new palm life drive

[fulltext]

Amazon is now taking pre-orders and has posted pics - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...493294-5778454

Looks like Dell will be playing catch-up on this one. Their new model with microdrive is rumored to be available in November!

[jmckie]

The Life Drive is supposedly as thick as two T5's put together. Who in their right mind would want to carry that kind of brick around with them?!

The T5 is actually pretty slim. Two T5's is about as thick as an Axim in a Sena case.

I think it is hilarious how on the picture page, they never show the device in perspective. Every shot is taken from an angle where you have no idea of the thickness. I find this weak attempt at misinformation insulting.

Looks like Dell will be playing catch-up on this one.

Or if you want a 4gb microdrive, add it to a X50v and consider yourself "caught up". I see more evolution than revolution in this offering. Nice but not terribly compelling in my opinion.

[two200]

I jumped ship about 8 months ago. My last palm is a TRGpro. Why I did not upgrade earlier is because I had no idea which "upgrade" to buy! They (vendors eg Sony, Handspring) will make very similar package (they called upgrade) which basically are just same product with different packaging. The most prolific vendor, Sony, will come up with "huge" upgrade in one model then took a few steps "backwards" with the next model. Very difficult to expect the next model.

I still currently use my TRGpro for my main serious use. No doubt it is archaic - no colour, no backlight - but it is in general enough. I like palm OS because it is stable and battery life seemed longer and therefore not much of a problem if you are away from a charger. But I still miss the days when all PDA uses the AAA battery. (Another reason why serious work involves TRGpro).

My Dell is wonderful and I used it mainly to play games (colour!!!) and surf the net via bluetooth. But it is unstable - not uncommon to need soft reset. The latest problem: it suddenly clobbered my SD card directory for no reason! Now the data in my SD card is not accessible but it is still there cos when I check the card with card reader, it still shows the card usage. Just trying to find out more before I finally reformat the card!

If palm gives me a good reason, I will still choose Palm over PPC.

Yeah - I bailed from Palm over a year ago. My machine at the time was a Clie NX80v. It's a great machine, but underpowered compared to most PPCS.

The reason I switched was because you get more bang for you buck with PPCs. I need BT and wi-fi and run a lot of emulators, so 624Mhz makes a real difference. Also, VGA is now essential :)

The only significant benefit I can still see with Palm OS is stability. It rarely locks-up - whereas any PPC I've had requires a soft-reset on an almost daily basis. But I can live with that.

I'm with PsionAndy though - Psions are great, great machines. If there was a colour wi-fi Revo or 5MX out there it would be my first choice.

As for the LifeDrive - it just seems underspecced when compared to the X50v (and 4Gb microdrives aren't that expensive).

Mark.