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PalmOne Releases 4GB PDA [updated]
davidconger writes "PalmOne has introduced the first device in their new line of Mobile Manager handheld devices. The LifeDrive includes an embedded 4GB Hitachi Microdrive and additional software for file/folder synchronization. The device includes both WiFi and Bluetooth. Price tag on the device $499. PocketFactory has done a complete review of the LifeDrive." Reader gandell adds a link to Brighthand's review. Update: 05/18 18:08 GMT by T : An anonymous reader corrects this story's original headline, writing "Despite rumors the LifeDrive would run Linux, it runs PalmOS 5 (Garnet). However, the device seems to have a Linux-friendly design, and is likely to run Linux soon, whether supplied by PalmOne's sister company PalmSource, or by Linux hobbyists. PalmSource is likely to offer a Linux OS upgrade for the LifeDrive, once it is ready to support the huge variety of legacy Palm apps under Linux." Update: 05/18 18:44 GMT by T : One more review, this one at MobileTechReview.
It runs PalmOS so where's the Linux part come in?
It actually runs PalmOS 5.4, not Linux.
Yea and 640K ought to be enough for anybody.
Error reading device 'Signature'. (A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?
in this age where my celphone has as much capability as a PDA (including 4gb of storage)
why would anyone want a bulky pda anymore ?
An XP Pro install comes in at 1.5GB, including a swap file. Even if you add another 1GB for Office 2003 and .5GB for a hibernation file, you still have room to play with.
http://palmsource.com/about/cms_linuxletter.html
It costs a lot of money to get everything tranlated into English!
Brittain has a VAT. Legally all advertised prices must include VAT. US prices do not include tax. So add on State Sales tax to 499. State Sales is 7% in my state. So our total comes out to 533.93. I believe VAT is 17% which would put the price at $583.83. That's pretty close to $600.00. So... There is your explenation.
I had a palm, a handspring and a Zarus. As I travel on business a lot I thought I would use it. What I discovered that that when I lost my palm, I didn't really loose anything...it was in my laptop. When my handspring got crushed by a taxi in New York, I didn't loose anything...it was in my laptop. When my Zarus was next to useless because it didn't really work all that well with my company-standard Windoze laptop, I sold it...and didn't miss anything because it never got off my laptop.
People I work with use their iPAQ's for watching movies ripped down to fit on their screens and listen to music. However, that is about it.
I don't miss my PDA, and I know more and more business travelers who have stopped carrying theirs as well.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
I'm really disappointed by this. I've been holding off on a new PDA, but I don't think I'll be getting this one.
The good:
The bad:
Personally, I'm glad it's not part of a phone. I want a seperate phone and PDA. I carry a thumbdrive in my pocket for toting files, which is very convenient because I don't have to mess with cables if I need to transfer files to another PC. If it's done well, I suppose the ability to carry along, edit, and then synch MS Word, etc., files could be handy. The music features aren't something I'll use. I'll stick with my iPod (which has way more than 4 GB of songs on it). Now an iPod with better PDA features--there's something I'd like to see.
/K
Man, what a waste of my time the parent post was. Thanks, Slashdot. I guess I should RFTA next time.
sigs, as if you care.
Not sure why the LifeDrive is getting all the press. Existing PDAs can get multi-GB HD using their SD cards.
The real news item is the huge number of improvements PalmOne made to their best-selling Tungsten E (top-selling PDA across all OS last year). Although the E2 has a slower cpu than T5, the E2 is reportedly even faster for many common tasks! Some changes from E to E2 include (cut/paste from palmone.com):
1. about 30% brighter than the Tungsten E display and with 40% better color saturation.
2. data is safe even when the battery is completely drained--if you recharge it a year later, all your data is still there.
3. built-in Bluetooth
4. Much better battery life. About 12 hours of continous MP3 playing according to one review.
5. compatible with wifi sd card.
6. Much-improved bundled software: NEW Documents To Go® 7.0 and VersaMail® 2.7.1 email client. The new versamail can finally be used with Google.
7. Improved processor. The faster Intel 200MHz XScale processor. Not the speediest but reviews indicate that for many common tasks, the E2 easily outperforms the T5 which has a much faster CPU.
8. Multi-connector port. I don't care about this feature but you might.
The E2 is about $100 cheaper than last year's average selling price of PDAs in the USA.
What is missing:
1. voice recorder. Sometimes, we don't want to pull out the pen and write. As a PDA targeting business users, the lack of voice recording is not good.
2. extra SD slot. Having only 1 SD slot and no built-in wifi means forcing the user to choose between extra storage and wifi. Not good. Provide at least 2 SD slots unless wifi is built-in.
