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Palm Withdraws Linux-Powered Foleo PC
M Saunders writes "Not long after we enjoyed playing with the device at LinuxWorld 2007, Palm has announced that it is shelving the Foleo handheld PC, before it was due to ship, so that the company can focus on a 'next-generation platform.' Palm hasn't ruled out a 'Foleo II' at some point, but for those of us looking forward to dinky Linux-powered laptops it's a bit of a disappointment. Still, with the Asus Eee PC nearby — and at a very low price point — perhaps it was a sensible move by Palm."
The Linux platform the Foleo was built upon is different from the one they are currently developing for the next line of smartphone. Thus it is quite expensive and resource intensive for them to maintain two lines. The Foleo II will have the same OS powering both the Foleo and the smarthphone. In addition to this, the Foleo had a very limited amount of application that could run out of the box, making it not very practical/useful to use. Finally, in the current generation one it only support tethering with a Palm phone. In few words: a very restrictive platform, a dead end for Palm. Let's hope generation two will be better.