[Mobilepartners] Palm's "Big Announcement"

[Andrew Yu]

Greetings!

Jeff Hawkins (the founder of Palm and the inventor of Treo) just unveiled 
Foleo. This was the anticipated "next big idea" from Palm, Inc.

Here are some descriptions:
- It's like a subnotebook laptop with instant-on capability.
- It's a Treo (both Palm OS and Windows Mobile) companion device that will 
work closely with Treo and extend Treo's capabilities with email and 
document editing, etc.
- The pricing is around $500 and it will be available some time this summer.
- It doesn't have a touch screen.
- Foleo is running a Linux OS.

In short, the product was designed to "extend" the capabilities of Treo 
smartphone devices with larger keyboard and larger screen. One of the 
questions from the audience was "isn't it just another laptop?".

Here is a blog link that has some latest info and a picture or two:
http://blogs.pcworld.com/techlog/archives/004514.html

Although this sounds like another sub-notebook device, one thing I learned 
about mobile devices is not to judge something before you try it for a few 
days. Jeff Hawkins has a great respect from the mobile industry, so it will 
be interesting to see how this new mobile device will affect us here at MIT 
in the future.

Andrew

_______________________________
Andrew Yu
Mobile Devices Platform Coordinator
Information Services & Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Phone: 617-324-8985
Email: andrewyu at mit.edu