3. >=64MB RAM. Since it only has 1 SD slot, it should provide at least 64MB RAM. At least provide a more expensive version of the PDA with this option. Yes, I know 64MB RAM in Palm device is more than 64MB RAM in PocketPC but still...
On the bright side, I've seen some multi-function SD cards hitting the market. Like wifi + storage combo SD card.
Linux PDA with a 4GB drive
mysql + apache
2GB en.wikipedia databse
Hello never being bored on the train again
The standard take on convergence is Phone + PDA.
Speaking as a Treo 600 user, the combination is pretty good, but there are compromises. Text input is OK, but a bit cramped. It is irritation to have the phone crash every so often. Likewise battery is overall good, but you're dead in the water if you run out, which you may if you will if use it much as an MP3 player or browser.
Now, suppose you are carrying a Treo and an iPod photo. Now you are no longer converged, but have two packages of functionalty: PDA/Phone/Network Access on one hand, Media Player/Mobile storage (like a USB key chain) and the other. Plus, you have a limited choice of phone carriers, and if Sprint is what's available for a Treo in your area, you might not like the way they package their services (sorry -- no voice dial on the treo, we sell that). Even worse, the excellent service policies you once enjoyed with Palm aren't there anymore. If you break your phone, you are S-O-L, unless you paid the exorbitant fees the provider wants for a "service plan".
Now, reenvision a slight redistribution of the functions between the two packages: Phone/Network Access on one, Media Player/Mobile Storage/PDA/Wi-fi access on the other. Link the two packages by Bluetooth.
There are significant advantages. Here are a few I can think of:
(1) If one device is out of juice, you can still use the other; furthermore if you have wi-fi nearby you may still be able to communiate when your phone is down. Skype anyone?
(2) You have a choice of service providers. You can even switch without throwing your PDA away.
(3) You can get your PDA fixed. And you don't give up your phone. Switching phones is a snap too.
(4) You get a phone whose ergonomics are optimized for making calls, and (hopefully) a easier to use PDA.
(5) You don't have stupid hardware limitations the carrier builds into the phone. The Treo 600 has a header on the circuit board for Bluetooth, but no bluetooth headsets for you: Sprint doesn't want to cut into sales of their CF network card, which sucks in ways to numerous to count and only works on Windows.
Of course the alternative next step would be a converged PDA/phone with a hard disk.
I'm not too sure about that though. It will avoid the Batman utility belt look, but it may be too expensive, too inflexible, and too complicated. Converged phones have major screen size trade offs, after all; you may be able to store video on the thing, but would you want to?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just like you don't call your laptop a word processor, despite it being able to do word processing, or a gaming device (despite it being able to play games), the LifeDrive's PDA (addressbook, schedule, etc.) functionality is just one part of what it can do. Calling it a PDA just glosses over all its *other* capabilities (2X wireless, high-res screen, voice recording, A/V playback, camera buddy, etc.), the sum of which really haven't been seen before.
It's because PalmSource announced a few months ago that some of the Cobalt (Palm OS 6) devices would be based on the Linux kernel instead of the traditional Palm OS one. Idiots assumed this meant that all Cobalt devices would be based on Linux, and then assumed all future devices (like this one) would be Cobalt. Except so far as I can tell, this is (yawn) just another Palm OS 5 "Garnet" device from PalmOne.
In short, it is entirely un-Linux related.
Then I bought a Powerbook and a T610 and most importantly of all - a pencil and notebook. I use my laptop for real computing and my phone holds and synchronises all of my PIM data so much more efficiently than my old PDA that I simply don't need a PDA, with one exception: taking notes. For that I find the notepad invaluable. The data is difficult to copy as I use a unique encryption system that only I can decipher (my handwriting), the power consumption is incredible, I haven't had to replace the battery once! It's instant on, the stylus can be replaced for pence and are universally availble and best of all you can use it to annotate the notes they give you when you go to meetings without any previous training. The price is good too, I'm not a rich man by any stretch of the imagination, but I can easily afford to have a notepad and pen in a selection of my pockets at all times, and if I want to share my data I can simply give the whole pad to that person! I've also noticed that I can freely mix drawings, and text in the same area and it doesn't constantly tell me how bad my handwriting is.
I'm sure there must be a situations where PDAs using current technology must be useful, I'll even hazard a guess: mobile, local database access for doctors, engineers and stock controllers, but really that's an industrial application for a consumer product.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
1) The main factor for making something "seem small" is to make it thin. The 15" Powerbook is actually quite large, but because it's thin it seems small. This thing is 3/4" thick.
