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For a limited time, Celio has dropped the price of its smartphone companion, Redfly, by half to $200 through the end of October. This comes only a month after the company lowered the cost by another $100.

Celio says the purpose of the price drop is to raise awareness of the device, which is essentially a dumb-terminal that turns a Windows Mobile smartphone into notebook computer.

Redflfy measures 9 x 6 x 0.1 inches and weighs 2.0 pounds. It's an 8-inch monitor that folds against a full-size laptop-style keyboard. It simply connects via Bluetooth or USB to your smartphone.

From the Redfly, you access data files, e-mail or anything else on your phone. You can send messages, view or write Office Mobile documents and even plug into a projector to give a PowerPoint presentation from your smartphone

"Redfly is an ideal solution for Mobile Virtualization in that it makes maximum use of the smartphone's capabilities without the setup and configuration or the backup and management of an ultra mobile PC," according to Celio president and CEO. "Whereas the small screen and form factor of the smartphone has made it an impractical solution for remote computing, the Redfly is completely turning that equation around."

If concept behind Redfly sounds familiar, it should. Last year, Palm killed a similar-sounding product, called the Foleo, before it even shipped. The laptop-like 2.5-pound Foleo, with a 10-inch screen and a full-size keyboard, was to serve as the inaugural device in a new category of product for Palm called Mobile Companions.

Foleo’s main purpose was to allow users to view and edit e-mail and documents from a smartphone (preferably a Treo) more conveniently, automatically synchronizing files back and forth between itself and the mobile handset through a wireless Bluetooth connection. You would have also been able to access the Internet for Web and e-mail, edit Microsoft Office documents and more on Foleo without a smartphone present.