Palm Foleo we miss you...
December 23, 2007 12:57 PM Subscribe
The Palm Foleo....everyone seems to have gone ga-ga over the Asus EEE, but did the aforementioned piece of kit reach production stage before it got pulled, and does anyone know where i might be able to acquire one?
Everex is expected to start selling an Eee-ish machine called the Cloudbook on January 15 that has a hard drive instead of a flash drive.
Apple is rumored to be announcing its own ultraportable next month.
posted by lukemeister at 4:01 PM on December 23, 2007
Apple is rumored to be announcing its own ultraportable next month.
posted by lukemeister at 4:01 PM on December 23, 2007
I doubt they even really started developing the software (beyond gui mockups and research). Even if you scored a prototype, you'd just be running plain Linux + X windows. At best, you'd get untested hacked together ACPI for power management.
posted by blasdelf at 7:35 PM on December 23, 2007
posted by blasdelf at 7:35 PM on December 23, 2007
According to this, Popular Mechanics, of all places, was given a review unit. To me, that means development was fairly far along. As to whether they were given back to Palm/crushed/secreted away by PopMech staff I have no idea.
posted by djb at 8:19 PM on December 23, 2007
posted by djb at 8:19 PM on December 23, 2007
Best answer: The same blog post punilux mentions above states that the product was about to ship, meaning they had likely been manufactured already unless they are able to crank up the machinery really quickly right at the end. We know there were test units out in the wild anyway.
Also, the post says that the product was pulled "in its current configuration" and that they wanted to focus on a single new platform (the phantom Linux-based smartphone operating system they've been working on forever and which is currently slated to come out in 2009). So basically the Foleo had its own operating system, which wasn't this new system even if it was Linux based and they wanted to wait until all devices could operate on the same platform. Rumor was that it didn't play nicely with the current crop of Palm devices either.
What I'm wondering is that if they did manufacture a bunch of these things, and it's just the OS that was the holdup, maybe there is a warehouse full of units just awaiting that new OS to be loaded on. You'd think that they could, would want to, and would need to do more hardware/design improvement between now and 2009 though, so maybe not.
posted by kookoobirdz at 9:37 PM on December 23, 2007
Also, the post says that the product was pulled "in its current configuration" and that they wanted to focus on a single new platform (the phantom Linux-based smartphone operating system they've been working on forever and which is currently slated to come out in 2009). So basically the Foleo had its own operating system, which wasn't this new system even if it was Linux based and they wanted to wait until all devices could operate on the same platform. Rumor was that it didn't play nicely with the current crop of Palm devices either.
What I'm wondering is that if they did manufacture a bunch of these things, and it's just the OS that was the holdup, maybe there is a warehouse full of units just awaiting that new OS to be loaded on. You'd think that they could, would want to, and would need to do more hardware/design improvement between now and 2009 though, so maybe not.
posted by kookoobirdz at 9:37 PM on December 23, 2007
Response by poster: kookoobirdz, exactly what i was thinking, which is why iu;d like to know if any got out into the wild.
oh well.
posted by spyke23 at 9:39 AM on December 24, 2007
oh well.
posted by spyke23 at 9:39 AM on December 24, 2007
Palm Foleo: The exclusive first and final hands on
posted by blasdelf at 6:51 AM on December 29, 2007
posted by blasdelf at 6:51 AM on December 29, 2007
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by punilux at 1:08 PM on December 23, 2007