2) Brighthand seemed to indicate that it would make a good portable storage device for your digital camera. I don't get that either. The casual photographer who might want to offload vacation pictures isn't likely to buy a $500 device to do so. You can buy a lot of huge SD cards for $500. The professional photographer, who WOULD find this device useful, all use cameras that use CompactFlash. If this USB-thing Brighthand mentions actually works, then maybe--but the idea of having a seperate device is to pull out the card, put it in the device, replace the card with another card, and keep shooting. Also less than 4GB isn't much when you're dealing with 4-7MB RAW files (which I guarantee the LifeDrive app won't be able to read, although it may be able to pull out the JPEG preview). This may be quite the swell device for a Brighthand reviewer, but that's a terribly small niche market.
3) What is the deal with WiFi on PDAs? People are obsessive about this, just as they all clamor for megapixel cameras on their cell phones. WiFi is a power hog. If I wanted to use WiFi on a Palm, I'd go for one of the Enfora portfolios where I don't have to use my Palm's battery. Battery life is king on a PDA. At some point you would do better to simply go with a 12" Powerbook or iBook, and a 3/4" thick device with WiFi but no keyboard is probably that point. (And getting a megapixel camera on your phone is stupid so long as the image is taken through a shitty, fixed focus plastic lens. You get more blurry pixels--that's a Big Win there, chief.)
4) Too expensive. I understand that in order to offer all these goodies, you have to charge for them, but if you drop this thing on the ground, or into the toilet, you've just ruined a $500 device. Everybody's tolerance is different, but for me, $200-ish dollars is that cutoff where I feel like I can replace 2 or 3 devices a year and not feel royally screwed. If I have a $500 device, I'm less likely to take it somewhere out of fear of busting it.
5) Related to 4), but unrelated to the LifeDrive; professional reviewers suck for this reason: they didn't have to buy the damn thing with their money, so they aren't interacting with the device like other people would. If a professional reviewer accidentally sits on the fucking thing, they just phone up Palm and say, "Oopsie, send me another please." They also tend to parrot specs and press release material, and are pathologically uncritical. I've hardly ever seen a review where the reviewer revisits the device after using it for a few months--mostly because after the initial review, the reviewer has moved on to using whatever the next latest-and-greatest toy is, because, you know, everybody has endless time and money to constantly upgrade. Jesus Christ, I'm still using a IIIxe because it works, it's reliable, and I'm not swimming in free time and cash. (The best reviewer in the world is probably Dan even though he does have goodies provided to him on occasion.)
6) No poofters.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
As a developer, Windows Mobile is a much easier platform to work with.
Best Buy can have you arrested
I cling to my Sony Clie T665C. I keep thinking about going with one of the current Palms, but they offer so little beyond what my Sony does that there seems to be no reason to pay money for basically the same device.
What do I use my Clie for?
1) Keeping my calendar on me at all times. I do find that I am using it less now that I also have my iPod set up to keep sync'd with iCal. It is nice to be able to add appointments while on the go, though.
2) Keeping the local bus schedules on me at all times. Without a car in a major metropolitan area, the ability to see when the next bus is coming is extremely handy.
3) Being able to read the New York Times and Rueters on the bus on the way to work.
4) Being able to get maps, walking directions, and local restaurants/bars/shops when I go out.
My friends used to laugh at me when I would stick my Sony in my jacket pocket before we would go out for a night on the town. The first few times I pulled it out and said "ok, there is an all-night eatery with good reviews about six blocks from here. Go three blocks in this direction and then turn left", though, they stopped making fun of it.
In addition to everything listed above, I keep a few photos on it, a couple hundred addresses, and a couple thousand datebook entries. Even with this, I am barely breaking 8 megabytes of the 16 megabytes storage on the device.
Sure, my 12" PowerBook could do most of what I have listed above. When I go out for a night, though, I cannot slip my laptop into my jacket pocket.
All this desire for gigabytes of storage, hundreds of megahertz of performance, and wireless make little sense to me.
This entire idea of convergence, with PDA/game device/cell phone/MP3 player/camera seems to be getting ridiculous. Palm seems to have completely ignored innovation on the low end of their devices.
What ever happened to the idea of a simple device that did its job and did it well?
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
I have a Tungsten T3 that I really love and that is practically glued to my back pocket.
.5GB SD cards scattered around for carrying files.
I love having a PDA for several reasons.
* I have a complicated schedule that often changes and a poor memory. The Calendar on the T3 is great and a real life saver for me. Color-labeled calendars are awesome. Vibrating alarms are a must have feature for me. I hate cell phone rings, I hate pda alarm rings, I hate any stupid noise like that. Plus it's fun to legitemately have buzzing things in your pants pocket.
