The Heck with the Foleo – I’m Buying an Everun!

I finally decided to give up on the Foleo. In many ways it seems to me very much like the iPhone – a really nifty, fun gadget that simply fails in a whole bunch of ways to meet my actual requirements for that class of device.

Instead, right now I’m planning on buying a Raon Everun-66SH UMPC (http://www.raondigital.com/fnt_english/ev01.asp). I’ve been reading a couple of very interesting early reviews of this unit from Europe and Australia and it seems to me that here is a device that really meets my needs. It’s small, light, speedy, has amazing battery life life and has the potential to replace both my Nokia N800 and my Electrovaya Tablet PC as my sole computer for usage during my travels as an enterprise computer consultant.

I’ve been really noticing the foibles of my Electroya Scribbler Tablet PC in the past few months. In fact it’s become a desktop machine at my client site with monitor, keyboard, and mouse hooked up to it. My Nokia N800 is coming to meetings with me, instead of the Tablet. The Scribbler is relatively large, it runs pretty warm (especially when sitting in my lap during a meeting), and frankly I’m finding the whole inking experience to be slower and less reliable than I’d like. I’ve been missing the very compact Sony U-750P that was my primary traveling computer before the Electrovaya. The primary reason I replaced the little Sony was that its screen was really too small for inking and that it was SLOOOOOW!

The Everun looks like it might be the ideal unit for me. It’s small (about the same size as the U750P) and it’s got a keyboard so inking isn’t required for using it. Early reviews comment on how speedy it is and I’m planning on bumping it’s memory up to 1GB, which should further improve its performance (See comment below). Its battery life is reportedly even better than my U750’s (which has an extended battery) and the Scribbler’s.

I’ve spoken on the phone with Dynanism, the US importer of the Everun, and they say that they’ll have these units ready for sale next week. Unless something untoward happens regarding the final specifications or the price of the unit between now and then, I’ll be ordering one as soon as they are available.

Should I Buy A Foleo?

You should all know by now what a huge fan on the N800 I am. I use it to replace many of the functions of a laptop or Tablet PC, and as a personal entertainment system. Nevertheless, the N800 does have a couple of deficiencies that bother me. First and foremost, it lacks the ability to easily handle Microsoft Office documents (Word, Excel, and Powerpoint). Next, even if it could handle Powerpoint it doesn’t have a VGA output port on it that would allow me to give presentations from the device. As a traveling consultant these would be huge advantages to have in a mobile computer.

That’s why I’m thinking Palm’s new Foleo isn’t as bad as people are making it out to be. It does exactly the things I miss in my N800. In addition, the bigger screen and built-in keyboard would be very nice to have, too. It’s runs Linux like the N800 as has the same kind of “instant on” I’ve come to love with the Nokia device. Of course the bigger size means I can’t put it in my pants pocket like I can do with my N800.

What really burns me about the Foleo, though, is the fact that it has no multimedia capabilities. In fact Palm specifically says that the Foleo does not have sufficient CPU power to handle any mulitmedia functions. I make extensive use of my N800 to watch videos of movies and recorded TV shows, and listen to music on it - which I couldn’t do with the Foleo.

So here I am, a traveling business professional that fits right into Palm’s stated market segment for the Foleo, and I find myself lusting after, and hating the Foleo, at the same time. Should I get one and go back to using my iPod for multimedia? Oh, but the screen is soooo tiny compared to the wonderful screen on the N800. Should I carry an N800, Foleo, and Tablet PC? Gad, this means MORE stuff to carry when traveling, and not less. What’s a fellow to do?