Home > Consumer Reviews > Palm LifeDrive Mobile Manager

I got the Lifedrive one week ago to replace a sony Clie. The following comments are based on one week experience.
Pros:
1. New lifedrive manager software which in most cases obviate the need for hotsync. This is truly revolutionary.
2. Larger hard drive. Finally we are catching up with the rest of the world. You may be able to replace your iPod mini with this more versatile handheld.
3. Good voice recorder. I just got back from a meeting and recorded one whole days worth of talks from the back of a room with 60 people and record quality was quite good and no software bugs were noticed. In addition to the time allocated under your voice memo section, you can directly record to your hard drive allowing you to record more stuff.
4. This machine can store an enormous number of powerpoint presentations. This is a big plus for if you do any teaching e.g. quick review of a topic with a med student before a surgery.
5. Nice metallic finish. Looks better than cheap looking T5.

Cons:
1. Poor battery life. After a whole day of heavy use, the battery dies without warning.
2. Repeated powering down of the hard drive causing a few second delay in opening new applications. Annoying as hell!!!
3. No way to customize turning off the screen after a short period of inactivity. If you play chess on this machine, it becomes annoying. By the way, Hiarcs chess engine runs quite well on this machine(Downloadable for 39.99).
4. Adobe reader formats most documents well, but some with complex formatting turn into incomprehensible amorphous text.
5. Price. I don't understand why a piece of cheap looking electronics made in china should cost this much money.
6. No integrated cell phone or camera.
7. Some applications don't run on this device. I signed up for audible.com membership to get a $100 rebate. But so far I have been unable to make the audible manager recognize this device and download audiobooks to this device.
8. It is very disappointing palm decided to put the cheaper and slower WiFi. I suspect their next device will have the faster version.
9. Size. More bulky than other palm handhelds. Not a true shirt pocket device.
10. No headphone provided. Why can't they throw in a $10 headphone for this $499 device. I am using my old sony clie headphones which works fine.

Overall, 4 stars. I am sure I will find a lot more annoying problems as I use it more.

I've had my Lifedrive for about 3 mos. now and have been very pleased with it. There seems to be quite a few negative reviews about the Lifedrive so I was a little wary at first. Many of the complaints seemed to stem from running older Palm software that didn't operate on the new Palm OS or from people who weren't used to using Palm PDA's. Although Palms are very easy and intuitive to use I think the Lifedrive is a little more complex due to the integrated hard drive, which at first doesn't seem integrated at all.

I didn't reuse any of my older Palm OS software which must have spared me from some of the re-starts and lock-ups some people experienced. Once my unit was charged I started with a new user name (so a new synch profile is created) and then immediately installed the 2.0 software update. I've only had 2 restarts on the device since I started using it, but I use it quite a lot. One restart was apparently due to a poor wireless connection and another I think was caused by Versamail while downloading an e-mail with an attachment. Other than that the device has been very stable and the restarts haven't been repeated.

At first I wasn't very pleased with the new Graffiti II but now that I'm used to it I'll concede that maybe it is an improvement over the older version. Handwriting recognition on Palms has always seemed far superior than on Pocket PC's to me and the Lifedrive's no exception.

Some reviewers have mentioned a "lag" problem when starting a new program. I was a little worried about this before I purchased the Lifedrive after reading it in several reviews. However, I tested a couple of Lifedrives first at electronic stores and didn't really notice any lagging or hesitating. It might have been 3rd party software issues as I haven't noticed this problem-- and I'm very impatient.

www.palmfocus.com has a list of Palm software rated for compatability with the Lifedrive. Before installing older Palm OS software it would be a good idea to check this list rather than struggle with your device. (Any software written for the new OS isn't an issue as far as I know.)

Pros:
+Wireless works well and connects easily.
+Being able to store, view and edit MS Word and Excel in their native format is a plus. (no conversion step as on Pocket PC)
+Store tons of videos, music and photos and take it with you everywhere.
+Synchrone entire folders from your desktop computer (Only folders on the root drive of your device can be synchronized so nested folders won't be synchronized unless you spread them out in the root directory of the drive. This will change the folder heirarchy on your device but not your desktop if you want to keep all the folders synchronized)
+The USB synchronization and connection has been flawless. (This hasn't been my experience with Pocket PC's)
+Very powerful yet elegant PDA!



Cons:
-Battery consumption high when using wireless. Don't leave on any longer than you have to.
-It's a little big and bulky to hang on to compared to older Palm PDA's. (Wish it had a place for a lanyard)
-Working with other applications while listing to music causes interuptions in the music playback.
-Versamail synch setup didn't go very easily for me. Make sure your default e-mail profile on your desktop is Outlook before you even get started with mail sync setup.


I've installed Dataviz Smartlist which is an excellent and fairly sophisticated database application which can sync with Microsoft Access. It works very well on the Lifedrive.

Also installed Mapopolis and it also works well. You must install maps to RAM or on a SD card and not the hard drive.

