Palm puts official Treo 750 Windows Mobile 6 ROM-update online (but doesn't want us to know)

The long-awaited Windows Mobile 6 ROM update (version 2.23-ROW) for the unbranded Palm Treo 750 is finally available from the Palm website. Although the official update page is still listing it as "coming soon", an attentive member of Palmclub.nl pointed out that the official English ROM-update is already available for download, here. You can also use the direct link, here.



European Vodafone Palm Treo 750v users already had their update a while ago, and our American AT&T-friends who use their branded Treo 750 should wait for an update released through AT&T at any time now - although they have been saying that for months.

Since almost none of the 'big' websites have gotten this news yet, I thought giving the regular RSS-feed readers of FoleoCentral the advantage of mentioning it here.

Hi there! How you doin'? Long time no see! ;)

Michael Mace on why the Foleo (and any other sub-PC) failed

Michael Mace is an ex-Palm and Palmsource manager, and a very accomplished writer. In my opinion, he manages to state the not-so-blatantly-obvious in a very readable way. As it is this time, where he has written a piece on why sub-PCs have been sucking in the market since the 80s.

Of course, the most recent example is the Foleo, Palm's attempt at creating a mini-laptop (I can say that now, can't I?).

Mace is saying, that there's a difference between:

1) looking at what people actually use on the PC on a daily or weekly basis

and

2) what they think they MIGHT be using sometime in the future, one day, when they have the time, etc.


Images hosted at Rubicon Consulting

It's obvious that when you ask people what they actually use, web/mail/office will be a top priority, and things like video-editting won't be. But if you ask: which things do you absolutely never use on your PC, you will see that a lot more people will refrain from mentioning video-editting, because hey, they might be using that once in a year.

If you produce a mini-laptop that is omitting a lot of features, you are depriving people form using those features in the future. And that might be just too much for people to handle, causing them to choose to be 'on the safe side' and letting them buy that clunky MacBook Pro that does all that video-editting they might once sometime be using in the future.

Read the whole story here.

I wonder when and/or if the Foleo will show up on eBay

But nothing so far. Not even Foleo debris from a blender.

The search results show two screenprotectors and, erm, an e-mail address.

Palm is cancelling the Foleo Mobile Companion

In a classic "what the h..." move, Palm CEO Ed Colligan announced the cancellation of the Palm Foleo Mobile Companion, just as it was supposed to be launched at the end of this month.

In a long statement on the official Palm Blog, Colligan writes:

Foleo is based on second platform and a separate development environment, and we need to focus our efforts on one platform. Our own evaluation and early market feedback were telling us that we still have a number of improvements to make Foleo a world-class product, and we can not afford to make those improvements on a platform that is not central to our core focus. That would not be right for our customers or for our developer community.

Now, you'll probably be too stunned to either cry or laugh. Since the Foleo was really about to launch, Palm should have a whole storage warehouse full of these babies. What are they going to do with it? Put them through a shredder? Sell them om eBay?


I hate to repeat myself, but Palm's problem always has been, and still is: execution. Their ideas are not that bad, the execution is just always... poor. It's always flawed in some way (delays, hardware failures, software glitches requiring patches) but I think what is happening to the Foleo beats it all.

Bravo, Palm, for making such a prudent business decision so close to the launch date, but a big boo for not executing properly yet again.

There is however, an "I'll be back" statement included in Colligan's posting. I guess Foleocentral in one form or another, will be here waiting for the new and improved Foleo II.

I'm sure news about the Foleo will still be trickling in, the coming period.

If you're a code monkey waiting for Foleo documentation...

.. then your wait is over. Tam Hanna from TamsPalm fame has attended everyone that there are two documents online at http://pluggedin.palm.com , the portal for 'normal' developers who want to develop for the Foleo. Of course, all the inside people from Normsoft, Tealsoft, Astraware etc. have had access to these already.



Grabbing a copy for yourself is easy, just register and download the stuff.

Foleo tidbits from last week

I didn't have time to update the blog last week, but just FYI and to make it complete: a summary of Foleo-related events from the past week.

1) Palminfocenter has some interesting quotes from the one and only Ben Combee, about the video capabilities of the Palm Foleo. Seems that embedded Flash-movies such as YouTube will not be directly possible on the Foleo. In spite of Palm's effort to target the Foleo on executives and business-users, this whole YouTube issue seems to hit the Foleo in the face everytime the device's (lack of) multimedia capability is mentioned.

Palm employee-dude with a Foleo
2) Yes, the Foleo has been spotted in the wild by an Engadget reader. A 50-ish old man has been seen and photographed using the Foleo near Palm's own HQ in Silicon Valley. Instead of walking up to him and saying "Hi, nice laptop!", all we got are some spy shots from a distance.

Oh well. I guess you don't walk up to a David Nagel lookalike just like that. :)

Palm: "We're fine, no delays"

Contrary to the last post, Palm has insisted that the Foleo would ship on time! That is, it will "ship this summer" as promised.



They do not deny the reports that the Foleo has some syncing problems at all, but perhaps they have calculated in the delays that fixing those problems will cause. And yeah, the last day of the summer is 22 september, so the good folks have a little less than one month to get things right!

Foleo delayed till autumn, needs ironing out bugs

Palm has had a couple of good ideas in the past. But where it most often failed is in the area of execution. Its track record is rather poor, and I guess it's no surprise that Jonathan Goldman of Deutsche Bank is mentioning a delay for the Foleo in a note to his investor clients.



Seems that the Foleo has problems syncing mails with the Treo (esp. the low-end and thus high-volume Treo 680) and without the syncing ability, the Foleo is just another laptop.

Oops, now I said it again.

Go to Brighthand to read more.