Pro Foleo

I've been reading quite a lot of discussion on the Foleo recently, and I've noticed a common hope winding through the threads covering the Foleo's battery life: Without the WiFi or Bluetooth radios turned on, and with the display a couple of notches down from its brightest setting, the Palm Foleo should run a lot longer than five hours before needing to plug in the power supply. There are various estimates of what that life may be. Ten hours. Eight hours. Two days of average use. One fellow hopefully tossed out a guess of fifteen hours, based on his experience of how WiFi alone affects the battery life of his Dell laptop.

I plan to use my Foleo more as a writing machine than an Internet machine (or even a smartphone companion), so I'm interested in figuring out the Foleo's battery life under low-power tasks. I don't pretend to know much about what kind of power requirements the Foleo has, or the amount of juice that can fit in its tiny form-factor, but I do know this: Every laptop I've tried has had much longer battery life when the WiFi was turned off. Palm advertises a 5-hour battery life with both radios on, and the people who've gotten their hands on the Foleo seem to think that is an accurate guess. So it would make sense that one could get 7 or 8 hours of life out of the Foleo if the radios are turned off.

Lest I raise your hopes too high, please do remember that most of the time, tech companies have a tendency to exaggerate the battery life of mobile devices. But reviewers have suggested that Palm has been admirably conservative in their Foleo estimate, so there is some reason to hope.

Thoughts?

My, Foleo, what a small power supply you have!

Many of you have already seen Brighthand's Foleo preview, but if not, it's worth checking out. The video especially gives a nice look at the Foleo's compact hardware.

The Foleo's killer battery life will mean you won't need to carry around the power cable all of the time, but it's nice to see that it won't take up much room in your bag on longer trips.