Reviews
Palm
LifeDrive
Hard drive-based handheld is both a distinct pleasure and a
royal pain
It's
become clear to me where mobile phones and handheld computers
are going to be by the end of this decade. Follow the trends in
miniaturization, wireless internet access and peripheral connections,
miniature hard disk capacity, battery technology, flat panel display
cost, media digitization, and widespread social acceptance of
mobile technologies, and I believe you end up with a fully integrated,
dual-device solution for all personal computing, media, and communications
functions.
The
common mobile phone will shrink to the size of today's smallest
wireless headset, worn over the ear and weighing almost nothing.
Calls can be answered simply by slipping the thing onto your ear,
or if it is already on, by tapping the earpiece with a finger;
tap again to end a call. Calls can be dialed using voice recognition
or through your pocket computer's virtual keypad or address book
icons.
Notebook
computers and handheld computers will merge into a single pocket-size
device that runs not Windows Mobile, Palm OS, or a Symbian variant,
but real Windows or Mac OS without any compromises. When at home
or the office, the computer will slip into a charging dock that
is connected to a flat panel, a keyboard, and a mouse. When away
from a dock, the device's built-in 5- or 6-inch touchscreen display
will show the most relevant information only: incoming messages,
RSS feeds you've subscribed to, appointments, tasks, and other
PDA-style data. Slide-out keyboards will make data entry easy,
and handwriting recognition will be an option for those who prefer
it over common QWERTY.
You'll
have all your communications, documents, photographs, current
video selections, and PIM data in one device. No syncing headaches,
troublesome file conversions, or any of the other hassles we take
for granted in today's multi-computer world. And it'll cost under
$500 ÷ cheap enough to lose or destroy one or even two per year
without breaking the budget, as most of us do with today's mobile
phones.
Until
the day arrives when traditional embedded PDA operating systems
are as irrelevant as floppy disks, today's handheld makers are
gradually adding increasingly PC-like power into their devices.
Today's handheld computers have as much raw horsepower as the
laptops of the late 1990s, though until now they lacked enough
storage capacity to cut into laptop sales.
First
of many
The arrival of Palm's LifeDrive "mobile manager" is the first
of what will be soon be dozens of microdrive-equipped handheld
devices. The LifeDrive is an admirable first effort in what is
arguably a new category of personal device, but it is far from
perfect and in some ways it is a step backwards.
By
any measure, the LifeDrive is a gorgeously designed piece of personal
tech. The all-metal body has iPod-like sculpted back edges that
look as good as they feel in your hand. Buttons and controls are
all top notch with a decisive feel. Graphic treatment is typically
Palm-elegant. I think it is the most physically attractive handheld
computer ever made, though I'm sure some will argue that it's
overly thick. Considering what's under the hood, I'm willing to
forgive a bit of excess depth.
Flick
it on and you go though a boot process that's as protracted as
that of most laptops. Several minutes later, you see a standard
Palm user interface. Palm users will recognize the Garnet UI from
the E2 and T5 machines. Little of importance has changed for the
LifeDrive revision (5.4) beyond a few trivial color alterations
that only an obsessive would notice. If you were expecting a fresh
new interface on this supposedly category-defining new machine,
you will be disappointed ÷ essentially, it's just a modern Palm
with a 4GB microdrive inside, along with built-in 802.11b WiFi
and Bluetooth 1.1 wireless. They could have called it the T6 and
no one would have blinked.
Palm
OS: Crumbling beauty
That's
not to say the LifeDrive hasn't got some mighty impressive functionality,
or that's it's not worth the $500 Palm is charging for it. It
may be the coolest Palm-powered device ever, but it's still just
a Palm. It inherits the flakiness of recent Palm OS 5 devices
along with a lack of real multitasking. Compared to Windows Mobile
and Symbian, Palm OS is showing signs of neglect. It's still just
as pretty as ever, but there is a patchiness to its underpinnings
that betray an aging codebase. Wireless in particular feels as
though it was hastily bolted on; the iffy performance of both
WiFi and Bluetooth in this machine borders on pre-beta.
If
you can get past the creaky operating system and wireless annoyances,
you'll find much to appreciate in this new machine. The 320x480-pixel,
64K-color display is a slightly improved version of the one on
the T5, that is to say bright, crisp, and readable outdoors. Text
of any size, photos and videos look fantastic on this display
÷ no complaints here. You can stare at it for hours without fatigue.
If
you do stare at it for hours, it probably won't be as many hours
as
you might like. Though the LifeDrive sports a big 1660 mAh lithium-ion
pack, the microdrive, 416MHz processor, and that lovely bright
screen eat up the amps pretty fast. Palm claims a battery life
expectancy of two days, but that's based on ãtypicalä usage patterns
cooked up by some marketing people. Like a Pocket PC, you'll have
to charge this thing up every night or wake up to disappointment
before lunchtime the next day. Incidentally, the LifeDrive battery
pack is not replaceable without special tools, so forget about
packing a spare.
