During your commute, do you find yourself grabbing the subway handle, half-awake, or idly gazing at the roadside shops? Perhaps you pass the time scrolling on your phone until you reach your destination station. Whether it's a 15-minute bus ride or a half-hour subway journey, commuting often feels like a less-than-ideal use of time. However, with all these minutes adding up, the time spent is significant. How to make the tedious journey productive? BOOX Palma has the solution.

Petite & Light: Bustling Commutes, Easy Moves
When a time-killer is needed on the go, some people opt for a book. However, flipping through a book becomes a real challenge in a packed carriage with no available seats, and people constantly getting on and off. Not to mention, sometimes you need a free hand to grab onto something for balance. An e-reader may be a better choice. But navigating a typical tablet-sized e-reader with your thumb is not always convenient, and holding it for an extended period may strain your wrist. To deal with all these inconveniences, BOOX Palma is here to help. The petite gadget is the smallest in the BOOX lineup. As its name suggests, this 6.13" mobile ePaper fits your palm, weighing just half as much as a common paperback book. Running on an Android system, it offers a familiar user experience with quick tapping and swiping. During multiple transfers, you can easily slip it in and out of your pocket—no more disruptions to your pace in the urban bustle.

Do you want a really small PC that fits in the palm of your hand? Well, if you do, then VIA Technology have got you covered with their new ARTiGO A1150. As you can see from the pictures, it has a high 'cuteness' factor, due to its diminutive size of just 5.7" x 3.9" x 2". For processing, it sports a 64-bit VIA 1.0 GHz dual core Eden X2 CPU and a VX900H media system processor supporting the latest HD video codecs including H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2/4 at up to 1080p. Interfaces include HDMI and VGA ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, five USB ports including one USB device port, three audio jacks with optional wireless IEEE 802.11 b/g/n and SD card reader modules.

Target uses include the usual home/office environments, use as a super space-saving desktop PC, a home server, media streaming and surveillance applications. Of course, the real question is what kind of performance can one expect out if it, given that it's targeted at the desktop PC market, so one hopes that it can run Windows 7 at a decent performance level. Oddly, the VIA press release doesn't say anything about the RAM, so it's not clear how much can be fitted, which type and what speed grades are supported.

In between a smartphone and a laptop, Palm's new Foleo offers a nearly full sized keyboard, 10 inch display and comes with a word processor and spreadsheet. Unveiled on May 30th at the 'All Things D:' conference, Palm's founder Jeff Hawkins says it is most useful when combined with a smartphone. The Foleo runs on Linux, supports Bluetooth, WiFi and uses Opera as its browser.