Software for Foleo

TealPoint Software is proud to announce full support for the Foleo Mobile Companion, the new Palm product that promises to reinvent mobile computing as we know it. We've had a prototype model for a little while now. Like most people, we didn't know what to make of it at first, but in using it have truly grown impressed by its capabilities and promise for the future. Overview What is a Foleo anyway? A Foleo Mobile Companion is a new product from Palm that brings the ease of use and intuitive user experience of Palm handhelds to everyday computing. While sometimes misunderstood, it is essentially a cross between a PDA and small laptop, combining the streamlined interface and instant-on features of the former with the large screen and full size keyboard of the latter. A Foleo is not intended to fully replace a laptop, but supplements one. The idea is that when you go into a meeting or a short trip and need to do a little work or email, you can often take your Foleo instead of your full laptop. It also features special connectivity features with Treo smartphones, but this is neither central or nor required for its use. Standard laptops and PCs are designed to do absolutely everything. As primary computing devices, they must be both all-powerful and all-expandable. This flexibility and complexity does not come without a cost, however, as it makes them overly expensive, fragile, virus and crash-prone, and cumbersome to use. A Foleo approaches the problem from a different angle. Instead of trying to do everything, it concentrates on the tasks most people need 90% of the time, such as web browsing, word processing, presentations, and email. By doing so, it can give a better experience while avoiding a lot of the pitfalls of lugging around a full-blown laptop. Features Why would I want one? Portability A few years ago, laptops were purely secondary computing devices. They were designed for long battery life and portability because we all had full desktops at home or work. That's no longer true, however, as more and more people use a laptop as their only computer. Consequently, laptops have bloated to meet this need, and are now often so big, run so hot, and drain so quickly that their portability has been compromised. A Foleo, however, is truly portable, and is about as small as you can get and still have a full size keyboard and 10-inch screen. It has no fans, hard drive, or any moving parts whatsoever, and runs completely cool. It weighs just 2 1/2 pounds. Battery Life A quick scan of any metropolitan airport shows how power hungry modern laptops have become. Electron-starved travelers cluster around every electrical outlet, eager to siphon of a few milliwatts of lifegiving power before embarking on the next leg of their journey. A Foleo, by contrast, can operate five hours on a single charge, even at full brightness with Wifi enabled. Instead of a giant charging brick, a small phone-sized wall wart can recharge at the end of the day. Instant On/Off When running into an old friend who wants to give you his or her new contact information... how many times have you taken out your laptop to type it in? Unless your acquaintances are more patient than the Dalai Lama, my guess would be about zero. By the time you waited for it to boot or come out of hibernation, do its quick virus scan, navigated the Start Menu and waiting for Outlook to open up, he or she probably would have decided that they had confused you for someone else. On a Foleo, the experience closely mirrors that of a PDA. Press one button, and it's on. Press it again, and it's off--truly off. No anxiety waiting for the system to come up, and no dirty looks from the flight attendant because your plane is waiting on the runway for your screen to stop saying "Windows is Shutting Down". Launching applications is similarly simple and PDA-like: press the "Apps" button then select an app to run. It opens instantly and fills the screen. When you're done, simply choose another app. You never need to explicitly reposition windows, hide or show a desktop, or "exit" an app. It's not a laptop What it doesn't do... Inevitably, some naysayers are compelled to point out what a Foleo cannot do--they are entirely missing the point. Trying to do everything is precisely why we're all familiar with terms like firewalls, blue screens, hardware acceleration, system restore, recovery console, driver updating, DLL's, task manager, hibernate mode, standby mode, video codecs, system cache, security updates, and the registry. A Foleo is not a full laptop, nor it is ever intended to be. There are some tasks, like video editing, playing DVDs, or hardcore gaming, that it will probably never be good at. There are many people--particularly frequent travellers--who already have a full sized laptop but need a very portable second device. For many of these people, a Foleo may be ideal. One key, we recognize, to the Foleo's success will be the availability of software programs. While it doesn't need to do everything that a laptop does, it will need to cover most of the common tasks users need when traveling or away from their desks. Accordingly, TealPoint has created special Foleo versions of the following products, with more to come in the future: ShortCircuit for Foleo Connect falling conduit game pieces into explosive loops in this frantic race against the clock. SudokuAddict for Foleo Sudoku (aka Su Doku) is the addictive number puzzle craze sweeping Great Britain and Japan. TealBackup for Foleo Backup and restore your files; prevent data loss with TealBackup, the complete backup solution TealDiet for Foleo Shape up your life with TealDiet, the diet, exercise, and personal tracking application for mobile devices. TealDoc for Foleo Read, edit, and browse documents, Doc files, eBooks and text files with TealDoc, the enhanced doc reader. TealMover for Foleo Beam, delete, rename, and copy files with TealMover, the file management utility for SD/CF/MS cards. TealPaint for Foleo Paint, sketch, or draw with TealPaint, the all-in-one mobile graphics paint program and photo editor. TealSafe for Foleo Store your passwords, credit cards, PIN numbers, and bank accounts in the TealSafe encrypted data wallet. Maximum security and encryption. TealTracker for Foleo Track time and expenses with a fast, easy to use interface. TealTracker is your personal time clock. Beta Testing a Foleo? Visit our Beta Test Page to download and try these apps. Software Support How TealPoint fits in... Conclusion... Some parting thoughts... Clearly, modern computing has gotten too complex and painful for anybody who simply wants to answer some email and get a little work done, and we commend Palm for creating something new and simple from the ground up. The idea of a simplified computing device is certainly not new, but our experience with the Foleo has been quite promising. We're cautiously optimistic that Palm will be able to leverage its hardware expertise, developer support, and "Zen of Palm" to succeed where others have failed.