The Palm Foleo is a 10″ screen with a keyboard, wifi and bluetooth for syncing with your Treo or some other smartphone.

“However, the Foleo uses an underpowered processor that isn’t really suited for video, Hawkins admitted. It gets five hours of battery life. It wasn’t designed to be a standalone product apart from its smart phone, although it can use its Opera browser to surf the Web over a built-in Wi-Fi connection.

It doesn’t sync calendar appointments, just e-mail and contacts. And it doesn’t work yet with widely used mobile e-mail products such as Research In Motion’s BlackBerry software or Motorola’s GoodLink software.” CNET NEWS

And it’s $599 (well, $499 with intro rebate … because … why?)

You know, for $300 less, I can get the V.Smile Touch Tablet.

It even has a trackball while the Palm Foleo only has a nubbin pointer.

PLUS, It has 100 activities to teach age-appropriate content in English, math, science, geography, history and Spanish through arcade-style adventure games! And apparently includes more “business” applications than the the Palm Foleo as the V.Smile includes a word processor, personal organizer with address book, calculator and savings tracker.

Or for $149 dollars in HOT PINK, I can get the Barbie one with a mouse included!

Or for $29, Fisher Price’s Fun 2 Learn Laughtop Laptop not only has Pong, games and can even “check e-mail.”

What is the Palm Foleo? A mini laptop to project/beam your Treo (or a limited selection of smartphones) to so you can read or see it better?

Palm’s Jeff Hawkins’ vision is probably going, I understand, I need some better glasses myself but if he can’t read their tiny Treo screens, maybe instead of a giant kids laptop to act as a monitor, maybe they should upgrade to an HD resolution screen or maybe for $30, something like this?

Sure, nobody likes to have to hang a giant piece of looking glass around their neck but it’s a way cheaper solution that spending tens/hundreds of millions to reinvent a Fisher Price toy at 10 times the cost? Because then aren’t you just using that giant magnifying glass to set fire to a pile of the shareholder’s money?

Or of course, a solution to make you feel like a 9-year old kid again … it’s technology so old you can only buy it used …

That’s right. it’s a magnifier for your GameBoy – I think it was around $10 new? About $3 used on ebay now. It’s HIGH TECH (well, for 1995). Think about it Jeff, the Palm Treo Foleo Mini – better mark it up to cover the cost of developing a laptop without any real functions except a keyboard – $149.99 (with a $50 rebate because you need more overhead at Palm).

Or maybe it’s the wave of the future to always get a giant attachment, when you buy a 40″ plasma, you also buy a 70″ screen with granite legs to beam the guide portion of your screen … not the TV image – just the guide.

Good luck Palm, though you might want to take some bits of advice. Remember, to follow Microsoft guidelines and you’ll be okay:

SHIPPED is as good as “sold” so use whichever number is bigger.
Always say it’s exceeding expectations.
Blame Apple’s “flashy” marketing.

Of course, it helps to have $12 billion in annual cash flow to hide any billion dollar boondoggles … you do have $12 billion in cash laying around, don’t you?