Palm Life Drive

Dr Jekell

Enlightened
Joined
Aug 3, 2006
Messages
493
Location
New Zealand
I am looking at getting a Palm life drive but after doing a lot of web research I have found that there are apparently a lot of bugs (mainly to do with powering up or down).

What I would like is if any other CPFers have a Life Drive can they post what they think about it.
 

carrot

Flashaholic
Joined
Dec 6, 2005
Messages
9,240
Location
New York City
I had a Palm T|X about two years ago, which is almost exactly the same as the LifeDrive but with flash instead of an internal hard drive.

I would not recommend it. Palm has fallen behind the times and is still offering Palm OS 5.x Garnet instead of the much improved OS 6 Cobalt that they promised maybe four or five years ago. Backwards compatibility with pre-5.x applications is acceptable, though somewhat poor, and the interface is still as clunky as it was in the heyday of Palm, back around the Palm V and M5xx series, then the original release of the Treo 600.

Palm has let their OS and hardware stagnate, and while the capabilities were certainly acceptable then, they are not now, as even the included web browser (Blazer) is not all that much better than a WAP-enabled phone.

If you can cope with Blazer or the similarly crippled Opera Mini, a poor screen for video playback (negative black effect is prominent in darker movies), slow WiFi access and a stagnant software library, and all you want is just a PDA to listen to music, the occasional video clip, check the web infrequently, and keep track of contacts and calendars and todo lists you may be ok. There are still some incredibly quality applications on the Palm, such as Wordsmith, probably the best word processor and MSWord compatible software on the Palm, Google Maps, and Pocket Tunes, but for the most part what I have seen is that Palm OS is largely dead.

If you are looking for the ideal pocket computer, the Life Drive is definitely not it. The ideal pocket computer of the year 2007 seems to not be a PDA (whose market is seriously losing steam) but in super-capable phones and smartphones like the iPhone and Blackberry.
 

bobisculous

Flashlight Enthusiast
Joined
Apr 12, 2004
Messages
1,004
Location
H-Town, 29.756641, -95.355320
I have a Palm TX...well kinda. I sent it off today for a replacement due to the bottom third of the touch screen becoming wacked out. A known problem with the TX with no fix. The digitizer slowly gets worse and worse and you can't do anything to fix it. So with that said, I am unhappy with my Palm. But I should get a fixed up and working one, and once I do, I imagine I will be kinda happy again. I can't say the Palm was worth the money for me. I primarily got it to use for geocaching. Its been great for that, but thats about the extent of it. I too would recommend just going with a smartphone.
-C
 

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