This morning I received an email from Lance Armstrong about his recent LIVESTRONG Presidential Forum on Cancer and LIVESTRONGArmy.org.

We must ensure our next President is focused on the cancer issue. He or she must be committed to our health and well-being and have the political will to do something about it…

…It is time to turn the number one killer of Americans under 85 into the number one election issue.

The president is responsible for my health now? The number one election issue? Really? On the surface it sounds like a great cause to a lot of good intentioned people, but if I were in the race my response to Lance’s question — what would I do as president to fight cancer — would simply be, “Nothing.” America is never going to get off the road to Socialism until people start asking questions like, “Is fighting cancer within the scope of the government’s role?” Thoughts?

“The greatest tribute we can pay to those who have perished in the past 9/11’s of the world is to believe that “not a hair of our heads will perish,” even if we are beheaded; and then to use that utter security to risk our lives in the service of people who suffer and are on the brink of eternal suffering.”
John Piper, Three 9/11′s We Need to Know

Mike Metzger writes about how the Bourne movie franchise mirrors (so far) the “four-chapter” gospel — Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration.

I have to confess that as a Palm Treo user I was slightly disappointed to hear that the Foleo has been canceled. Not that I would have paid $500 – $600 for such a device, but I think that Jeff Hawkins is onto something with his version of the mobile companion concept (similar to a subnotebook). For all of the jeers Palm has received (such as “Fool-eo” and “Folly-o”), Hawkins and company CEO Ed Colligan are not alone in their belief “that the market category defined by Foleo has enormous potential.” In fact, Asus, Via and UMPC are working on delivering similar devices to consumers. However, of the four three only the Eee PC by Asus is priced right to sell the notion of mobile companions to the masses.

One of the criticisms of the Palm Foleo was that it had a price point of $600 ($500 after rebates for early adopters) in a market where $400 to $600 laptop computers are a dime a dozen. Sure, you are giving up on size, but gaining in processing power and storage capacity. “There was nothing innovative [enough] about the Foleo” was another complaint, although similarly sized PC’s have previously sold for more than double or triple the cost. Enter the Asus Eee PC; offspring of the one-laptop per child project; affordably priced at $249.

Have you looked at what they are asking for desktop PC’s lately? Even Macs have come way down in price with the introduction of the Mac Mini. You can now get a home computer with a blazingly fast processor, beau coups of memory and all the bells and whistles for less than $600. However, try to get those same specs in a laptop and you are talking $1,000 minimum, if not more like $1,700 to $2,500 for the wider screened editions (sadly, this is the range I paid for a Win98 Compaq desktop in 1995 and my current WinXP box that I have had since 2003).

There will always be exceptions — mobile professionals running resource intensive applications, hardcore gamers, the space conscious, etc. — but when I travel for both business and pleasure I end up using two, sometimes three, features on my IBM ThinkPad: email, web browsing and the working on the occasional office document (spreadsheet/text). Each one of these tasks can be easily handled by a modestly sized and moderately priced mobile companion. I also believe that there are many people in the marketplace who fall into this same category.

It may seem like a stupid idea to go out and buy a mobile companion that can do less for a slightly lower price than many Windows laptops, but when you factor in the size, simplicity, short boot-up times, savings and (most importantly) intended usage; it makes spending $2200 on an “entertainment laptop” look like buying a dump truck when all you really need is a small pickup to get the job done. In fact, you might even find yourself waiting less and less to use that powerful desktop back at the home or office.

Part II will explore some of the practical considerations of owning a mobile companion relative to smartphones, mobile computing and changing lifestyles.

Of First Importance is a relatively new (since 6/07) daily devotional blog that also comes with a dashboard widget for OSX.