Rant: Palm – now’s your chance to revive the Foleo netbook
By Dusan Belic on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 1:52 AM PST In Devices, Ideas and rants, Palm
I’ve already ranted about Palm and why they should revive the Foleo concept. I felt like I need to do it again – because I want one. But I don’t want the original Foleo, it was too bulky and way underpowered. What I want is something lighter and smaller, something that resembles the Sony Vaio P, yet it’s cheaper — just like I mentioned in my rant against the Nokia Booklet 3G.
In a nutshell, here’s what I want from my next netbook/smartbook:
- OS *must* be Linux-based to run/load faster. The OS used in the Foleo I’ve seen seems quite decent.
- CPU could be either Intel Atom or some ARM-based. Snapdragon is a good idea for the latter.
- Sufficient amount of RAM is required in order to multi-task.
- Palm (NSDQ: PALM) needs to get developers on board. Skype is a must-have, Evernote would also be nice, though I could access it via web browser. Some WordPress and Twitter client would also come as a plus.
- Speaking of web browser, make it Webkit-based (Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Chrome?) – it will be faster, or at least me thinks so.
- WiFi is a must, GPS not that much.
- 3G should be optional, not a must-have feature that would drive the price through the roof.
- Battery – 4 hours of autonomy is enough, meaning 3-4 cells is all I need.
- Size – please, please make it not larger than the Sony Vaio P. I can’t emphasize this enough!
- Instant on is also a plus. Scrap that – it’s a must!
- Forget the touchscreen, it will drive the cost up.
- And make all this available for $500, maybe $600.
Have I missed something? Any thoughts?
why not webOS as OS on the Foleo? And a 6-cell battery would be better
totally agree, webOS looks like it can scale quite well, and if they do launch it on the Foleo it could rock.
imagine a button you push, similar to the windows key, and that pulls up card view. very similar to expose on the mac and the new N900.
That’s Linux based, right? Nothing against it – quite the contrary.
If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t the Foleo nothing more than a companion to your existing Treo/Centro? If I remember correctly, it connected to your existing device and did nothing more than offer a few advantages like larger screen and full-sized keyboard, but all the computing was still done on your phone.
I mean, if Palm wants to make a netbook, that’s one thing. But the companion-style device is just going to be a huge failure.