But you cant make a product severely underpowered even for browsing tasks and have such a high price point.

Also, there would need to be applications like UltraSoft Money that would run and take advantage of the bigger screen. All of the current database, planner, and mostly any application that could take advantage of that bigger screen and full size keyboard would need to be ported over and have the capability to run on it.

Now thats a good idea.

Email.

Light surfing.

Documents.

Could Foleo do these things? Yes? Could it do these things better than an Eee? Instant-on, full keyboard, and twice the battery life. Yes.

The Foleo would have a market. But first needs is to lose the silly smartphone companion marketing angle.

I think what’s up is Palm is working with Celio’s Redfly:
http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/palm-celio-redfly-mystery-device/

Palm no longer has the financial resources to put out another Foleo, nor does it have time, nor does it have a real OS.

I suspect some of the users in this market space are also the ones interested in the EEE PC. Additionally, the EEE PC Implementation isn’t trying to tie itself to a Platform, like the FOLEO was designed to do, poorly, unfortunately.

Additionally the price / performance ratio of the ASUS EEE PC compared to that of the FOLEO is much much better, you get a lot of bang for the buck at the 549 price point that the new bigger screen asus EEE PC costs.

Who wants to shell out 400 dollars for a crappy(comparatively speaking) buggy TREO with a 5 year old O/S and then spend another 4 or 5 hundred dollars for an equally buggy and crappy Companion. Why spend almost 1000 dollars for these two items when you can use the truly effective although still admittedly limited screen size iPhone.

IMHO a phone was never meant to browse the web to the degree that you should be able to on a PC, but the FOLEO should be able to bridge this GAP, if they bring it to market with browsing capabilities close to a desktop.

Hey, im a DIE HARD Palm FANATIC.. I was very excited to be able to get my hands on a foleo. But once you dig in a little and realize the lack of functionality that it would have, its poor implementation, and the fact that PALM needs to revamp its PALM OS COMPLETELY as evidenced by the CONSTANT crashing and lawsuits against them for their TREO Smartphones, it was probably in palms best interest to work on improving their current smartphones and to compete in their main product lineup before entering yet another market space. It sounds crazy but PALM has been dead as a company for years, it took apple to come with a revolutionary new interface for a smartphone for them to finally wake up. Hopefully now they do something with the pain they are experiencing from the swift kick in the ass that apple is giving them with the iphone.

I do think, though, that Palm wouldn’t now have – or have had at the time – as much success with the Foleo as it stood, reliant on a smartphone. The Eee might be similar in size and functionality, but the fact that it stands on its own makes a huge difference. What’s a shame is that it’s (perhaps) taken Palm this long – if a new Foleo really is on the cards – to catch on to the potential of a re-worked WiFi verision. I just hope they don’t miss the budget-ultraportable moment.