What A Difference A Year Makes!

Palm Foleo in the sweaty paws of Ed Colligan

Palm Foleo
* 416MHz Intel / Marvell PXA27x processor
* Marathon 2700G graphics accelerator with video output
* 128MB of RAM (for running apps) plus 256MB of non-volatile memory
* Dual expansion slots (CompactFlash and SD)
* Dual wireless (Bluetooth and WiFi support)
* One USB port
* 10 inch 1024 by 600 pixel screen
* Proprietary Linux-based OS
* Couldn't play YouTube or any FLV web videos
* Handful of specialized applications at launch
* $599 ($499 with initial $100 mail-in "rebate")


MSI Wind in the dainty hands of Laptop magazine's Joanna Stern

MSI Wind U100
* 1.6GHz Intel Atom (Diamondville), 512KB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB
* Intel 945GSE, Intel ICH-7M
* 1GB of RAM; 2GB maximum
* 80GB hard drive
* 4-type card slot
* Dual wireless (Bluetooth and WiFi support)
* Three USB ports
* 10 inch 1024 by 600 pixel screen
* Webcam and microphone
* VGA out
* Ethernet port
* Headphone and microphone jacks
* Open Linux OS or Windows XP
* Can play YouTube, FLV, and DiVX AVI videos
* Any damned Windows XP app you want, baby!
* Linux 1337s can morph the OS at will
* $400-$620 (estimated, depending on model)

Here's an object lesson for every American company: the world no longer revolves around you!

Palm rushed the Foleo to market not because they heard of the Asus EeePC. They had heard about the Windows Mobile-compatible Celio Redfly, which was from another American company.

And then along came the Asian company Asus and pulled the rug out of the entire notebook industry.

All those Asian companies building all the stuff that goes into American products? Those Asian companies can put them together into cheaper and better systems themselves.

And as Asus has shown -- and now MSI as well -- they can generate their own cool.