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LifeDrive: Hands on First Impressions

by C.K. Sample, III Jun 7th 2005 at 2:15PM

unpacking the PalmOne LifeDriveRemember when PalmOne announced the LifeDrive, how ecstatic I was? Well, now I'm even more ecstatic because I have one in my hand right now as I am writing this post.

This is going to be a short and sweet first impressions post of unpacking and using the LifeDrive with a Mac. I've uploaded all the relevant unpacking shots to our Flickr set. Check it out. I'll do a more thorough review later on this week after I've had some time to get everything set up properly.

Read more after the jump...
First impressions:
  • It's not as thick or as heavy as I had expected after reading different online reviews complaining about it. Then again, I'm a big guy who was never bothered by the clunky-ness of my Nokia 3650.
  • The first time it boots it takes a looooong time to boot.
  • I forgot what a pain setting up the Palm Conduit to work with iSync could be. Took me about 10 minutes to get everything to sync properly, but once I got it set, it was syncing nicely. This was all via the supplied USB to Palm cable. HotSync on the LifeDrive indicates that there is a WiFi sync option, but no mention of Bluetooth. I need to figure out how to Sync without a cable, and if it is not supported, I'll be working on hacking a bluetooth sync...
  • All of my iCal calendars synced nicely and I like the Today, then This Week display of the device. The device comes with the standard Palm Desktop software if you prefer that, but the iSync with iCal and Address Book worked pretty flawlessly.
  • The screen is nice and crisp. Looking at pictures is good. Watching video is good.
  • The speakers sound good. I played the two default MP3s and they were nice and loud.
  • So far, the two (admittedly large) Word files that I've tried to open on the LifeDrive have either not opened or brought the device to a screeching halt. I've reset it twice already.
  • Setting up a new email address is a piece of cake. They already have a .Mac setting too.
  • Web-browsing is nice and fast. The pages available via PalmOne's default home page for the LifeDrive load very quickly. Other sites can look a little squashed with graphics.
  • TUAW loads, albeit a bit slowly.
Overall, this looks like it will be a good Mac-companion PDA. There were no major bits of incompatibility. It is, however, a very noticeably un-Mac-like working environment. As Scott noted in chat to me: no multi-tasking. This is Palm, after all. But, the GUI is very Mac-like in its attractiveness, and the device itself goes nicely in its aluminum shell with my 12-inch PowerBook. I guess that is a good enough list for first impressions. I think I need to spend some actual time playing with this thing before I can say much more of value. If there is anything specific you want to know about it, ask me in the comments.

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Remember when PalmOne announced the LifeDrive, how ecstatic I was? Well, now I'm even more ecstatic because I have one in my hand right...
 

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S Ekker

Do you have any time for an update after a couple month's use? Does the machine seem slow? Any troubles with Tiger?

August 20 2005 at 2:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
devinened

I've owned Palms for at least 6 or 7 years but haven't upgraded beyond IIIxe models (am using my 4th IIIxe). Refurbished units are so inexpensive now that I don't usually feel terrible when I crack a screen or even lose one. Having said that the PalmDrive sounds very compelling. Will a PalmDrive accept beamed Datebook, MemoPad and ToDo files from old OS 4.1 Palms?

June 20 2005 at 8:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeremy Marx

How has the battery life been? I've read that it only gets a few hours between charges.. Also, do you think it's as fragile as they say it might be, what with it not being solid-state and all? I'm so close to buying one, but these are my concerns.

June 18 2005 at 12:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Chuck

I'd love to have a ftp app for this too. Be nice to be able to send media files that way instead of synching. Anyone know of one (or am I missing some obvious functionality?)

June 14 2005 at 4:20 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Macuser

Regardless of whether your wearing your watch on the right side or not you still living in the past according to this article: http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000107038796/

June 08 2005 at 9:26 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
superpixel

Ah Palm... This seems like too little too late for too much money. At this price point you can get a laptop. Within 18 months there will be phones with *some* similar functions. I loved Palm once, now they're like a bad country song... But questions, questions... Yes, PDF support is a must for me. Not handling large Word docs? That could be a killer. What about Excel? I noticed you cannot edit PPT files. Also, is there any Java support? What happens to pages with plugins? I am still shocked and appalled that Palm ignores or refuses to license Flash. Sony put it in their Clie's (licensing the PalmOS), so what's the deal here? A nice how-to would be getting video files of all sorts onto the device. I've heard good reviews of Kinoma's software (used to convert videos), but how would that integrate with iMovie? Can you make an Automator workflow to ease the pain? That's all I can think of for now... Too sunburned to think clearly...

June 07 2005 at 10:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
C.K. Sample, III

Pedro: NEVER!!! Adam, so far, I've only played with Word documents. One that I actually created in Pages won't open on the LifeDrive (which uses Dantz Documents to Go) and very large doc files tend to freeze it up. Regular average-sized files seem to work okay though. Supposedly it has PDF support, but I haven't tried it yet.

June 07 2005 at 10:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Pedro

stop living in the 80's and put your watch on the right side of your wrist!

June 07 2005 at 10:02 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bill Hennan

Will the "Active Sych" application sych the LifeDrive with Microsoft Office on a Mac?

June 07 2005 at 8:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Adam

I would love to know more about how the LifeDrive handles native documents (word docs, excel docs, pdfs), can you just dump the files on the LifeDrive and open them or is there some sort of translation/conversion required? That was the biggest pain of using Palm in the past I think, not being able to just dump a few pdfs on a SD card and then opening them up on the palm. SOunds like it didn't like the word documents, I'll be interested to see if that works better over the course of your testing.

June 07 2005 at 5:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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