Brighthand Reviews the palmOne LifeDrive Mobile Manager

[Logan5ed]

Ed I'm glad you pointed out the light.

If anyones used video like I have it drives you nuts after about 5 minutes straight of playing. Playing mp3s is the same case. Although most mp3 people won't even look at their device much, if you are playing mp3s in the background while doing work on the Lifedrive, like I enjoy to do, it will make you wanna grab a screwdriver fast.

I hope PalmOne fixes that in their next patch. I think light being straight disabled for the Media application would be good, as well as a system option made to manually turn it off.

[banker]

I was reading your review and find it most misleading. I find the LifeDrive unusable because of lags. Now let me define what I mean by lags. Because of the hard drive access there are lags when you open applications and get data. Now this is acceptable. However, the LifeDrive (at least the one that I have) has delays on switching applications even when they are opened frequently. A clear indication of this is when you write Grafitti 2 on the LifeDrive. If you do at a speed which makes Grafitti at all useful, the LifeDrive will force pauses. There are pauses where the cursor flash at least once. This make it ridiculous to write on. The LifeDrive also delays when you chose items on application menus.
These will not be noticeable if you are a new "mobile manager" user or perhaps moving from a POcket PC OR any less able "mm".
Palm OS have establish a certain quality and performance benchmark. The Palm OS is famous for its fast software and small form factor. These were unmatched by competition. With the LifeDrive I think PalmOne has successfully created a Pocket PC. It is unfortunate that they have stooped down to match the competition when they have the edge.

[Gatewood]

I have a LifeDrive, and a Dell Axim X50V. I take exception with banker's comment. My Axim is lots faster than my LifeDrive. I'm struggling with trying to like the LifeDrive, and it isn't easy. The lags are difficult, even with Sharkcache installed. That helps a lot, but I'm hoping Palm will put out a patch that will make this device the one I want to use the most. Right now, it's not there.

[AlanG]

I've only played with the LifeDrive at the store, so my experience with it begins and ends there. However, playing with the preinstalled apps didn't produce any serious lag. The only lag that I did see (2 4 seconds) was when I launched Documents to Go and it went looking for documents on the hard disk. To me, that is an acceptable delay.

A clear indication of this is when you write Grafitti 2 on the LifeDrive. If you do at a speed which makes Grafitti at all useful, the LifeDrive will force pauses.

Now, I'm a new Tungsten T5 owner. Thought that there was a lag in the T5's Graffiti 2 engine. And then I learned what was going on. G2 will pause the drawing of a character on screen until it knows what character you'r writing. So, anyone who has used G3 will know that to write a lower case 't' you need two stokes: down and across. G2 won't draw the 't' until it captures the second stroke. Internally, G2 is asking: is this an 'l' followed by a space, or the first half of 't'. If you keep writing at normal speed, G2 will keep up with you.

Ed, has this been your experience with the LifeDrive?

Alan G

[Ed Hardy]

I've never had problems with G2 being slower than G1 because it seems I enter text differently from the people who are complaining.

It seems to me that what you're doing is writing a letter, waiting for it to appear, writing another, waiting for it to appear, and so on. This is an immensely inefficient way to enter text.

Just write the letters one after another. As soon as the feedback lines disappear off the screen, write the next letter. Keep your eyes on on the Graffiti area, and write as fast as is comfortable.

There may be slight delays while the LifeDrive is waiting to see if you've entered an L, T, I, etc. but they don't effect the speed at which you can enter text, just the speed at which that particular letter appears, and you won't care, because you aren't waiting for that.

At the end of the sentence, paragraph, etc., you can look back at the text you've entered and fix any mistakes you've made. I don't get more than about two a sentence, and my handwriting is terrible.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the constant glancing back and forth between the Graffiti area and the text as it appears is not just making your Graffiti slower, it's making it less accurate. Keep your eyes on what you're doing, and let the LifeDrive take care of itself.

[STORM SHADOW]

I have a TT and an LD and I find the LD writes better than my TT. My TT has no lag at all... but I figured out on my own what LD is doing and what was different. So I just write natural and wala! (I should copyright that), and it keeps up with me. Like ED said..don't keep looking back and forth. Just write.

[sovi007]

Storm:

You should copyright "Voila", not "wala"!.....

My husband speaks French....

:-)

[STORM SHADOW]

Originally posted by sovi007
Storm:

You should copyright "Voila", not "wala"!.....

My husband speaks French....

:-)

Sorry... I only know HOW to French *wink*

[MnM]

I have been wanting to post this and haven't found a good thread so I am writing this here. . .

I am regreting my decision to purchase a LD. I upgraded from a T3 and thought the 4 gigs of data storage would be great. To this point it has been as I have about 2 gigs of data that I back up on the LD. It's great peace of mind knowing that data is safe if my office computer goes down for good.

That's where the honeymoon ends.

I never realized that a small form factor was such an important factor over all. The LD is so big that i carry it less and less with me and it's getting left more and more in my briefcase. If I don't have the LD on me when I am making appointments on my cell then it's not much use to me. This thing is just too big. Couple this with buggy software (I only use core PIM app's) and I am rethinking this purchase. Is anyone else having issues with the size of the device. I kind of wish I went with a Treo or Blackberry.

Ok rant over, thanks for listening.

Edit: I am having the feeling this thing may be relegated to nothing more than a portable back up hard drive soon. If anyone who has owned a LD and has switched to something else, I would love to hear your thoughts about the transition.

Edit 2: I purchased the Treo 650 through Cingular and I am loving it. The LD is now in my office desk drawer holding backed up data.

[ZargoGames]

Some words about lifeDrive as I feel it. I think it's a very good device and I do not see any problem with couple of seconds to wait to run application as many people complaining. Although it depends. In the case if you need to work with many different applications which must be closed and running fastly, I mean if you need to change between applications fastly then of course lifeDrive give you some lag and so it's not for you! At least I have such problem and it's hard for me to work on lifeDrive because I need to change applications fastly. I am palm OS developer, and I do my programs entirely on palm with OnBoardC language. (http://www.zargosoft.com)
OnBoardC consist of different applications(assembler, C, resource editor, text editor) and so I need to change between them fastly. But it's impossible on lifedrive. So I prefer Tungsten C. But!!! I think it's a very rear case! In other not a problem to wait a little. I must admit lifedrive have a very good sound, screen, design. So if you have no plans to change between applications fastly you must like this device. Otherwise I can suggest T|T5 or T|TX with big SD card. Why not? They are very good too! And another palm OS devices too. Maybe I am not right in something, but I like palm OS and there devices so do not take me seriously. :-) I am simply palm OS fanat.