.FLYINGHEAD COMPUTING UNPLUGGED FIRST LOOK
.TITLE A first look at the LifeDrive
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY There are two things you need to know about palmOne’s newly announced LifeDrive handheld PDA. One, it’s got a 4GB hard drive (3.85GB is useable by you), and two, it’s $499. Although we haven’t yet gotten our hands on one of these beasties for an in-depth review, we did get a special pre-announcement briefing this week, which gave us enough information to form first impressions. To be honest, my strongest first impression is that I wish they didn’t play it so safe.
There are two things you need to know about palmOne’s newly announced LifeDrive handheld PDA, shown in Figure A. One, it’s got a 4GB hard drive (3.85GB is useable by you), and two, it’s $499.
.FIGPAIR A Are you excited by the LifeDrive?
Although we haven’t yet gotten our hands on one of these beasties for an in-depth review, we did get a special pre-announcement briefing this week, which gave us enough information to form first impressions. To be honest, my strongest first impression is that I wish they didn’t play it so safe.
.CALLOUT The LifeDrive is a compromise product.
.H1 Let’s give palmOne some kudos
First, let’s give palmOne some kudos. This is the first consumer PDA available, out of the factory, with a built-in hard drive. PalmOne has included some nice software, called the Camera Companion, for photo backup (unfortunately useful only if you’ve got an SD card camera and only if those SD cards have very small capacity), and, given palmOne’s recent history providing exceptional color screen quality, this device’s screen is sure to be beautiful.
.BREAK_EMAIL So, is this a product you should buy? Better tap here to read the full article before you plunk down your five hundred bucks.
I also really like the name LifeDrive. I am concerned that, without added awareness, it won’t be obvious to non-palmOne fans that this is a PDA and not just an external hard drive. That said, it’s a very catchy name.
The device also comes with non-volatile RAM, first introduced in the Tungsten E2 a few months ago. What non-volatile RAM means, in reality, is that if your battery runs out, your data doesn’t go poof. Very nice, and very important, especially if you’re doing a lot of traveling and might not have time for a recharge.
The LifeDrive also comes with folder synchronization software, which is nice. This will allow you to sync up folders on your PC with folders on your LifeDrive.
.H1 Are we excited?
Let’s be fair. Building any PDA, let alone one with a large color display, a hard drive, and good battery life is nothing short of an astounding act of human innovation. In fact, hard drives are astounding acts of human innovation themselves. That said, what have you done for me lately? Is the LifeDrive innovative enough for 2005, in a market full of astounding innovations?
In a word, no.
This is a product I would have been wildly excited about in 2002, not 2005. Hard drives in mobile devices have been around for years. The iPod, of course, is the most well known — and it’s in its fourth or fifth generation. So let’s compare. A 60GB color iPod photo is $449. The LifeDrive, with about 5% of the storage, is fifty bucks more.
OK, you say. So the LifeDrive has Bluetooth and WiFi. The Dell Axim x50v does as well, and it’s got a 640×480 screen instead of the LifeDrive’s half-size 320×480 screen. The X50v also has a 624MHz processor, compared to the LifeDrive’s 416MHz brain.
Plus, since the Axim X50v has both a Compact Flash as well as an SD slot, you can easily drop a Microdrive inside it. In fact, since it’s got a CF slot, you could easily drop a one or two gig CF card into the Axim (for about $60), and keep a few of them around, to offload your digital photos. And, if you happen to have a digital SLR that uses CF, like my Digital Rebel, you can even preview and edit those pictures on the Axim — something you just can’t do with the LifeDrive.
.CALLOUT I so wish palmOne would have taken a chance.
The LifeDrive is a compromise product. We know our friends at palmOne are excited by it, but it offers too little on one hand for the price, and not enough on the other hand.
Plus, it’s chock full of little weirdnesses.