I purchased this in june and had to return it. I use it as a physician and have had a Tungsten C, and Visor and Palm V, each of which represented continuous improvement in speed and usability. The lifedrive was so slow switching between applications, up to 2 minutes and usually thirty to 90 seconds that I couldn't function. Also the programs I used ran more slowly (10-20 seconds for steps that were instantaneous before) than before or than on the T|X with which I have replaced it . Iuse a prescription program and it links to epocrates which meant every time it would take several minutes to perform a task that took 10-20 seconds previously.
On the plus side the multimedia and PIM functions worked well if you waited for them to start. It has a sharp screen and pictures. The dictaion feature was great.

I purchased a Life Drive PDA because of the large memory capacity. I upgraded from Sony Clie. I have been unable to get any help from Palm, since my Life Drive crashed after a long holiday weekend. I guess the battery ran down and it will not recharge. A $500 device that is now useless. I have now returned to using my Sony Clie which continues to work. If I were you I would think twice about buying such an expensive PDA that does not contain replaceable batteries. Take a look at Palms website where they tell their customers that sending the device back could cost you more than the amount it would cost to buy another. "Let the buyer beware!"

Like many others, I am profoundly disappointed with Palm's latest release, the Life Drive Mobile Manager. There are many positive reviews posted here, but the majority of them are from users who are relatively new to the Palm PDA line.

As a power user, and having owned nearly every model they released, I can say with confidence that if you are a power user, you will be returning this unit within two weeks. The majority of the third party apps that I used to use are not compatible with it and that causes fatal errors and random soft resets. When the app is uninstalled, the error stops, but because the unit boots off of the hard drive memory and not flash memory as all previous models did, a soft reset takes approximately TWO MINUTES 16 SECONDS from start to being ready to use again. It is unbelievable. You should really drive down to play with one to look at the lag time BEFORE you order it here at Amazon. I promise you - it will be time well spent.

The power switch on the top of it is a slider that is made of plastic, looks very cheap and I'm guessing will last maybe 3 or 4 months tops before it needs to be replaced.

If you are thinking of buying this for watching videos and playing MP3s or as a replacement for your iPOD, keep your iPOD. Sometimes I wish Apple would buy Palm. Maybe then we'd start seeing some quality.

No cradle - a flimsy breakaway plugin to charge it.
The hard case looks sexy and sleek, but you will soon tire of having to pry it open several times a day with your thumbnail. And if you don't have any thumbnails, you're out of luck. Don't get the hard case or you'll never be able to open it.

Overall a big disappointment for me. I made the mistake of selling my T3 and putting the proceeds toward the LifeDrive. I still have time to return it - and I likely will - but am having a huge problem trying to decide what to downgrade to from the LifeDrive. T5 didn't get much better reviews and T3 is a few years old now...

If you absolutely MUST buy this unit, please wait until the LifeDrive 2 and LifeDrive 3 come out later this year or in early 2006. Remember the T, T2 and T3? My guess is the same thing is going to happen to this one. They would have saved themselves a lot of headaches if they waited until it was ready to be released as a quality product.

Now I don't know what the heck to buy to replace it. T5 maybe, but still nothing compares to the T3 thus far.

The only good thing the LifeDrive has going for it is a lot of storage and internal WiFi; HOWEVER, the version of wifi they chose to install is the slow version - it crawls; and I have no idea what all the fuss is about people being able to use this as a 4GB USB drive.

Yes, it works as an external drive. It's slow but it works. Big Hooey. Go down and get yourself a 1 GB USB flash RAM drive (tiny) if you want that level of portability. For me as a longtime Palm user, the ability to use this as an external drive is NOT a huge deal. I've been using USB flash drives for years to do what this does.

Perhaps the biggest annoyance - and primarily the reason why I am returning the unit - is the lag time switching between apps. You click the stylus on an app and since it is no longer booting from the flash drive, there is a two second noticable lag time before the app launches. It's ridiculous. They say that putting a hard drive in a PDA is an achievement that will allow for a great deal of things to come.

It would be. If they had left the unit booting to flash ram and used the 4 GB for storage only. Big mistake. Bad Developer. No cookie for you.

This crashes as often as a PocketPC, but it is much slower. That's the best way I can describe it.

Hope this helps!

Adam Boettiger

UPDATE: 22 AUG 2005 - Wanted to add a post script to this to let readers know that I did in fact return the LifeDrive to the store and purchased the Tungsten T5 and some accessories instead. While the T5 is not everything I want in a PDA, in my opinion it is the best unit Palm has on the market - primarily because it has fewer problems than the LifeDrive.

After setting it up last week, I've had no problems with the T5 since. As a longtime Palm user, it was nice to see the zippy flash drive again, with no two-second delays in switching between apps, no Fatal Exception errors, etc. It just worked.

If you must upgrade now, buy the T5. If you can wait 4-6 months, hold out for the OS 6 devices due out in Q1 or Q2 of 2006. You'll probably be glad you did.

Hope this was useful.

Adam Boettiger