Another important ingredient, he added, is Foleo's instant-on capability. In fact, it only has two states, on and off—there's no suspend or shutting the device down. You never have to worry about saving data.

Hawkins did not specify how much solid-state memory the device would ship with. You can expand the amount of storage through an external SD slot and a Compact Flash slot located inside underneath the battery. Both memory card formats come in many different sizes, upwards of several gigabytes, so lack of storage shouldn't become an issue for users. Palm said it would post a list of all compatible cards as it gets closer to launch.

Since e-mail is Foleo's primary purpose, Palm added a button to launch the device's messaging application. As soon as you turn it on, you'll see the messages and folders from your smartphone, with everything all synced up.

Foleo's e-mail client supports Palm's VersaMail application on the Palm OS front. The company is talking with other e-mail application providers to extend support to their software as well. As for Windows Mobile, since Foleo is compatible with Pocket Outlook, it should already work with most third-party messaging software, because these applications plug directly into Microsoft's mobile e-mail application.

Palm's director of marketing Paul Cousineau demonstrated how Foleo features a four-step setup process, which includes entering the type of smartphone you have, the carrier you use and clicking next. You then press the e-mail button to sync all messages and folders from your Treo for the first time. He used a Palm OS-run Treo 755p for the demo.

Unlike with a much smaller device, a smartphone like a Treo for example, Foleo's e-mail application offers a preview pane, taking advantage of the added screen real-estate, in addition to its full-screen mode for reading messages.

For navigation, there's a trackpoint on the keyboard, along with a scroll wheel that rests, according to the Hawkins and Cousineau, conveniently right next to your thumbs when they are in typing position. The scroll wheel allows you to move in any app without changing the position of your fingers on the keyboard.

In addition to being able to surf the Web wirelessly with Foleo over Wi-Fi, you can access the Internet through a wireless Bluetooth connection to your smartphone, which would serve as a modem.

While you can bring up flash animation sites on Foleo and rapidly switch between applications, multimedia support appears to be the device's main weak spot for those looking for a moderately-priced laptop replacement. Hawkins said it had to do with the power of the processor. This is disappointing, but could be solved in future iterations of the device.

According to Hawkins, Foleo's five hours of battery life is for real usage. He compared it to a cell phone - you charge Foleo over night and use it all day without a recharge.

"It is our intent to support every smartphone we can," Hawkins explained. That includes, in addition to its own Palm OS and Windows Mobile Treos, other devices built on Microsoft's mobile-device platform as well as Symbian and RIM BlackBerry smartphones.

In terms of security, you can use the Treo to lock and unlock Foleo. So if your Treo is within range of a Foleo, it automatically lets you in, and when you move a Treo out of range, Foleo locks up. Securing the device through a password is also possible.

Although Foleo's screen resolution isn't standard, when you output video via its VGA port, it streams out at 1024 x 768.

Even though Hawkins said Palm didn't design it as a standalone device, Foleo does have the potential to support a wide variety of applications. He thinks (banks on, it seems) there will be a very broad range of third-party developers who will create software for the device, greatly expanding its capabilities.

If he's right, then perhaps Foleo may gain a wider audience than many expect. Whether Palm shareholders are patient enough to give Foleo the time it may need to gain traction and for developers to come onboard is another question.

Whatever you think about the iPhone, Foleo and their future fortunes, and the expectations for each are widely divergent, they have at least one thing in common; each has the potential to become centers of mobile-application development. And that can only benefit consumers who use all different types of smartphones.

The extremely high initial demand for the iPhone gives Apple a lot of time to iron out any issues it has with opening the smartphone up, so it can comfortably give outside developers a go at creating software when it's ready to.

Palm, on the other hand, seems to be banking on outsiders to bring out the full potential of its latest mobile device.

For more on Foleo and the iPhone, see links below.