A niche for the Palm Foleo is discovered!
A jkOnTheRun reader who will remain anonymous as I don’t have permission to disclose his/her name sent me the following email with an interesting question:
I came upon your blog looking up Batman oddly enough, (yes I would probably get along great with your friend Marc). For some time I’ve been looking for a low frills portable word processing device with little luck. With your vast knowledge and experience in the world of so many on the go devices of the likes I’ve never seen, I was hoping you’ve come across something.
I am an avid note jotter and unambitious writer who constantly loses pocket size notebooks before I can type the important stuff into my pc. Not only is writing in the tiny things a pain but it’s even worse to have to retype it all later. A thing I put off so long it’s likelier I loose the notes or they get too worn in my back pocket to read. My demands for such a device aren’t non specific but if you can point me in the right direction I’m sure I can pick something suitable. I’m hoping there is a device in existence I haven’t found with my meager consumer research skills that has a large enough qwerty keyboard not to hit 3 letters a time and requires no OS boot time with enough battery life to be useful. I don’t think it’s likely to find a word processor specific gadget in our multi tasked device world but that would be it’s primary use for me. While video, mp3s, web surfing and various palm style apps would be nice I believe that would only add to the need for an OS, less batt life and more $$. I hope I haven’t missed such a thing in your blog posts but if so please send me a link as I wouldn’t even know what to type into the ctr f to find it. If you get time to answer this, thanks a lot! Keep up the good work.
This is an interesting question and it’s good to get reminded that for some simpler is better if that fits their needs. The first solution that came to mind is the Palm Foleo, which I think would make the perfect word processor. Those who do a lot of writing could make good use of the Foleo. Instant on, good battery life and it’s cheap. If this reader needs to connect to the web or get email that can be done by connecting to a phone. We may have discovered an actual niche for the Foleo.
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Maybe the AlphaSmart would be a better (and cheaper) bet? Much longer battery life, for one, and if you’re looking for a writing tool, that’s exactly what it was designed for. To me, it still seems like the Foleo is an answer to a question no one has asked.
Well Brother makes such dedicated word processors for less than the folio- So I don’t know if that is such a good solution, Besides wouldn’t you want to do any writing in Word for compatibility and formatting features?
The AlphaSmart is a good device too that might work. The only thing is the small screen where the Foleo has a full screen to make writing and editing easier.
http://www.alphasmart.com/Retail/
I actually think the Palm Foleo might be tremendous for me. I’m a professor who attends a lot of outside forums, events, research conferences, business meetings, etc. The ability to type in a few words quickly would be a great asset. I wish Palm had seen fit to make the Foleo into a convertible style tablet with an input screen for scribbling however – for me, that would been killer. It would the be literally an electronic folio pad.
This is something that I used to do with my Palm III, then Palm VIIx and a foldout keyboard – might also be a solution.
Wow,
So Palm, in their infinate wisdom, thinks this device can replace all the revenue streams that have dried up after PDAs stopped selling and the Treo is on its last limb? Great job Palm, you’re going to come out of this alive for sure!
(/ saracsm)
Wow, so you “discovered an actual niche.” Way to go, Columbus.
I can’t believe it took a reader email to get you to realize the practicality of a lightweight, instant-on device for writers. That market has been there for years.
I finally had a chance to try the Foleo at Gnomedex. It’s a very nice device and will suit your reader’s needs very nicely – at a price. I think Palm will do much better if they rethink their pricing and adjust downwards by around $100. And yes, I told them exactly that.
$50 will get you a Newton e-Mate (the original “bat computer”) or maybe get a used HPC form-factor device with keyboard.
If the iRex iLiad sold for $200 and didn’t have a failure rate roughly equal to that of an XBox 360 I’d recommend that device. As it is I have to second the e-mate suggestion. I know a couple writers that you couldn’t prize the device away from with out serious mayhem involved.
When Palm goes out of business where will you get Foleo service parts?
I repair printer/photocopiers on site and this
foleo if it can display PDF would be great.Often I need to read service books and by the time I get my laptop out(always flat) wait for it to boot then then open a PDF four mins have been wasted.This instent on and off would save me so much time and effort .
This shows the importance of bringing down the price point of UMPCs and Tablet PCs. It saddens me to see a fellow pen-based note-taker (and unambitious writer) brought down to the level of text entry by budget constraints.
Alphasmart has a smaller screen.
