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First Foleo - mobile phone companion PC - unveiled by Palm to work with Treo

Palm has, finally, been forced to accept that its secret Linux-based laptop computer, the Foleo, has been outed by people who dug into private parts of the Palm web site - and it is officially announced.

It's easily described: in the words of Palm founder Jeff Hawkins "It is targeted at people who want to do wireless email." He calls it a "mobile companion" device - not a personal computer, but a full size keyboard and full size display for mobile PDA-phone owners.

The crucial question which everybody immediately asked is not "how much?" but "how long?" - what's the working battery life?

Hawkins says five hours. "You can use it all day" was the other thing he said. Well, which?

Part of the answer lies in the speed of startup. There are, said Hawkins, just two buttons; one for on/off, and the other for email. The device doesn't need to be shut down, hibernated, stood by; it switches off as fast as an FM radio switches off; and back on equally quickly. So the arithmetic of "how long?" does not have to include the five-minutes lag that a typical PC owner would expect between close-down and re-start.

So it's quite possible that five hours would be "all day" because there would be nothing to inhibit the user about switching off to take a call, or when interrupted by a passer-by.

Price will be $500 introductory price, said Hawkins, indicating that it would go up by $100 after that.

Apart from email, it doesn't do as much as you might expect. Yes, it has a browser; yes, it has WiFi and Bluetooth. No hard disk; just compactflash as main storage, and SD as addin memory. It's "not fast enough" to do video, conceded Hawkins. It will let you look at spreadsheet files and Powerpoint files. It has a full colour 1024 by 600 pixel screen; external monitors will show 768 pixels down the side, all the same.

Pretty much, it's useless without a companion phone. Right now, it will "pair" with a Treo (both Palm OS and Windows Mobile) and Symbian is planned for the future. "We haven't had time to test it with all Windows Mobile phones, but we hope it will work with them out of the box. And we want to work with RIM," Hawkins added.

"Get the skinny on our latest device: watch the Palm webcast," says the Palm home page. It's worth a visit.