But the Eee wasn’t the first to employ the broader concept of a mobile Web device that looked like a notebook PC, but was meant to function more as a secondary device. That was the idea brought to us by Palm founder Jeff Hawkins with the Foleo.
Hawkins, who invented the Palm Pilot and the Treo, insisted the Foleo was “the best idea he’d ever had.” The product was roundly panned by critics and eventually dumped before it even came to market late last summer.
The idea of a small form factor computer that is tinier than a notebook with solid-state memory, running a light operating system, Web access for e-mail is being tweaked and advanced by some of the biggest names in computing. ^
Over the course of your life, you will be told many times how wrong you are by other people who are projecting on to you. They are afraid you are right. They have a vested interest in you being wrong. The simple math is that if they can convince you you’re wrong, you give up, and they are safe. (Author Tom Wolfe, who draws our attention to things like this, invented the term homo loquax to demonstrate how much language changed humanity.)
The Palm Foleo was such a case. It was a great idea, because the average user (90% of all tasks) wants a way to quickly check email, surf the web, and do basic office operations. We’re not talking document authoring on a grand scale, but keeping meeting notes, sending emails, entering data in basic spreadsheets, maybe a small amount of conceptual sketching — that’s it.
The industry would rather have consumed its young than accepted this, since its business model was to cram many “features” into a machine, jack up the price, sell the customer on its whiz-bangness, and make a fat profit margin. This kept Dell going for many years, until they ran into a brick wall. The customer no longer saw the computer like a new car. Now, it’s like a toaster or television. We like the newest stuff, but as long as the old one works OK for the files and hardware our friends play with, it’s good enough.
Dell and its ilk were used to the easy hunting glory days of the early internet, when everyone and their dog wanted to get online and so was buying a computer. Your first computer, you’ll spend more on. As time goes on and you realize that even if you were using a ten year old machine today, there are still ways to do the basic things you need, you stop caring. At about the second computer purchase, the average American blinked, said, “Well, our current TV is good enough…” and went off and spent the money on gasoline instead.
The paradox of big computing is that it relies on not only a busted business model, but a busted usability concept. The user does not need more features, since 90% of users will not use most of those features. The user needs expandability, cheaply, so they can add features as they need. They do not need a ton of horsepower. Actually, they need less, because more horsepower means more cooling gear and other restraints. The average user now wants an efficient, secure, reliable version of the 500 mhz computer they could have bought in 2001 — and if you’ve seen a desktop box running BeOS/Haiku, Linux or BSD, you can tell how much power a 500 mhz machine really is.
Asus is about to make a fortune with the Eee PC because it delivered what Apple promised, and what most users want: simplicity for most everyday functions. Very few of us need any software beyond the major packages. Even if we do, we are often doing so out of preference. There just are not that many tasks in life, or that many that need to be done on a PC. The average person is not a geek and they don’t need overpowered hardware.
Palm was ahead of the game. It’s too bad they let the big manufacturers, including Apple and Dell, convince them (indirectly) that the Foleo was going to fail. Palm, unlike Asus, wanted to “get along” and “play well” with big computing, and that meant listening to Intel ferry back fear and doubt from Cupertino and Austin. Asus doesn’t want to get along well with these people. They’ve sold them motherboards for years. They want to replace them, and as long as they keep resurrecting consumer-positive ideas, they’re on track to do that.
Very nice article on the eee. I have just bought one – awaiting its arrival – and could not agree more. Should be a fun (and productive) toy.
The Wombat
[...] Ultra Mobile Personal Computer (UMPC) market is heating up ever since the Asus Eee enhanced the idea of the Palm Foleo (or, for that matter, Alphasmart Dana) and made this nifty, [...]