Palm Foleo auctions on eBay disappoint

IMAGINE OUR surprise when we discovered not one but three listings on eBay that actually had "Palm Foleo" in its name. Sadly one is a prank, and the others are screen protectors for the unreleased device.

After we learned that Palm cancelled its Foleo device, and that they were very close to shipping - my immediate thought was: "If the first production run went out of the factory, will they send those and all the early prototypes to a landfill, or do something with them?" The second: "why don't they auction the existing units "as is"?. I suspect there was more than one produced as they showed one off a few months ago and Brighthand also did a video review. Palm's CEO Ed Colligan said that because production was cancelled so late in the production, the firm would take a $10 million charge.

Yet, for some reason, companies are so secretive that prototypes of failed and abandoned products are often completely destroyed instead of being preserved for their historical value at a museum. According to a bloke claiming to be Gateway employee on a linux hackers forum, the only remaining prototypes of a successor to the firm's "Connected Touchpad" Linux powered device - released seven years ago with featured a faster Transmeta Crusoe CPU - were destroyed for good.

In any case, the curious in me headed to eBay and searched for "Foleo". The result was surprising, yet disappointing: someone's prank on the Foleo. User "qschoice" registered in the Netherlands, has listed "Palm Foleo Mobile Companion Gmail / E-mail address" with a base price of $0.99. The picture shows a Foleo getting dumped into a trash can and reads "Since Palm's CEO Ed Colligan cancelled the Palm Foleo Mobile Companion, I'm auctioning the one true e-mail address that covers the whole story on the Foleo: FoleoInMyCornholio@gmail.com

.

He adds that the account is, "brand new, spam-free and has not been used", and assures - as if anyone cares - that the account is legit "To check I'm actually the owner of this address, send me a message to this address and I will reply it from there". The sale ends in a day and you can find it here.

While "there's a fool born every minute", this got me thinking on why prototypes of cars and planes are sometimes saved, yet the IT industry doesn't seemingly recognise much value in never-released prototypes.

A bit amusing and perhaps tragic is the case of a company which obviously doesn't read much news and which is offering Screen Protectors for the Foleo, at a price of $9.99 each. The seller, from Cedar Hill, Texas claims 100 packages are available, and also lists "anti-glare" protectors - another 100 units. As if it was needed, there's a disclaimer "Palm Foleo not included." We suspect that for the time being, these will be as useful as the domain name " foleofanatics.com". Find the listing here.

Glenn Derene at Popular Mechanics received a pre-production unit, and wrote an interesting post-mortem defence of the Foleo concept "It's a rare irony to chronicle the demise of an upcoming device by using the device itself. But here I am, writing about the death of the Palm Foleo on a pre-release Foleo. ". -I would have as well, I suspect, had its price been $350 instead of the $500 Palm anticipated charging for it-.

Also noteworthy is an interview at PalmInfocenter where Tealpoint's Founder Vince Lee tells his reaction about the Foleo cancellation, and there's speculation as to whether the $10 million cost to Palm that Colligan announced would include " compensation for Palm's software partners" that invested time and effort into testing products for the now-defunct platform. They forgot about screen protectors and e-mail addresses, apparently.

Finally, a blogger over here writes about a Palm job posting for a Foleo Application Engineer, and concludes that Palm is still working on it. It could well be an automated reposting by the jobs agency - the original was August 29, with the reposting on September 11 - or it could be real and Palm is still working on it. Only time will tell, and we suspect we would only hear a deafening silence if we ask, as usual. Thi comment is based on this scribbler's personal experience only, perhaps they like our Tony Dennis more.

I certainly hope that not all Foleos are crushed and that the computer history museum gets one, especially since our Martin Veitch named it one of the Top Five unreleased products. Companies like IBM seem willing to save their most interesting prototypes to bemuse future historians and geeks alike. In any case, if you thought the Foleo was a must-have like our Doug Mohney, stay tuned and monitor the eBay auctions, just in case Popular Mechanics' Glenn Derene decides to have his 15 minutes of fame and sell the one he received from Palm, instead of returning it to the corporation's HQ to be crushed in a press and surely end up in a landfill.

Since we're not sure Glenn Derene would like to part with his toy, then someone at the Computer History Museum should ring up Ed Colligan and save an early prototype from oblivion. µ

L'INQs
Popular Mechanics' Post-Mortem defense of the Foleo

See also:
The INQUIRER Top Five products that never made it to release