The Foleo was, alas, a non-starter. The subcompact form factor, however, has a champion now in the form of the Asus Eee PC, and Redfly thinks that maybe the time is right for someone to take a shot at the sub-sub-compact. This thing is small enough to fit in your purse, guys, and although it’d be cool if it was running some kind of compact Linux distro, it’s got a custom OS that (they say) makes communicating with your smartphone a snap.
Personally, I’d rather wait until mobiles usurp the capabilities of the laptop, not the other way around. But for people who are really hardcore about their smartphone use, this thing, at $500, may actually be a good idea.
Redfly resurrects the Foleo [Pocket Lint, via Gizmodo]
Hmmm…Custom OS sounds like a really bad idea.
Not as bad an idea as trying to run Vista on a tablet.
Very useful for many users out there who only use a PC for email access and WWW such as my brother and sister. It’s been a support headache for me to keep their PCs (which I bought them) up and running when they haven’t been able to learn how to do anything themselves over the last 8 years. Windows is just way too complex for many people who just want to do the simplest things. I’d definitely buy them one of these instead. The customized Linux version for the OS is fine with me. This might even be useful to myself as a secondary road PC when all I need is email and web access (which is most of the time).
Redfly should open up a software side of the house. A server app for windows mobile and a display app for a pc.
Gads that thing is fugly!
I own several UMPC’s so, while I recognize that none of them are sexy, that 2 tone colour scheme that got going there only amplifies what is not nice looking about little laptops. Custom windows on it… bah, I’ll keep my Eee. Word to those looking into a UMPC, going off my experience with a 2g, 4g, 8g, and a Cloudbook, right now, best bang for the buck is the 4g 701, the 8g 702 is nice but the fan runs all the time, very annoying as well as hard on batteries. 2g is little more than a toy or a paper weight, and the Cloudbook is full of hardware that is not linux friendly (and yet it ships with linux)
So for now, I’d say the 4g 701 is the best UMPC going, /shrug, its all what you like, and if your gonna pervert it with MS anyway then the Cloudbook could be a great machine as well.