CNET User Opinions Average user rating 5.3 out of 10 Total votes: 162   "Nothing that hasn't been done before" Bill Door on  May 10, 2005 User rating: 5 Looking at the leaked specs, they fall below what the Sharp Zaurus CL3000 has in almost every area: the CL3000 has a 480x640 screen, integrated keyboard and a 4gig HDD. It runs Linux too. The only area its lacking is wireless connectivity but this is available via SDIO and CF. The only problem is its only available on import Still I can't believe that over a year down the line this is the best PalmOne can come up with- no improvement on the Zaurus!!! Pros: PalmOne are trying to be different Cons: They've been beaten to it by Sharp by almost a year "4GB hard drive has never been done before" mb47 on  May 10, 2005 User rating: 10 This will be the first major PDA maker to have a 4GB hard drive. Hopefully my next treo will get one too! Pros: 4GB hard drive, huge screen, PalmOS Cons: might be a little large "hallelujah - wifi without a keypad (hopefully)" jdwaters on  May 12, 2005 User rating: 8 I've been waiting and waiting for a Palm OS device with WiFi that does NOT have a keypad. I don't need no stinkin' keypad. ;0) Graffiti works just great for me - although I like Graffiti v1 way better and v2 Pros: wifi finally Cons: possibly the price, weight, size, battery life "this can bs product or an amazing 1" pandacity on  May 13, 2005 User rating: 5 this can bs product or an amazing 1 Pros: the hd will be great Cons: quetionable weight and battery life. the hd is only 4 gigs so some dvd cant fit onto it "Poor performance, poor battery life, another failure from palm" joe91 on  May 19, 2005 User rating: 2 Running everything from a hard drive not only results in slow performance but also in unacceptable battery life. You can get a pcoket pc and add a 4GB hard drive, and it'll still cost less and be miles more powerful then this. Pros: 4GB storage Cons: Unacceptable battery life and performance "Won't get me to switch from T3" James Anderson Merritt on  May 19, 2005 User rating: 4 I have been hearing about this product for a while. The Tungsten T5 was not nearly enough PDA to get me to give up my excellent T3 (which previously had caused me to give up my very excellent Visor Prism). The LifeDrive gets closer, but the T3 is still winner and champion. What kind of LifeDrive would give me serious thoughts of retiring my T3? In addition to present features (or instead of corresponding ones), the following: * 4GB of flash storage, not disk storage. I have one of those little, 4GB flash drives that resembles a zippo lighter and it is sweet, silent, vibration free and shock proof. Why they didn't build something like that into the LifeDrive (especially for the high asking price) is beyond me. * More focus on A/V, including high-quality audio and video line inputs, a built-in still/motion camera and cell phone, and a MUCH better media player than RealPlayer (which causes me to need to reset my T3 at least twice a week). This is called "LifeDrive." It needs more built-in devices for recording and playing back life moments. * Easily replaceable battery, and/or ability to run from standard consumer cells. Long battery life is a must. * List price of $299 or less. I'll give Palm partial credit if they bring out my tricked-out LifeDrive for $399 and drop the price of the original model to well less than $300. Pros: 4GB storage space; audio/video output; voice recorder; large screen; wifi inside Cons: No line audio or video input, no camera; no cell phone; 4GB storage is disk, not flash; batteries not user-replaceable?; high price "Then I'll Give It A Ten" passingthrough on  May 21, 2005 User rating: 9 Always amazes me to see people critique items on CNET when they don't even own the item they are critiquing. Strange. So I suppose if someone who has never owned the item can give it a 1 or 2, I can give it a 10. Disclaimer: I have never seen nor owned the LifeDrive. But if I were to see it and if I were to own it, I'm sure it would be great. I love my other Palms. So there you have it. Another review from a person who does not own what they are reviewing. Go, Palm, go!! Oops. Changed it to a nine, because as reminded by CNET, nothing's perfect. Pros: Real Player to go if that's for Real Cons: It can't do the dishes. "Very nice=) Gonna buy it" rusanov on  May 21, 2005 User rating: 10 Glad, I dont' need to stick to Pocket PC anymore to get dual Wireless! Can't wait to see it in Russia! 