More Details About Palm's Upcoming Foleo

If you’ve been following news about the upcoming Palm Foleo, you may have noticed that it’s gotten a lukewarm reception from many gadget websites. Common complaints are that it’s underpowered, overpriced, and can’t play videos. For $500 you could get a cheap laptop that does exponentially more than the Foleo can do.

That being said, I’m still getting one.

I need a lightweight internet machine with a full size keyboard. Nothing more, nothing less. I think the Foleo could do well with the journalism crowd or anyone else who needs to type stuff while on the go but doesn’t want to take out a second mortgage for an ultraportable.

Brighthand.com has new Foleo details. Apparently several LinuxWorld attendees were given fully working retail units, which hints that the device will be shipping very soon (the launch date has been pegged at around August 22nd). The unit will also include a Marathon 2700G graphics accelerator that will allow it to attach to an external monitor and may provide enough juice to run a third-party video player.

There will also be 128MB of RAM for apps, 256MB of non-volatile memory for the OS, and support for 4GB of CompactFlash plus an SD card that’ll take up to 2GB.

Networking options will include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and the USB port will support mass storage devices, so you’ll be able to hook up an external hard drive should you need more storage.

Palm Releases New Information on the Foleo [Brighthand] via Engadget