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Palm Foleo Now Listed on Ebay

Are you jealous of the Palm Foleo I bought last  fall? Here’s your chance to do something about it. There’s another Palm Foleo listed on Ebay right now (not mine).

This is a rather rare occurrence, and in the time I’ve been tracking them I have seen Foleos on Ebay twice a year, at most.

What’s the Foleo, you ask? In terms of hardware, it was a netbook. But in terms of market presence, it was Palm’s last big fiasco (before the TouchPad).

Back in 2007, Palm had a great idea for a netbook. That was a largely unfilled niche at that point, and Palm thought that the 10″ Foleo would make  killing. It didn’t.

Palm never released the Foleo, because as the ship date approached it became more and more obvious that it cost too much (the Asus eee701 cost half as much) and not very many  people wanted to buy one. In some ways, the Foleo was like the TouchPad. It had a decent design with several clever features but died due to poor mrketing, app support, and the fact it simply cost too much.

Ebay

 

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Comments


Mike Cane March 12, 2012 um 1:38 pm

Someday will be satisfied just touching one. Buying one? Never.


Shawn March 16, 2012 um 7:57 am

I have one that I received as a test device that I’d be happy to part with, cheap.

Melvin Chupp March 20, 2012 um 9:41 am

I would like to buy yours Shawn if you still have it. I do quite a bit of work on the old palm PDA and just recently found out about this project. When I tried to see if I could find one to test out I discovered that they are not available. Please let me know what you want for yours and what the shipping would be. I am interested in seeing it but don’t want to pay a lot for it.

Thanks,
Melvin


Chris U. June 21, 2012 um 10:11 pm

I just picked up a Foleo on eBay last week. I like it a lot. The five year old browser is presenting some challenges. It hangs on some sites. Even Google takes a long time to load because of that little widget it puts in the upper right corner. But mobile Google is proving to be a viable substitute.
The instant-On feature alone more than makes up for all the shortcomings. Then, the crazy UI model that has no desktop turns out to be remarkably intuitive and easy to use. I think Palm got it right back in 2007. This isn’t a device for movie watchers, but I’ll bet many of those millions still out there who are clinging to their Blackberries would have been crazy about the Foleo and what it would have become in later versions.

The irony is that I got the Foleo because I wanted it to pair with my Palm Treo 650. They do talk on Bluetooth, but nothing happens. In fact, the conversation even hung the 650 once. The Foleo setup doc says I need to install some upgrades to my phone, so I’m guessing that’s the issue. The link it gives for those upgrades just gets me to a generic HP support screen.

I like the Foleo, and I’ll bet if I can get its email feature working with the phone I’m gonna like it even more. If anybody out there has a clue to how I get the needed Treo 650 upgrades it would be much appreciated.


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