5 my friends gonna buy it to. Pros: It's a PALM. 4Gb. Wifi finally. Cons: Could be smaller. Could have 640-480 screen of 18 bit at least. Could have 700Mhz processor. Non-removable battery not good either. "The PalmOne ($499) Store - Every New Product is $ 499" tamay17 on  May 25, 2005 User rating: 7 I have not bought the LifeDrive as of yet. I started with the Treo 600 (No BT)$499, then the Treo 650 $499 because it had the bluetooth and now the LifeDrive $499 which sounds great but why spend that much when there is no phone or camera? the only added feature/difference between the Treo 650 and LifeDrive is the 4G HD. NEWS FLASH AS OF JUNE 10TH YOU WILL BE ABLE TO GET A DEVICE THAT WILL GIVE YOUR TREO 600 & 650 WIFI - THE DEVICE IS CALLED "The Enfora Wi-Fi Sled" for the Treo 650 allows Treo 650 Smartphone users to access Wi-Fi hotspots to surf the Internet and send and receive email at highspeed over Wireless LANs. It includes WEP Encryption and an internal long life battery which provides 5 day standby and 24 hr typical data use and does not draw power from the Treo Smartphone. It ships with a 5 volt power supply and the Enfora Wi-Fi management/setup CD which includes Eudora Web Browser and a 30 day trial of Bachmann Mobility Suite. When the Sled is attached to the Treo the power supply will charge both devices simultaniously. Browse the Internet; read email and even Hotsync your Treo 650 wirelessly. Charge your Treo 650 through your Wi-Fi Sled. Integrated battery provides hours of high-speed Internet use without draining the Treo 650's battery. Lightweight and low profile design makes for effective travel and comfortable use Pros: Bigger Screen, HDD, WIFI Cons: No Camera, No Phone, Battery Life "WI-FI: YES APPLICATIONS TO RUN WITH: NO" gmaccian on  May 26, 2005 User rating: 1 If you are a man on the go,and you need to stay connected to your files,your bussines,your home ,your music,your movies i sugest you to take a look on HP RX3715.I have this hp with windows mobile,i never used the RESET button ,which is VERY famous on palm os powered devices(as on my tungsten t3).And about the battery,the ipaq keep playing music for more than 24 hours without battery charging. Tips: -hard drive need more energy to work than a sd card so you may have less battery life using it. -if you need more storace space on your pda buy an storage card. -if you are planning buying the lifedrive because it have wi-fi forget it.what you can do with wi-fi and almost no applications for it? Pros: It's new. Cons: Low battery life and not user replaceble,use palm os , hard drive . "BAD for play, OK for work..." JeZ-I-Lee on  May 28, 2005 User rating: 4 UNLIKE THE PREVIOUS USER REVIEWS, I ACTUALLY OWNED THIS DEVICE. I am also an official Palm OS software programmer and developer. In one sentence, I can describe LifeDrive: "BAD for play, OK for work". If you are going to be playing music MP3s and playing games (especially emulators) then DO NOT purchase this device (would recommend Tungsten|T3). System performance felt sluggish with 1 second pauses while accessing the hard drive. Device does not come with a hostsync cradle, which should have been included with the $500 price. Internet access through 802.11b was near perfect, with web pages looking great in landscape screen mode. Word, Excel, and Powerpoint files opened and could be edited flawlessly too on this device. Battery life (w/ all services on) was about average (3-4 hours). I use my Palm mostly for play (MP3s and games), which is why the low score. Device would have been a perfect 10 if the speaker was much better and if the 5-way navigator and application hard buttons worked properly in games and emulators. Nice and interesting effort by Palm, but device has critical flaws. WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND TO YOU TO PASS ON LIFEDRIVE AND PURCHASE THE TUNGSTEN|T3 (A DEVICE I OWN AND CURRENT BEST PDA ON THE MARKET). Hopefully Palm reads these reviews, and will design something better in the near future. Pros: Near perfect Internet browsing with 802.11b, great Word/Excel/Powerpoint support, alot of memory Cons: Very poor speaker, very poor game control support, hotsync cradle NOT included?, poor system performance (due to hard drive) "Great multifunctional box!" robke67 on  May 28, 2005 User rating: 9 After using it for a couple of days I have to say that this is really an excellent device. It stores documents, photo's, music etc. without problems and you can use them on the road. At work or home they transfer/sync