Foleo, Foleo .... wherefore art thou Foleo ?

Just when I was putting my thoughts of owning a Macbook to the back of my mind, a colleague showed me the spiel for a forthcoming gizmo - the Foleo - from Palm.

It looks looks like it is being received with mixed reviews.

• On the one hand, there's the good stuff : it's portable, it syncs with smartphones, it's got a good screen and keyboard, runs familiar Palm apps.


• On the other hand ... it won't do movies and it's not a PC and it's not a Mac.

The sub-notebook is clearly territory where Psion boldly went before with the Series 5, Series 7 and Netbooks. And yet, despite producing truly portable, reliable machines with excellent out-of-the-box software, instant-on and long battery life ... they never saturated the market in the way that they deserved.

Why ? I believe there were two main reasons :

1. Users wanted their familiar applications. At the time, that meant Windows stuff. Sure, Psion provided PsiWin to convert word processing and spreadsheet files between the platforms, but that's just not the same is it ? All that mucking about only to find that your formatting headings have all gone funny ....



2. It was a proprietary architecture, so Psion prices were at a premium.There was no real direct competition in this arena - although Psion did eventually license their system to other suppliers (the GeoFox was a gallant effort) but it was too little, too late.
   

I believe that there is room in the market for a Foleo-type device, as long as the price is right, and as long as information can be easily shared between devices. Given the abundance of decent web apps (Google Apps and Zoho, to name but two), some of us might only need a decent screen, a decent keyboard and a decent internet connection to keep us happy. As long as the Foleo's browser can keep up with the demands of these apps, then it could break through.

So has Palm got a winner here ?

My head says no. This is based purely on the Psion experience.

My heart says yes. This is based purely on a love of gadgets ... and the fact that I personally would use one of these gizmos.

Good luck, Palm. You'll need it.