After relative radio silence for a while, Palm has announced its newest device. The Palm Foleo is billed as a “smartphone companion”, and allows users of Palm’s popular Treo devices (and maybe others) to wirelessly sync all the stuff they have on their phones onto something a little easier to type on and read from. The Foleo sports a 10″ LCD, full size QWERTY keyboard and lots of other features for road warriors who do tons of email with a Treo-type device.

And I have to admit: this seems like a really nice sub-notebook for the very narrow demographic its intended for. It’s small, light, and has zero-startup time so you can rapidly check your email in line at the airport or in the back of a taxi and stow it away. However, I think it’s also susceptible to the “but where’s the” treatment from everyone else. I think a smart way to get around that stigma would be to do what Palm will likely do and aim this thing squarely at the same folks who buy Treos—corporate types with a huge need for constant email access.

But with all its neat features, even when aimed precisely at the domain where it might succeed, it reminds me of some other miracle convergence products that came and went with little fanfare—The 3Com Audrey, and to a lesser extent the PowerBook 2400.

When the Powerbook 2400 debuted in 1997, it was the ultimate subnote: fast, full(ish) sized keyboard, 10.4″ display. It was a huge hit in places like Japan where tiny laptops are still all the rage. In the states, however, where laptops of the day came with every option onboard or hot swappable the 2400 suffered and was cancelled a mere 8 months after its release. Something about trading in your peripherals for a tiny footprint, coupled with having to lug around a separate floppy drive and CD-ROM drive (and their attendant custom tether cable) was not so appealing. And I’m not saying that the Foleo is the same; but something about the brains of the computer being attached to your hip while all the display capability is in your briefcase seems a little schizophrenic to me.

The release of the Foleo is not the end of the story though, it’s the beginning. It’s an opportunity for Apple or some crazy Chinese manufacturer to release a tiny, flash based laptop that does everything a MacBook does but with zero startup time and a DVD drive. Slap a $799 price tag on it, take a $50 loss on each unit and you’re good to go. You’ve built a market on subnotes that only bloggers will buy that adds to your coolness factor, and pads your market cap nicely.