When Palm announced the $500 Palm Foleo mobile companion a few months ago, the world pretty much shrugged. It's not quite a laptop, and it's not quite a PDA. So what good is an underpowered device that doesn't run many applications, but lets you interact with your PDA or Smartphone?

Well, as with any computing device, it turns out the Palm Foleo will only be as good as its software. And the more we hear about the software available or the Foleo, the more we warm up to this little device. First of all, the Foleo runs Linux, which means you might be able to slap some custom software on there in addition to the default applications.

And it turns out you can also use the Foleo to access and control your home or work PC on the go. LogMeIn is showing off a software client for the Palm Foleo at this week's LinuxWorld conference in San Francisco. LogMeIn offers free and paid services. LogMeIn Free lets you control your PC over the internet. The paid version lets you share files between your local and remote machines. Of course, you could also just use the free version to email yourself files from your home PC. But you didn't hear that from us.

At this rate, forget the whole companion for your mobile phone thing. You can think of the Palm Foleo as a light weight, instant-on internet terminal for web browsing and accessing all the data on your remote PC. Of course, for $500 you could also just go out and buy a used or underpowered laptop. But it wouldn't be as small, or umm... new.

[via jkOnTheRun]