It's probably not the first
Foleo to ever splash down on
eBay, but this one might just be the most comprehensive of them all. Palm's companion laptop-that-never-was will almost definitely remain a tech mystery for eons to come, but today, the chance is yours to own the
flop of the last decade for just $750. Better still, that Buy It Now price includes a smorgasbord of applications, so you won't have to go hunting in order to find programs that actually take advantage of the thing. The only downside is the lack of a VGA dongle and the original packaging, but there's only so much griping you can do about a Foleo that costs less than an
Adamo.
Update: And she's gone! But strangely, it looks as if the entire auction has been removed. We're guessing someone paid this fellow a couple million to end it early and take an under the table lump sum, Just a guess, though.
posted June 30th 2010 9:06AM
FU** Macbook Pro i7
I'm getting this
@dthehwang I've been scanning ebay for a Foleo for years with no luck. It was never commercially released. It's a pity my Treo 650 hasn't seen action in about 2 years now.
@dthehwang next HP Envy????
whats foleo
@sedo: The greatest thing ever
@sedo
the iPad traveled back to 2007 and smacked down by Engadget.
WANT.
@sedo
Here's a link:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=foleo
@sedo Cornholio
@sedo
I have a foleo in my bungholio!
@Smart People Play Tuba thanks for nothing pal we are not impressed by your homosexual link
@notimpressed
Wow. You registered a user name just to post that?
I am impressed.
@Smart People Play Tuba I don't understand why ppl use URL shorteners in a blog, it's so annoying. They belong in twitter and a few other select places, it's so pretentious and annoying here.
@juanvaldez It's not a URL shortener... If you don't know what lmgtfy is you probably don't belong on the internet.
@juanvaldez
1. yes URL shortners are annoying
2. he did not use an URL shortner
@juanvaldez Looks like someone didn't click the link . . .
Somebody will put Android on this. Blogs will go wild.
@okok only Apple Fanboys bought i
Yes it would, but Android has a bigger development community. Just talkin' about likelihood
Oh man, I wish HP would make the new Foleo on WebOS...
Forget it. HP's on the tablet kick.
Foleo was the netbook-before-netbooks-were-cool.
Development community is where the money is. And it’S certainly not with Android.
Someone, somewhere with their Palm TX, is rejoicing.
Was never sure why Engadget shat so hard on the foleo. I can see a market for a device that makes your smart phone everything that's not a laptop, eliminating your need for a separate fully fledged device... let's say a keyboard and screen with a decent size storage drive that can run light apps over wifi when not connected with the mobile device. I dunno.
@Luke
Yet it wasn't really a smartphone companion as it was the earliest of the modern smartbook. It had wi-fi and local storage and local apps.
I'd buy one today if it had support and I could get replacement batteries and such.
@Luke
Apple is selling iPad quite well, Toshiba, Lenovo, and many others now building so-called "smartbook"s... It WAS the future, I was even planning to have one, and people(including engadget) couldn't see it. So unfortunate for foleo, now the Palm's merged into HP, I hope HP-Palm-branded foleo will someday resurrect with its all the goodness it had back in 2007.
@Luke I bet if it was 'iFoleo' by Apple, Engadget would have proclaimed it as the revolutionary device of the decade
You really want to go toe-to-toe in a bidding war with Chris Zeigler?
@franktronic So he can immediately after winning smash it into pieces and claim there has always only been the iPad. ;)
The reason this was such a poor idea is because it was running a very limited OS...netbooks took off because they could run WINDOWS in a form factor that was no larger than the Foleo and cost less. Practically no one actually kept a Linux pre-installation on a netbook!
I don't understand why Palm at one point stopped producing things in large enough quantities...their products became downright exotic in most countries in the world. They wanted to introduce a new computing paradigm, which is fine if you're a gigantic company like Apple or Google, but if not, your product NEEDS to run Windows. Wanna bet that if ASUS came up with a non-x86 eeePC it would have met with equal derision?
Same goes for pre+webOS...if HTC is capable enough to get their products pretty much everywhere, why couldn't Palm do the same? It was downright ridiculous to come up with a new platform and expect to make money by selling it in...3-4 countries???? Of course there was no developer interest, why would anyone want to make apps only for Sprint subscribers and a couple of other carriers in Europe? I live in the EU and use Vodafone, where were my Pre offers?
I used to love these guys, but they SOOO deserved to fail.
@lecter You know, this is really obvious, so I'm going to be blunt about it.
They didn't have as much money as HTC; they were probably the poorest company in the smartphone game. When you're tight with money like that, you don't have the luxury of depending on worldwide launches to bring revenue.
I'll pass without a second thought!
I snagged it. Lets see what I can port to it. :)
does it come in web-os?
Seems like it's not so much the concept of the foleo that was such a bad idea, just the terrible price/value ratio as compared to the netbooks that would start coming out like a year later once atom hit the scene. Also the fact Palm had no business designing this.
@Mr Itcher The concept of a small ultraportable notebook was great, making it tied to a cellphone was not good.
No longer listed on eBay. Booo.
Are they raising money for a new hire to replace one of the many which keep leaving?
I am sorry, but this was not a flop - it was never commercially released. What it was was one of the greatest missteps by a company - coming up with what could have been the first netbook, and shelving it months before the category took off. One wonders if they would have released this, if they might have gotten 1/4 of the business of Asus and been flush with enough cash to really give the Web OS phones enough R&D that they could have stayed independent. Oh, and been able to launch on Verizon before the Droid, and possibly replacing Android as the must-have iPhone alternative.
Then again, maybe they would have stuck with Palm/Harmony OS and crippled their phones even more....
@daedbird42
What is "Harmony OS"? The only code names I've heard were Garnet, Cobalt and Nova.
@daedbird42 : It wasn't a netbook. It required another device to work.
Nope, not sold. PULLED, perhaps by Palm. I actually l took a futile shot and bid $200, which still didn't make the reserve price. Half an hour later eBay sent me an email, which said, in part:
"...we removed the listing because the copyright or trademark owner of this product reported that they believe the item may not be authentic."
The copyright/trademark owner is Palm (at least for a few more hours, then it's HP).
I had one of these few a weeks as part of Palm's developer early access program. I can sum up the experience in two sentences:
* It booted instantly... very cool for something that seemed like a notebook.
* In all other ways, THE FOLEO WAS SLOW AS SHIT.
This thing was unusable. And expensive. ($600... WTF?). You would be far better off today with an 12 inch notebook (netbook?), which can be had these days for $500.
So I actually have one of these... I'd love to sell it. Do you think anybody would want to buy it? It's basically brand new in the box. I've played with it a couple of times but that's it. I put a 1gb flash card in the internal slot and it works great on wifi. I have the original box and all the connectors it came with. Anybody have any advice? should I put it on eBay? What do you guys think it would go for?