easily to the pc (both Mac and Windows). I also work with a iPAQ hx4700 but the LifeDrive absolutely beats it in useability, features and software functionality. Pros: Storage space, wifi, bluetooth, battery life, software. Cons: Size and price. "very disappointed, a departure from my usual Palm experience" mpbdpm on  June 1, 2005 User rating: 4 I was very disappointed when I went through the 3 hour charge and set up only to have it crash the very first time I pressed the Files icon. Very slow to restart. What is Palm thinking? They must have hired someone from Microsoft. Needless to say I returned it the next day. Back to my Zire 72. Pros: a lot of applications and memory Cons: not as direct and intuitive as I have come to expect, slow, did I say slow, and it kept crashing and restarting, unheard of for Palm "I love my new life drive" angiesco on  June 9, 2005 User rating: 9 I purchased the life drive last week at compusa. When pressing file or the favorite key the unit started resetting itself, after that continued I immediately exchanged it for another unit, same problem with unit 2, now unit 3 is working perfectly enabling me to enjoy all of it's great features for my salon business. I am really happy with my purchase in spite of the problems with the first two. I truly enjoy the downloading of pictures for each of my clients and adding additional information of products and services. I also use salon based software for my pda that work seamlessly with the calender, customer database and it dials my bluetooth smart phone by Nokia. This is a great PDA, and I must say that palm got it right with bluetooth and Wi-Fi combined, I certainly feel happy to upgrade from my trust T3 to the life drive. I would recommend it to my friends, family and colleagues. Pros: 4 Gig hard drive and excellent features Cons: Resetting itself and the lag time after the reset. "omg, no replaceble battery, palmone did it again" boxing on  June 13, 2005 User rating: 4 i was excited to see this device but the price is disapointing. i can buy a dell x50 with 4 gb cf card with much cheaper price and unexpectedly, palmone still doent offer replaceable battery which is so annoying. Pros: 4 gb harddrtve, plenty of rooms to store stuff, finally build in wifi Cons: no replaceble battery, last short, slow processor "Bad name it needs a life" keighmy on  June 15, 2005 User rating: 2 I bought 1 had it 2 days and it crashed took it back to the store for # 2 it made it 4 days and crashed I had it Staying with my Palm T3 bought a 1 gig sd card and I love it. Pros: lots of room Cons: crashes to much poor video sound lags "Great device with everything I need" nickmiddy on  June 16, 2005 User rating: 8 I am going to say as well, don't review a product if you've never used one. This is a great package and does everything I need it to do. Wireless: I travel a lot for work and firing this up in the airport lounge and connecting to the wifi network for a quick check of emails is great. Same at home - easy to get emails while out on the deck without having to drag the laptop around. Bluetooth: I HATE big phones and go through phones quickly. All you geeks with gigantic phone bricks strapped to your belts look like idiots. With a small bluetooth phone in my pocket, I can pair with the Lifedrive and surf the web, check emails, make calls. I can synch the phone directory with my lifedrive directory so even though I have two places where this info is, it's very easy tokeep them in sync. Palm OS: Great. I hate Windows products but am forced to use them at work. I have a mac at home and know Unix like the back of my hand so I needed a device compatible with Mac OS and I also like the Palm OS. Weight: Who the hell thinks this is heavy? Do people kick sand in your face when you go to the beach? Storage capacity: Ok, we all know a DVD is larger than 4gb but who said on this forum that you couldn't load a whole DVD to this device? Well, no **** sherlock - who would want to. Do you really need the best video quality, 7.1 channel surround and subtitles in 10 languages on a tiny handheld device - duh... Palm software automatically converts a whole 2 hr DVD movie to less than a gig for use on this device. Size: Sure it's big. Sure it doesn't have a phone in it. Have you ever seen those idiots with the Qtek (Imate, whatever it's branded) with one of those up to their ear? Unless they switch ears a lot, they get lopsided suntans. I don't need my handheld anywhere near as much as I need my phone. So, when