Why I think the Palm Foleo is brilliant

At first, I did not know what to think of the Palm Foleo. What is it? A mobile companion? A laptop? It certainly is not the "new" Treo or device I was hoping for. That aside, it is just what I think any mobile professional or tech person needs.

The Palm Foleo is essentially a very thin, light flashed-based, instant on/off, Linux powered "laptop". I say "laptop" because that is instantly what it will be compared to. Every one I have spoken to says, "Why would Palm do this. I carry a laptop, Treo, now this? It's too much!". These people are missing one big point: the device is an accessory meant to sync with your smartphone to make your portable life easier- it is not meant to replace your laptop. Look at it this way:

When you  leave for work everyday, to you take your Treo, laptop, iPod, digital camera and video camera to work? My bet is no. You take some of these devices depending on your need. If you are doing a site visit, you might take your cameras one day. If you have a lot of driving ahead, you may take your iPod and so on. The Foleo is the same thing. You don't need it everyday, but when you do, its there. Let us look at some scenarios where it would be useful:

You have an all-day meeting tomorrow downtown. You don't feel like carrying your 6-pound laptop because all you can really do is reply to emails during the meeting- no real "work". Solution? bring your ultra light-weight Foleo (all 2.5-pounds of it), sync it with your Treo and write those emails away on a full size keyboard and beautiful 10" screen.

Or, perhaps you are sitting on your couch (like I am right now) and you want to compose a blog post. I have to wait 2 minutes for may laptop to boot, then launch all the tools I need to blog. Or, I could have my Foleo sitting on my coffee table and I boot it up (takes .5 seconds) and away I start to type up a blog post. How can I do this? The Foleo is fast and it also has Wi-Fi.

I can do the same thing in a Starbucks or a park because not only can I connect to access points, it also uses my Treo's data connection via Bluetooth. So, literally wherever I go I have a big screen and keyboard to do what I want. Look up full screen Google Maps, compose a document or simply browse the web anywhere I want since I always have a data connection with my Treo in my pocket. Yes, of course you can do the same things with a laptop, but the fact the the foleo is very, very light and has instant on makes it very convenient.

Out of the box, there is not much software. Email, Documents to Go, PDF viewer, photos and that is about it. However, this prouct is another product line, just like a Treo and Palm is releasing SDK's at launch. I think in no time there will be plenty of applications available; there are already plenty of Linux geeks just salivating at the chance to write some mobile applications.

When all is said and done, I will be first in line to buy this very exciting new product when it launches this summer.