Palm’s Foleo was presented by Jeff Hawkins at the D5 Conference. It was described as “first smartphone companion product”. When you edit a document on the Foleo, for instance, the changes appear on the accompanying smartphone, and vice versa. Foleo was designed to work in a tandem with a smartphone.

The device sports a 10″ wide screen, full QWERTY keyboard and Bluetooth connectivity. It can be paired with Palm Treo devices that use the Palm OS or Windows Mobile. Other devices could work with Foleo by modifying their software.

Foleo impresses with the built-in office software: Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the Opera browser for Web surfing and a Palm-developed PDF viewer. It features Wi-Fi connectivity. The mini-laptop runs the Linux OS. However it received some critics referring to the underpowered processor. Palm Foleo is priced at $500, but many voices questioned its capabilities. Overall, I find it very attractive. Probably an improved model would rock the market. We shall see…

Filed under Gadgets, UMPC