With the LifeDrive, now, your PDA is no longer safe from ads. Admittedly, we make our living from the ads we sell for this magazine and our others. With the LifeDrive, though, palmOne provided ads will be shown directly on the device, in the launcher, as you HotSync. Lovely. It’s one thing to see ads when you’re getting free articles. It’s quite another when you’re paying five hundred bucks for the privilege.
Another place the product wimps out is in the included audio player. Rather than the Real player (something we were never fans of), palmOne now includes the Pocket Tunes player. But rather than including the full version of the product, you’ll have to shell out another $24.95 and upgrade to Pocket Tunes Deluxe if you really want to get such innovative features as gapless playback, bookmarks, and the ability to play .WAV files. For $500, you’d think you’d at least get the full version of the included software. This nickel-and-dime attempt is just cheesy.
Throughout palmOne’s briefing, our friendly neighborhood palmOne product manager kept saying, "We’ve done a lot of research about these features." Apparently, Google wasn’t one of the tools used in this "research." The name Camera Companion, heavily promoted by palmOne for the LifeDrive, already belongs to another company that makes a program for downloading, storing and reporting shooting data from F100 cameras. Holy Moose’s Camera Companion (at http://www.holymoose.com/) is the third entry in Google, so it’s not like it would have been that hard to discover. Either palmOne didn’t try, or they just didn’t care they were trampling on a small company’s trademark. Either way, it’s just weird.
I really hate beating down this product. I had such high hopes. But there are some weird decisions going on. For example, the headphone jack is on the bottom of the unit, not the top. Why? The audio jack on the bottom means that people will wind up holding the LifeDrive upside down. Clearly audio wasn’t a priority either.
.H1 What should have been
I so wish palmOne would have taken a chance. Imagine what this device would have been with a 60GB hard drive, instead of a 4GB one. Even a 40GB hard drive would have made this device infinitely more useful. Apple figured out how to use handheld 40GB hard drives back in 2001. Do you want to offload your 1 or 2GB SD card once to your LifeDrive, or take 40 or more card-fulls of pictures and dump them onto your much larger iPodesque drive?
.CALLOUT The LifeDrive is just another expensive PDA and it could have been so, so much more.
Yes, perhaps the device would have cost $600 or more. So what? The Archos digital media players (which have all the features of the LifeDrive and more) are getting rave reviews. PalmOne could have introduced a product that knocked the iPod out of the game. The ability to have a real screen on the device (rather than the iPod’s teeny one) would have been wonderful. I’m constantly frustrated by my iPod’s poor user interface, but I can still store a tremendous amount of data on the thing.
Sadly, I think "research" might be the problem. The LifeDrive feels like a product designed by a committee. Maybe the rabid Mac fans are right. Maybe Steve Jobs does have a lock on "insanely great."
The LifeDrive is just another expensive PDA and it could have been so, so much more.
.H1 James’ thoughts
I asked Computing Unplugged Senior Editor James Booth his opinion. After all, I thought, maybe I’m being too harsh. Here’s what he had to say:
.QUOTE It’s a neat device, and it’s about time that hard drives came as standard equipment in handhelds. The WiFi is long overdue. In reality though, what’s the motivation for me to give up my Zodiac and shell out another $500?
.QUOTE Where’s the LifeDrive mobile phone? I want a completely converged device that’s a mobile phone with a full-size screen, Graffiti input, a hard drive, Palm OS, and decent battery life.
.QUOTE Even the Treo 650, palmOne’s newest Treo, is a sad offering for a converged device. I don’t care if the device is a little thicker, I’m willing to accept that in a device that combines all of my mobile needs into one device.
I have to agree. The PDA market is in decline, in part because there’s just no compelling reason to shell out $500 over and over again. Start to wow us again, and you’ll see the market pick up.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on the LifeDrive, visit http://www.palmone.com.
For more information on the iPod, visit http://www.apple.com
For more information on the Archos players, visit http://www.archos.com.
For more information on the rightful Camera Companion, visit http://www.holymoose.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
