(source)

Remember the Palm Foleo? I did promise not to write about it ever again, since The Smart PDA is a smartphone and PDA blog. But I'm all for covering gadgets that help maximize our use of mobile gadgets, and I believe that the Asus Eee PC has the potential to be the "smartphone companion" that the cancelled Foleo was supposed to be.

To be clear, the Eee PC is still quite limited. Those who do most of their work online, such as bloggers, would be fine, as the Asus mini-notebook boasts Wi-Fi, a full keyboard, and a full-featured version of Firefox. But from the limited applications available on and for the Asus Eee PC (it runs on a modified version of Linux that works with Windows XP), it seems that it has limited syncing capability with popular smartphones and PDAs.

Perhaps this is a need that makers can exploit. Why not provide downloads that would facilitate the transfer of data between the Eee PC and mobile gadgets? The Asus product has 3 USB ports, and I'm sure full syncing capability is just a matter of providing the right software, making it freely available on a website, and providing instructions on how to install it properly.

In short, the Asus Eee PC is just a few, relatively simple, steps away from becoming a really affordable smartphone companion.