After three months of not having a little (but important) piece of code in my blog’s header, I have finally reinstalled and upgraded to the latest Mint.

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons. HT: Tim

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.

It was never about the brakes; it was always about the engineering. Check out Ted Ciamillo’s latest project as he aims to pedal across the Atlantic Ocean.

I just bought domains for my kids (dot coms!). They are 5, 3 and <1 years old. I need to find an internet registrar who has long term renewal rates.