Two months ago we were wishing for a PDA with a hard drive, but cynically dismissing the LifeDrive rumours. Now our dreams have come true… well, okay, the ones about genetic experiments involving handhelds and hard drives.
palmOne is positioning the LifeDrive as a Mobile Manager, whatever that might mean. In the real world, it's a handheld on steroids. Instead of a piddling 8MB, 32MB or even 128MB of RAM, it contains a 4GB Microdrive, enabling you to store loads of everything: 10,000 contacts, 10,000 appointments, 6,000 emails, 1,200 documents, 1,000 photographs, 300 songs and 2.5 hours of video, all at the same time.
We like:
• Simple design. It isn't the iPod, but it's refined.
• PalmOS. Still our favourite operating system for handhelds.
• Big, bright, high-res (480 x 320) 65K colour screen.
• Switch on the side for flipping between landscape and portrait displays.
• Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and infrared.
• Simple synchronisation with your My Documents folder.
• Support for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Adobe PDF files.
• Displays photos, plays music, plays videos.
• Camera Companion software transfers images from your camera's SD or MMC memory card.
• Did we mention the 4GB hard drive?
We can live without:
• A camera. Sure, built-in cameras sound cool, but they're basically rubbish, so you end up carrying a separate camera anyway.
We're not sure about:
• Battery life. palmOne wasn't saying anything more specific than "a couple of days". Hmm. We wish the battery was user-replaceable, so we could carry a spare.
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