Word compatibility is there via Doc2Go built-in.
PDF I have no idea. It’d probably be about as lousy an experience as on the Nokia 770. (You’d rather die than use it, in other words.)
I still think the Foleo will be the Flopeo. Unless they ram the price down to $300-$400.
He didn’t have to wait until Foleo.
There are units like HP Jornada 720 or NEC 900 or a Psion unit that can be purchased on ebay for less then half of foleo and will do this.
Actually from what I read, the PDF viewer on the foleo is quite robust. Plus its nice to have that wifi and phone sync in addition to just plain word processor (not to mention that the keyboard is full size unlike the psion)
I second the votes for Mr. Anonymous to check out the AlphaSmart – probably the “Neo” model.
Ozone: Check the Logitech digital I/O pen. It might do what you want, and you’ve only got to carry a pen and paper notebook. I’ve played with one and it does a very accurate ink capture, and is kinda fun to use. Not so good for checking email, though :-)
He already stated that he loses things in his pocket. He’d probably lose and/or break a PDA.
eMate? Why saddle him with conversion problems?
I think the Flopeo is his best choice.
The Foleo has built-in wifi, so it doesn’t need a phone to get online. I agree that the price is too high, but as a low-end standalone notebook (of sorts), it’s really not that bad.
As much as I love all my Newton MessagePad (the e-mate’s brother) I would NEVER recommend any of those 2 today!!!
No wifi, no SD/SDHC slot, too small screen, too low rez (HalfVGA), no color, no USB, no VGA out, no service parts (or hard to find/expensive), closed platform, dead since over 10 years now!!!
That’s 1 advantage: battery life and 10 disadvantages, many major ones!!!
As for the price it’s a brand new devicer not even on the market yet, tho Engadget says August 22, 07 (not official). That’s next week. And prices will go down.
It’s by far NOT a new market, indeed the Foleo’s ancestor came out around 25!! years ago, it was The Tandy TRS-80 Model 100.
I heard it sold by the truck loads to journalists, amongst others.
Epson, Sinclair/Cambridge Computers, Kyocera, Olivetti, Gateway 2000 (now just Gateway) also came out with competing machines, JK should remember most of them.
I know he says that he says that he loses pocket sized notebooks before he gets around to transfering the text to his PC. However, if he’s used to being able to pull his notebook out of his pocket whenever he needs to jot a note, I think he’ll find any device which isn’t pocket sized less convenient and less available. Likewise, if he’s used to jotting down notes while he’s not sitting down near a flat surface, he may find another device less convenient and less available.
This is my experience trying to transition away from a Moleskine pocket notebook. My problem isn’t that I lose the thing. My problem is that I can’t always read my handwriting to transfer the text. Oddly, neither the Newton nor RitePen has problems with my handwriting. (The XP Tablet recognizer fares slightly worse. I couldn’t get PenOffice to work correctly on my Tablet PC. I don’t own anything Vista capable.)
If he’s willing to make that trade off, the Foleo may be right for him. Of course, so might the cheaper Asus Eee, or VIA NanoBook.
yes, but Asus Eee has a terrible keyboard and build quality. The Foleo looks like really well-built product. That has to count for something.
the Asus Eee is supposed to be around $400, not the $200 (I even read $189) it was promised to be (tho that also depends on the market: US, Europe…)
Then the Folio at $499 is a much better alternative with its much bigger screen and REAL instant on capability. The Foleo only has on/off state, no sleep, deep sleep or hibernate that takes awefully long time to come out of.
Tho sleep on my Q1 only takes 4-5 sec to go in/come out, it reverts back to hibernate after around 5-10 min of sleep. Then it can take 40-60 sec to wake up again…
The interactivity of the internet is great. I’m seeing so many other options now due to these comments. While I do like the nice size keyboard and LOVE the instant on of the Foleo, The price and the fact that I don’t already have a smart phone slide it down a notch in this new list you are all helping to build. I had no idea handwritting recognition has come so far along. If I can find the right combination I think a good PDA with the Ritepen s/w or Ipen attchment will actually be more portable for me as screen size isn’t a huge factor. Due to my previous low tech methods I’m actually pretty comfortable with a pen over the keyboard. Do the two pen inmputs requre a full windows OS though? If so I will still have the bootup hurdle. What about all these so called UMPC’s? I’ve seem some that look good for size but still seems batt life is a large limitation with them.