“To save power, the hard drive stops spinning between uses. That’s fine. What’s not so fine, however, is that it takes six seconds to spin up again and feed its data into the palmtop’s memory so you can use it. As a result, your work is frequently interrupted by maddening, six-second visits to the dead zone. Everything is frozen on the screen, no button works and your workflow comes to a crashing halt.” Read the full review of PalmOne’s Lifedrive at News.com.
A new spin on a PalmOS palmtop (or inside it)
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
while you no longer need the pda for number and other addresses, its larger screen and touch ability makes it a perfect small surf and mail interface.
and with bluetooth ability you can combo it with any phone that have it and transmitt phone numbers and other contact info both ways. combo this with a bluetooth headset and you can basicly put the phone in a pocket and forget about it.
sure they could have trown in a bigger drive but hey, its a start
and its nice that it can show up as just another removable drive to any computer that supports that usb feature.
to bad about that spinup thing tho. they should put in a prefetch system that would atleast grab the data for the last week while its at it rather then wait for user input (or watch what the user access most of the time and prefetch that). another option would be to allow the user to set up a list of stuff he allways wants in memory when powering up so that you get your most used stuff in mem from poweron.
soo… long spin up time, horrible batt life.. screw this thing.
What is with palmone lately? How hard is it to put out a good palm os pda that has a removable batterym, cf AND sd, 320×480 screen, wifi and bt AND 4 hour batt life? ppc’s have it!
The big problem of the LifeDrive (as was indicated in many reviews and discussed on many forums so far) is that it has a TINY amount of REAL dynamic memory. The “PalmOS” traditional memory is now just a 64 MB partition on the microdrive and it doesn’t use more than 2 or 4 MBs of REAL RAM (PalmOne doesn’t want to disclose the real amount of memory – probably too shameful for them). This is why nothing fits in there and swaps in and out all the time, and adding the 6-seconds of spinning the drive on/off (at which time you can’t click anything as there is no real multitasking on PalmOS 5) it makes as TERRIBLE performance experience as all reviewers have noted. This model is slower than the T3/T5 which run on slower clocks!
Now, compare the LD’s 2-4 MBs of RAM to 64 or 128 MBs of memory that PocketPCs have these days… or even the 32 or 64 MBs of REAL RAM Tungstens have. PalmOne did some “money saving” (we are talking about pennies here) and killed off performance.
What PalmOne should have done is:
1. Include at least 16 MBs of real dynamic RAM.
2. Instead of a 4 GB microdrive include a 2 GB internal Compact Flash card.
This way they would have:
1. Continue having good performance as more RAM is included.
2. CF cards require way less battery as they don’t spin mechanically.
3. CF cards are cheaper than microdrives.
So, LifeDrive would have been cheaper and faster if they did that (and even less hardware faulty as microdrives are bound to die with motion overtime). Also, Lifedrive was the perfect device to start experimenting with PalmOS 6, as it’s not a business device per se (it’s more of a multimedia device) so PalmOne wouldn’t have to allienate their main customers who are mainly business people.
As for LinuxDevices.com’s article that this device is Linux friendly, the reality is that it is not. With only 2-4 MBs of RAM Familiar/OpenZaurus Linux (with a full GPE/QPE GUI) can’t run. They require at least 32 MBs of RAM. Yes, you could port a command-line version of Embedded Linux (e.g. from Montavista), but not a real-deal Linux GUI PDA version.
ugh, that bad? great concept shot in the family jewels!
hand me that tungsten with bluetooth and wifi instead…
My thoughts exactly. How could they even think of using a part of a hard drive as main memory? And why didn’t they avoid the hard drive hassle and use flash memory instead? It just makes no sense to me.
That not all was wrong in late Palm developments, but after this I do not kanow what to think anymore, this whole thing about putting an HD on a PDA sounded stupid since day 0.
And what a price! $500!!!
I can’t see why PalmOne would release a new device such as the LifeDrive with large storage space and features but not include cellular capability. Anyway, I was considering purchasing a PalmOne Treo 650 but after looking at what competitors are offering I’m now considering other options. Such as HP with their soon to be released iPAQ hw6515 that offers among other things GSM (quadband), GPRS/EDGE, bluetooth and an integrated 1.3 MP camera.
http://www.expansys.ca/product.asp?code=120563
>release a new device such as the LifeDrive with large
> storage space and features but not include cellular capability?
That’s because the LD’s battery life is terrible as it is, adding a phone in it would only make things worse, especially the battery lives people have come to expect from phones. Plus, phones need to be real-time, the current 6-second delay is unacceptable on a phone. Also, LD is too big for a phone. VoIP seems more reasonable on this device.
Eugenia,
I forgot to add that the HP iPAQ hw6515 will have integrated GPS (normally offered as a costly add on) which is what PalmOne could of included in the LifeDrive if they would of put a little more effort into the design. You’re correct on the other LifeDrive points you made. PalmOne made this one bulky and severly lacking device not worth the price.
while it would be nice to have gps in the box, why not grab a bluetooth based one? that way it will work with any future bluetooth equiped gear…
as long there are drivers for it though…
There are no many gps drivers for palmos…
Actually, the Mapoplis GPS kit we put on my wife’s Treo600 works fine, for ~$200 including the dash mount.