Apple's
world-beating iPod has made the miniature hard drive hip. It was
only a matter of time before they started showing up in all manner
of mobile device. The largest maker of microdrives is Hitachi,
to which IBM sold the technology and turned over all manufacturing
a couple of years ago. Hitachi has since added some improvements
in capacity and roadworthiness to the design, making them ideal
for use in handheld computers. The first LifeDrive has the latest
4GB mechanism, a 16-gram wonder of the modern age.
LifeDrive
software
All
that storage capacity fundamentally changes the way you'll think
about a handheld computer. Suddenly, you can carry thousands of
documents and media files instead of dozens. Using Drive Mode,
you can plug your LifeDrive into any modern personal computer
and access the contents from your Windows or Mac desktop. Forget
about HotSyncing all this stuff, just drag it over. On a Windows
machine, you can use the supplied LifeDrive smart file manager
to structure your portable data, while on a Mac you have to do
it the old fashioned way of manually putting things where they
make sense. I'm a Mac person and I know how Palm OS organizes
its various folders, so I had no trouble. This LifeDrive PC software
is not particularly sophisticated, so creating a comparable Mac
version will be trivial once Palm gets around to it. One thing
I did miss in my PowerBook to LifeDrive experience was the option
to have files intelligently converted and changes synchronized,
as it does on the Windows version of the software.
While
we're talking about that little hard drive, let me describe the
memory management scheme we have in the LifeDrive. The microdrive
is used in place of RAM, 64MB of it dedicated to program memory.
There is some caching going on but basically everything you do
on your LifeDrive entails spinning up the drive and waiting a
few seconds. Some stuff is kept in program memory, such as emails,
while their attachments go on the user-accessible portion of the
drive. They call this user memory and it is the rest of the microdrive.
It's all kind of confusing, but it works well, if a bit slowly.
If you are used to speedy program access in a late model Palm,
the LifeDrive approach will take a little getting used to. It's
the price you pay for all that capacity and current technology
cannot do anything about it without raising the product's price
and reducing the battery life even further.
Application
tour
LifeDrives
offer the latest Palm applications, all revved up to support the
microdrive. VersaMail is as pleasant as ever, and the Blazer web
browser hums right along as expected. The personal information
management apps are unchanged, doing what they've always done
so well. In place of Photos, we have Media, a catch all organizer
for all your still and motion pictures. Working with Media is
the new Camera Companion, which fires up when you insert an SD
card from your digicam and offers you a variety of ways to view
and move your shots around. (Users of cameras that use other kinds
of flash cards will want to buy the forthcoming media adapter
cable from Palm. At press time, we unfortunately did not have
one to test.) Now you can use your LifeDrive to archive all your
photography while away from your personal computer, then use Media
to build slideshows on the fly.
For
the four or five of you that don't yet own an iPod and prefer
to use your handheld computer to listen to music, LifeDrives ship
with a basic version of the decent PocketTunes application. It
can play MP3s and do a serviceable job of creating playlists and
organizing your audio, but to play WMA files from some online
music stores you have to pony up another $25 to upgrade to the
full version. After forking over $500, I'd be surprised and disappointed
to have to pay more for what should be core audio functionality.
What's worse, even after upgrading you still cannot play AAC format
files from iTunes, either ripped from your own CDs or purchased
from the iTunes Music Store. I didn't really expect the latter,
as Apple is jealously guarding its iPod hardware franchise, but
the ability to play unprotected AAC files should definitely be
there. Even $100 Nokia phones can do that, so why can't a $500
Palm? Smells like corporate intrigue to me.
Office
to go
One
of the functions that the LifeDrive does particularly well is
work with Microsoft Office documents. The latest rev of Dataviz'
Documents to Go is preinstalled, and it works beautifully on both
the handheld and on your PC or Mac. I love the way it works with
email attachments. Native files just come right up for editing
and can be round-tripped over and over without drama. I predict
that many a LifeDrive will be sold to folks who need to carry
loads of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files around with them. Add
in the excellent Palm Wireless Keyboard and you've got a formidable
mobile office that weights less than one pound.
Though
I've mentioned a number of drawbacks in the LifeDrive, I must
admit that I found the device compelling enough that I was sorely
tempted to become a Palm guy again. Paired up via Bluetooth with
a good GPRS phone and synced up to my PowerBook with the superb
Missing Sync for Palm (www.missingsync.com), I have a powerful
suite of interconnected tools that gives me outrageous flexibility
in both my professional and personal lives. The deal breaker for
me is the on again, off again wireless performance, tired old
twentieth-century OS, and pokey performance. Oh, and the execrable
Graffiti2 character recognition system is intolerable for a ten-year,
multi-platform Graffiti veteran like me.
Still,
when I hold the LifeDrive in my hand I can imagine something very
much like it five years from now, running my operating system
of choice and securely holding my entire digital life. The LifeDrive
a significant evolutionary step towards the fully converged personal
computer of 2010.
öDavid MacNeill
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