Pro Foleo

I'm a fan of the Foleo concept, but I do have some basic requirements before I get in the trenches with Palm. One of those requirements is a high-quality, full-size keypad that behaves like I expect a laptop keypad to behave. (The need for a good keyboard is why the current competition won't see my money.)

According to those who have handled the Foleo, Palm has put in a nice-feeling keyboard, so they're halfway home. But they seem to have forgotten something when designing the keyboard layout.

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When searching for alternatives to the Foleo, one cannot avoid at least a quick look at the Asus Eee PC, another low-cost, Linux-based laptop alternative. One of the strongest initial criticisms of the Foleo was that it didn't have enough functionality for the price. So when the more powerful Eee PC was announced at $199–less than half the price of the Foleo–the blogosphere firmly declared Palm's device DOA.

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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?

Tealpoint is one of the third-party software vendors on board for the Foleo. I've not used a lot of their applications, but PDA folks seem to like them. What I do know, however, is that whoever wrote the Foleo overview on their site clearly understands the potential the Foleo has to bring us truly mobile computing.

[The Foleo] concentrates on the tasks most people need 90% of the time, such as web browsing, word processing, presentations, and email. By doing so, it can give a better experience while avoiding a lot of the pitfalls of lugging around a full-blown laptop.

One thing you'll notice is that not once on their page do they describe the Foleo as a companion to your smartphone.

Anyhow, the full article is worth a read. Very clear.

Lots of people seem to be getting their hands on the Foleo at various Palm events these days, but Engadget reader Michelle sent in a couple of pics of the Foleo in use at an oil-change station in Redwood City, California. Anyone recognize that guy? Palm rep? Linux developer? Or just a regular Joe the Journalist testing out his review unit, meaning it won't be long until our own Foleos arrive? He's using what looks like a Treo, so he's at least trying the whole smartphone companion thing.

UPDATE: Maps are our friend. Turns out Redwood City, California isn't too far down the road from Sunnyvale, home of many a Silicon Valley giant, including, yes, Palm, Inc. It's likely the gentlemen getting his car's oil changed works for Palm.

Nothing new here, but James Miller at Palm Boulevard wonders what, exactly, Palm means when they insist that "U.S. availability for the Palm Foleo mobile companion will begin this summer."

Technically, that would give Palm until 9:51 p.m. on September 23rd, when the Autumn Equinox kicks in to mark the beginning of fall. Then again, most of us assumed Palm meant sometime between late June and Labor Day, which falls on September 3rd. That's the time when pools close and kids are on their way back to school.

Interestingly, Deutsche Bank's Goldberg said Palm was supposed to have released Foleo last week, well within the range of common expectations.

You'll note that, at the end of the article, James says that the Foleo will cost $399 after the mail-in rebate. That is undoubtedly a mistake, unless James has some inside scoop on a price drop.

Anyhow, I'm tapping my foot impatiently here, waiting for the availability update from Palm. It's getting a little old just looking at pictures… 

It amuses me to no end when I stumble across these blog entries declaring the Palm Foleo DOA because some other cool gadget has come out that is so much way more awesomer n' stuff. This time around, Aaron at the Morning Paper has a round up of reviews for the HTC Advantage:

…at roughly $900, the Advantage seems to be far ahead on connectivity, usefulness, installed applications and overall positive reactions. The fact it already has phone connectivity would put this as the real competition to the Foleo in my opinion.

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Ben Combee, working hard to iron out the Foleo's software before launch, stopped by the TreoCentral discussion forums to give a little more information on the Foleo's video capabilities:

The Foleo hardware is capable of playback of several video formats as the Marathon 2700G chip accelerates the operations involved in H.263, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 video. It is possible to use the hardware to support a standalone video player like TCPMP…

As of the current system software build, Flash video isn't supported. We'd like to change that, but I can't promise anything yet.

It's interesting that the Foleo does have the grunt to handle video files. No YouTube, though. For those interested in the Foleo, that's probably not a deal breaker. Myself, I'll gladly trade Internet video for an instant-on device with great battery life. I can watch videos on my home workstation.

James Kendrick has a new op-ed piece titled, "Vista will never run well on mobile devices." Kendrick explains how frustrating the Vista experience has been on all the mobile devices he's tried.

"The dreaded disk thrashing that occurs with too little memory leaves the device unresponsive to the user until it's done doing whatever it's doing, and that takes way too long on the slower processors…

"I do not have a good outlook on resolving the Vista performance problem on mobile devices in the near future."

JK says the Vista experience is better on fast laptops with Core 2 Duo processors, but even then the system will often have slow-downs that leave the user frustrated.

"Who knows what it's doing when it freezes up temporarily but bottom line who cares?  It shouldn't do that."

"If you use Sleep and Resume you quickly fall victim to the dreaded Vista la-la land where the device fails to resume properly.  Sometimes the device comes back fine but without a screen which is oh so useful.  Other times it comes back but hangs the entire device up in just a few seconds."

Kendrick doesn't seem to be a fan of the Foleo, although he has said that a few writer types might find it useful. Still, Kendrick's editorial definitely emphasizes what many Foleo fans don't want in a mobile computer: A bloated memory hog of an OS that is better suited to a desktop workstation with several gigs of RAM.

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.