* Having my next-tasks list on the same screen as that day's appointments - on the Agenda view - is great, a real productivity boost for me.
* Having my entire address book in the T3 is also fantastic. My wife keeps her addresses in a traditional paper book and it is a mess of crossed out entries, personal contacts next to business contacts, etc. With the T3 I can easily enter, edit, categorize, and look up phone numbers and addresses (real and e).
* I have a ton of lists: next actions, projects, waiting for, follow ups, someday, DVDs/Books/CDs/Websites to buy/rent/borrow/bookmark, Wine & Beer I like, etc. Between Tasks (which should be called Lists), Notes, and Memos it's easy to keep these things always at hand, categorized and easily editable. I could keep these in a paper notebook, but I again run into the problem of the notebook becoming a mess of crossed out items where I can't easily find what I'm looking for and that has to be manually copied when I fill up one book and get another.
Bluetooth is nice to wirelessly sync the T3 to my PowerBook. It's cool to have family pictures and a pr0n stash readily viewable on a very nice display. The slider keeps the T3 nice and small in my pocket and nice and big in my hand.
The lack of wi-fi isn't too big of a deal. It would be nice for email, but web surfing on that tiny screen is a bit masochistic. Also, the pathetic battery life would be worse with wi-fi. That's the biggest problem with the T3. A hard day's use makes it worthless that evening until you've charged it up again.
Yes, my cell phone (Motorola V265) can do most of that stuff, but entering and editing the information is a *huge* pain in the ass. The tiny screen is also annoying and I basically just use the thing to hold other people's phone numbers, which aren't too bad to enter.
I was looking to the Lifedrive to be a replacement for my aging T3. What I really want from my next PDA is a T3 with better battery life, a more modern operating system (ie Palm OS 6) for better multitasking and network connectivity, and wi-fi.
OK, I got the wi-fi. But battery life doesn't look to be any better even though the Lifedrive has a bigger battery than the T3. Also, the included web browser looks to be almost useless to actually surf the web.
I guess the brilliant slider is gone forever, which is really a crying shame. The Lifedrive is huge and heavy and not suitable for back pocket glueing. And no vibrating alarms! Ack! It still uses OS 5. Blech!
I have no idea why anyone wants 4GB of storage in their PDA. From the reviews it seems all it does is slow down app loading times and suck battery life. I have a 1GB iPod flash that I use to listen to music and carry files. I have several
I guess the "killer feature" of 4GB of storage is handheld video. Personally I think handheld video is completely braindead, as is anyone who seriously thinks it is a good idea. The Lifedrive can't even play standard TV resolution without dropping tons of frames. Why would you want to look at that? I doubt you could watch a feature length movie before the battery died. If I had very long commutes on public transportation I'd pull out my Powerbook or just a book.
Oh, and having to pay extra for decent Mac connectivity is just assinine. (Palm Desktop is a dead horse. The Missing Sync from Markspace is necessary for proper T3-OS X interaction and costs $40.) I think the people who actually like
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
However, the device seems to have a Linux-friendly design, and is likely to run Linux soon, whether supplied by PalmOne's sister company PalmSource, or by Linux hobbyists.
Oh, goody.
You mean like Open Zaurus? Which after HOW many years of development is still worthless as a PDA and somewhat less useless, but still extremely marginal as a Linux system? This isn't a flame, but a statement from someone who tried to get several revisions crufted into a working system on a SL-5500, and eventually gave up and went back to a Palm in frustration.
If Palm actually comes out with a reasonably debugged, usable version of Linux running their existing UI, I'm all over it. Clean, simple, and elegant. If I have to wait for what passes for the Linux PDA community to come up with something usable, I might as well get a paper notebook and pencil.
By pairing (via bluetooth) a Sony Ericsson S710a with a Dell Axim X50V you get:
Compact Flash Storage (4 Gigs)
SD Storage (2 Gigs)
Memory Stick Storage (1 Gig)
802.11b Wifi
Edge data transfer
Megapixel Digital Camera
640X480 Resolution
Frankly, I'm a bit excited about this one!
I'm thinking about it in terms of putting the music-sharing ability of iTunes/Rendezvous (not the crippled version on 4.6+, but the early versions) on a mobile device that has much storage and connectivity.
Wouldn't it be nice to set up in a coffeeshop (ah, good ol cliches) and discover other people's playlists in range? Then, depending on how scrupulous the software used is, you can either stream new stuff, or *ahem* download shared tracks?
I've been looking for something like that for a long time. If they make it easy and popular to use, I think that it can revolutionise how I hear media. It almost reminds me of how I used to share files over IrDA with my PowerBook G3 back in the day.
*Personal Mass Storage Devices