Also, I think Hardware approach is needed too. Making it software only is a bad idea and is very limitted, IMO. Using a web server only as Nokia is doing is a good software approach, but I see a limit in the end. I mean, isn’t it much more convenient to rely only on a handheld device and not a PC accessing a web server? I don’t think this is enough and people will see a limit by relying on just web servers soon. The idea is just too geeky to me to reach the broad population, not to mention how inconvenient that is. People would rather have devices which connect to the cloud, not a device that relies on computers to connect to the cloud.

So, I would welcome Folio, as it will bring more competition to the area and make Nokia do more on the hardware approach. I see Nokia as too darn stingy, to be honest, for not making their “multimeadia computers” more powerful and all. I mean, promoting N Series phones as computers is a joke, seing how it doesn’t perform that fast and how limitted it is. Nokia relies too much on software. This also includes how their cameraphones produced overprocessed photos due to the lack of sensors cameras should have, improving S60 to be less RAM hungry instead of adding more rams, etc.

It’s nice to see Palm trying a different approach that is more independent than what Nokia is offering. It’d be great if this stir some major development. Yeah, sure, the small screen sucks compared to the PC/Laptop screens, but I’d say leaving out buttons and making phones pure touchscreen would eliminate this problem. Also, this would be a lot more mobile and independent on other devices. So, I’d say I want a device that connects to the cloud more than devices which connect to other devices that connect to the cloud. Why going towards a more limitted and inconvenient path when we should be progressing to a more mobile and independent path?

I DO like everything on my phone and I DO want a bigger screen experience w/o lugging a laptop through every airport on the planet. With this and my WiFi-enabled phone I’ll be good to go providing:

1. Foleo will handle HTML e-mail (which I doubt by the lack of it in the publicity shots)

2. Foleo will display PowerPoint presentations stored on my PPC

3. Battery life is half-decent –

Psion actually made a unit like this some years ago (GOD, they were soooo far ahead of the world), but it ran EPOC, then “WINCE”.

Foleo takes that concept and makes it what it could have been.

Cool!

Like the “life drive” this is not in tune with the current market and just doesn’t make sense to me. I predict this may be the end of Palm as we know it and ripen them up for a future acquisition for someone who wants the Treo name such as Moto or Nokia.

My .02 cents….

At this point, a media server in your home is a task even the most novice computer user could do:

Step 1: Put your media into a folder on a computer that’s always on and connected to your home network.

Step 2: Enable UPnP on your router

Step 3: Install a UPnP server on your the connected machine (freely available for just about any platform, uShare for Linux, TVersity for Windows, etc).

Step 4: Connect any device that’s UPnP capable to that server, and enjoy your media.

Nokia already has it nailed, the N80i, the N800, etc.

-olly

But why 5+ proprietary docks? With the smartphone as compute device, the dock only needs to provide power (for charging), screen, keyboard/mouse and perhaps audio and broadband network connections, and all of this can be provided over one or two USB2 connections. And isn’t PCI Express designed for just this kind of thing also?

I’m sure vendors would prefer proprietary connections but there would be no technical reason to take this route and I would hope that consumer pressure for interoperability would force vendors to standardise – did I read somewhere that the South Korean government is trying to get manufacturers to agree a common charging standard?