It’s not quite the cadillac you can have for ~$1,000. The voice coming over the speakerphone is functional, and the form factor/responsiveness is adequate, but we put in an office address to which we had to drive and had success. Installation/configuration weren’t too bad, but the wife and I aren’t total beginners, either.
So, what does this reviewer say that is inaccurate? You should enlighten him/her so the story can be corrected.
http://www.calerga.com/products/LyME/index.html
Lyme (Matlab in your pocket) benchmark results:
Generic PC Pentium Win2K 300 MHz: 350.9 444 257 380 518 288 276 294
Dell Axim X30 PXA270 626 MHz: 143.4 55 140 31 381 111 59 226
Apple PowerBook 3400 PPC603 200 MHz: 133.7 141 120 111 215 182 79 88
CerfBoard 255 XScale 400 MHz: 84.4 11 25 42 234 92 63 125
Kontron X-board SC1200 266 MHz: 76.9 65 63 81 88 142 47 52
This computer (400 Mhz Xscale 255 with PalmOS): 3.4 3 3 4 3 5 2 4
Palm Zire 71 OMAP 144 MHz, emu M68k: 1.2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1
Handspring Visor MC68EZ328 16 MHz: 0.5 0 0 1 1 1 0 1
PATHETIC !!!
I bought the M130 about 2 and a half years ago. Its been fantastic. It never misses a beat. Word to go sometimes freezes it if I try to create a document with the same name as one already existing but I keep a paperclip ( to reset it ) in my wallet for such occasions.
It is very handy for scheduling jobs and keeping customer details.
One night at went clubbing and was dancing for about 2 hours with it in my pocket and it was fine.
I’ve dropped it about 2 times and while the face plate fell off and I glued it back on there has been no damage other to it.
The battery is still very good and I always leave it in the cradle over night.
I bought the stow-away keyboard when I was studying small business management but haven’t used it much since.
For $500 I can get PocketPC PDA with WiFi/BT + 4GB CF card.
Jon,
Your quote: “As long there are drivers for it though…
There are no many gps drivers for palmos…”
It’s been reported that the HP iPAQ hw6515 will either have Windows 2003 or Windows Mobile 5. In either case since HP is integrating features such as Bluetooth, GPS, EDGE etc in the device there will certainly be drivers preinstalled. The only issue would arise if a user decided to install Linux on the iPAQ which has been done in the past. See http://www.ipaqlinux.com/ http://www.cfar.umd.edu/~arvind/linuxonipaq.htm http://www.handhelds.org/geeklog/index.php
Since the product has yet to be released it’s not determined if users will be able to use voice commands (speak and the device executes your command) when using a Bluetooth headset. This is an issue for other devices such as the PalmOne Treo 650. It’s also one of the reasons why I’m holding off on purchasing a smartphone PDA. If manufacturers expect us to pay a lot for these devices then they could at least meet the needs of consumers in a wider range instead of limiting what the devices can do. An example of poor design is the LifeDrive which is costly, bulky and limiting features.
From what I’ve been reading the spinning up only lasts a maximum of two seconds, so I think the reviewer is sort of exaggerating. I could live with that delay myself, but I can imagine that it could be annoying when it occured just using the default PIM applications.
I’m considering getting one in the future, it’s a great deal if you ask me. €439, for a nice 480×320 screen, bluetooth, Wi-Fi, a 4GB disk and PalmOS. I can’t find a PocketPC that can offer me that for that price.
The question is: do you really need 4 GBs? You can always find a good PocketPC for $300 (e.g. the rx3115) and then buy a 2 GB compact flash card for $100.
What people want to do, is take high resolution photo’s and video’s and not have to bring their laptop along.
Not everyone, but some people certainly do…and you can buy an iPod with 60gb drive, and do that, to an extent but there are issues with it, so people buy some kind of specialized media player.
but….darn it, who wants to carry an iPod and Palm around… and a cellphone, etc. and a beeper….
I like the iPod, I would love to see it become a pda, but that will happen when hell freezes over, and right now, it cannot even do video….
so this device from palm sounded like a great idea, except I wanted the 40gb hd version….it seems from reading the reviews though, that palm really hasn’t entered the market that I hoped they had…which is ashame because I liked palm, and remember them fondly, I used to own one…..oh well.
Even though all the bad reviews and issues with the Palm’s, I’d still buy one over a PocketPC.. The idea of a mini-windows for my PDA makes me gag.
That seems a little excessive. I have a Hitachi CF 4GB microdrive in my PPC, and its spinup is less than 2 seconds (haven’t timed it, but it actually feels like less than 1 second in practice). I’m pretty sure Palm is using the same core drive as what is in my CF microdrive. Either Palm is doing more than just spinning up the drive (such as some random access), or this guy is exaggerating a little.