I need a larger device, I have it - I don't want it with a 1x2 cm screen - that's useless to me - and yes, I have perfect vision. When I need a phone and PDA, I pair them with bluetooth. When I need just a phone, I have that as well at a fraction of the size. Plus, when the phone gets old, much cheaper and easier to replace. Battery Life: I am a moibile road warrior and have never had an issue with this device. Cost: How is this expensive. Someone else on here added up the cost to get the features of this device on cheaper devices and the overall price is compatible. Overall, this is a great device that is perfect for what I need. If it doesn't suit you or your lifestyle, don't buy it! Check the features before you say it doesn't have a phone built in - it's not supposed to! Pros: All in one package Cons: None for me... "High hopes... unmet" drbmg on  June 16, 2005 User rating: 4 So beautiful! So warm and heavy! That pretty much sums up my past 6 days using the Life Drive, which I'll be returning. I was attracted to its large screen, thinking I could type in landscape mode using Docs to Go 7. Unfortunately, I can't really make the screen size large enough, without increasing the font size, to make this practical (suggest looking at the AlphaSmart Dana for real typing on a Palm). The Life Drive feels like a nicely shaped bar of soap, and therein lies a huge problem. You can't just put it in your pocket and, by the time you put it in a case, it's huge! The weight of this unit is almost too much for the Palm Universal Keyboard. I kept thinking it was going to slip out, although it didn't. Also, by having a built in hard drive, this unit is apparently more fragile than previous Palms. I found the system responsiveness too slow, even when turning it off. On the plus side, the screen is bright and clear, and voice recorder feaure worked well. Wish I could say the same for the MP3 player. Songs which play just fine on my other units sounded scratchy and there was an annoying buzz in between songs. Battery life looks like it may be a problem. It went down by half in a day. Finally, don't plan to access anything else while the Life Drive mode (like a USB drive) is going. I tried to add an appointment while transferring my MP3s. Sorry, it's one way or the other. So, back it goes... I'm going to try out the E2, although I swear, the T3 and T5 are looking like interesting possibilities. For my money, spending an extra $250 just to get a few GIGs of space isn't worth it. Pros: Georgeous Screen, wifi setup & signal strength, Doc to Go software, overall software installation went smoothly Cons: MP3 sounds scratchy, can't see screen outdoors, battery % way too tiny to see, no vibration mode, Live Drive must be off to use Palm apps, on/off switch awkward to use, too heavy and bulky for a Palm "Close but no Cigar" Hydro77 on  June 20, 2005 User rating: 6 This is my 7th palm device. I upgraded from a Tungsten C. The built in stuff works pretty well. But it has a tendency to reboot or lock up just like a pocketpc. This occurs even when only using the included apps. Hopefully this will be corrected with an OS update at some point. I own a lot of palm apps but many of them malfunction or do not work at all even though they worked fine on the Tungsten C Pros: Great connectivity and storage Cons: Incompatible with many palm app, not just older ones but new as well. "Impressive Device!" daltex on  June 20, 2005 User rating: 9 I have had many PDAs over the years, but have been using an old Palm VII for quite a while. I have a Blackberry for email and scheduling, but still need a good contact manager, password file (SplashID) and of course AvantGo. I had a surplus Toshiba e55 given to me at work and so was introduced to a wireless PDA. Nice effort but a Pocket PC interface was just not for me. Just then, out comes the LifeDrive. After reading every review I could get my hands on, I bought it on line from Palm. They even give me a $50 gift certificate for retiring my old PDA. After several days, I am more than pleased. The screen is amazing, and all the features and functions work as advertised. The case feels very expensive, great feel to it. It's even got small rubber feet on the back to keep it from sliding off the desk. Within an hour of opening the box, I had everything migrated and am a happy camper. I'm already using the eReader to read short stories, wandering my yard browsing the web, playing with all the software that comes with it, and buying some