Re: [NTLK] New Palm Device (flop?)

On Thu, May 31, 2007 at 12:21:11PM -0700, Steven Scotten wrote:
> And that it will "only" come with
> 256MB of memory. Of anyone, Newton users should know how much you can
> do with 256 MB.

Sure, and if the Foleo were running NewtonOS, no one would wonder if
256MB Flash is enough. Different OS and different generations of
machines have different requirements. People are just assuming that
the Foleo belongs to the current generation, not to the generation of
10 years ago.

Also, as near as I can tell, that's all the storage that is on it, so
I assume that you don't have all 256MB available to you. Presumably,
Linux will take up some space on the internal flash. I don't know how
much space a Linux distribution takes up.

I haven't found how much RAM it will have. Since Minimo requires 64MB,
I assume that it will at least be that much.

> Never mind the 4GB SD cards and 16GB CF cards the
> thing will take. Sheesh!

Yes. So the question how much stuff needs to always be
available. Until we see a spec sheet, I think this is impossible to
answer. (Just like we don't know what the Foleo actually does. To take
Jeff Hawkins at his word, this is a smart terminal for a smartphone,
not a subnotebook laptop computer. In that case, 256MB internal flash
makes perfect sense to me. If this were a computer in its own right,
it would be like running a Linux with a 256MB hard drive.)
 
> I
> wish the thing would have a touchscreen and allow the keyboard to
> swivel around for tablet use; maybe we can hope for those things in a
> future generation.

Devices in this form factor which have a touchscreen and usable as
tablets are available now. e.g., any UMPC, Nokia n800, a bunch of
subnotebook laptops.

I think the thing to hope for is not only the tablet use model, but
also to have it at a reasonable price with decent battery life. (I think
there are reasonably priced Tablet PCs now. If so, there's hope.)

> In any case it's about time someone started
> ripping spinning disks out of "portable" devices.

Sony has already done this. The Vaio UX390 has a 32G solid-state hard
drive, and it's available right now. (Of course, it's also quite
expensive.) Perhaps Palm made the right decision decision for the
Foleo. However, someone has already started. Palm is following Sony here.

> It's truly stupid
> design decisions like carrying around a spinning disk that makes the
> iPods (other than the shuffle or nano) useless.

I find my hard drive based iPod quite useful. This is good since I
couldn't afford an 80Gb flash based MP3 player even if someone made
one. Just as lots of people have found the hard drives on their
laptops useful. Are hard drives the ideal solution? Probably not. That
doesn't make them useless though. I'd like to think there is a
continuum.

                                          john

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