Gadget World Madness- my thoughts

I'm still catching my breath from all of the recent technology news that has popped up this week. I do have a few thoughts on things that I'll quickly summarize here:

Palm Foleo Cancelled:

My Treo was abuzz Tuesday afternoon with Twitter tweets, Google alerts, and finally an email from Palm president and CEO, Ed Colligan, announcing the end of the Foleo, for now anyway:

"I have decided to cancel the Foleo mobile companion product in its current configuration and focus all our energies on delivering our next generation platform and the first smartphones that will bring this platform to market." -Ed Colligan, President & CEO, Palm Inc. (from the Official Palm Blog)

Initially, I had mixed feelings about the Foleo. I can understand having a large screen to browse the web, sync and read my email, etc., but I have a low profile laptop that does the job really well. Even still, I couldn't picture paying $599 for it.

I hope Palm can lick their wounds on this, focus, and come out with the ultimate smartphone product for us Palm loyalists.

iPod Mania:

Update: Steve Jobs to offer early iPhone buyers $100 store credit after news of price drop.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the newest line of iPods on Wednesday, including the new iPod Touch, which is the equivalent of the iPhone without the phone part. And to the dismay of many iPhone early adopters, the price of the phone was dropped $200 after only two months on the market. The news of this price drop was not taken lightly by a friend of mine who bought the phone on the day it was released. He considered the news "aggravating" and a "slap in the face" by Apple.

I, too, was eager to get in line to get an iPhone when it was released last June, but I was only a few months into a new Palm Treo 755P, and I couldn't part with Sprint, my long time carrier (and happy customer). I seriously had a gut feeling that Apple was going to release a new iPod with iPhone features, but wasn't sure when. I guess I learned my lesson a couple of years ago when I purchased a Sony Clie UX-50 Palm PDA at Best Buy. It was the highest I'd ever paid for a PDA at $599. This device was way ahead of its time, and came with wireless, bluetooth, voice recorder, camera & video recorder, thumb keyboard, and a high-res flip screen. The UX-50 was discontinued (as was their entire PDA line) by Sony only 5 months after I had purchased it, and it left me fuming.

I never bought another Sony product again.

So what's next?

The life of a gadget lover is hard. Do you get the latest and greatest now? Or wait to see what happens? Do I need it now? (shakes head yes). Can I afford it now? (shakes head maybe). Technology moves at break neck pace, and it's hard to keep up- take that from a career IT guy. But still, it's always fun to browse a store shelf or two to see what new toys are out there- just leave the wallet at home (yea right).