games for down time on planes this week. The 802.11 receiver seems quite sensitive.. better than my laptop. The Blazer browser is not lightning fast, but so what? It does a good job of sizing the screen to make it easy to read, and it's in the palm of my hand! Showing a bunch of my digital pix to friends last night, they were blown away by the slide-show-in hand. I love it! Well thought out design, a pleasure to use and a great replacement for my old PDA. It's exceeded my expectations. Two virtual thumbs up! Pros: Great screen, super software, lots of functions Cons: No cradle.. must be purchased separately "Amazing! Life Drive is exactly what I needed and I didn't even know it!" Morpheus903 on  June 20, 2005 User rating: 8 When I bought the Life Drive, it was to replace my aging Handspring Visor Deluxe. I had seen and used other color PDAs, but this is the first one I ever owned. Initially I was quite frustrated with it. Much of the thrird-party software I was used to using was causing the Life Drive to reboot constantly, at one point entering into a reboot loop from H#77! I found that I just needed to be more patient, and careful to load software one title at a time to check for compatability issues. It's running like a charm now! The storage is amazing. Having a digital camera that uses SD cards, I now have a place to offload them when on vacation. I can also carry around all kinds of mp3s. I can't wait to use it on my next vacation! Unfortunately, the screen is not as vivid when displaying color pictures as the Zire 72. More controls over the video end of things would be a welcome addition. Some people seem to have a problem with the hard drive causing stuttering, etc. While it does slow things down a bit when compared to the flash RAM in other devices, so far I've had very little trouble with that. It's certainly not bad enough to even worry about when considering the benefits of this device. In summary, the Life Drive has all that almost anyone could ever need. It IS pricey, and I do worry about what might happen if the unit is dropped since it uses a hard drive instead of flash RAM. Other than that, I'm very happy with my purchase. Bottom Line: BUY ONE! Pros: Nice Color 320x480 16-bit color screen - Tons of storage - Very Functional! Cons: Price is a bit high. Not as easy to set up as older palm platforms. "Talking loud, saying nothing" Dredlocks on  June 23, 2005 User rating: 9 When I read these reviews, it is almost like reading a mac vs windows review. Pocket PC vs Palm. I am a special ed teacher. I use mac, I use Palm. This device is small and has everything I need for me and my students in the classroom. If you want a smart phone, get a smart phone. Don't complain about things you have never used and have no intention of buying. It always amazes me how people can give opinions on something they know nothing about. I cant read the specs on a car and REALLY know if it will suit me or not. Same with a piece of technology. Here is the low down. Go to a store and try the thing. If you dont like it, dont buy it. If you like it, I wish you all the fun and producctivity I have been having with this thing. Pros: Storage, wifi, bluetooth, video Cons: price, lack of a hipcase "Great Product" 48 express on  June 24, 2005 User rating: 10 This is palms best pda ever. It does everything you need and does it great.I can't believe the cry babies out there that all they do is trash every device on the market and most never even buy the product. I have 10 music cds stored several books and tons of pictures and I have tons of room left. The screen is outstanding and the color is as well. If you use a pda for business you will love this jem. Pros: WiFi,4GBHD,Bluetooth Great battery life Great screen Cons: None at this time "Fantabulous!" louiev on  June 24, 2005 User rating: 9 I love this thing! Its got everything I wanted/needed in a Multimedia player/PDA. I've upgraded from a Zire 71 so I'm familiar with the Palm system and the Lifedrive handles Palm fine. No complaints there. (though I am waiting for upgrades for some of my software). But the Lifedrive really shines with its Wifi/bluetooth and Multimedia capabilities. Hotsyncing via Blootooth has been easy, fast and simple. And the WiFi - Great! Easily connects to my home office network allowing transfer of files, checking email (via Versamail) and even web browsing. The Wifi speed, though not as fast as the cable modem, has been more than acceptable. The Wifi even handles finding and linking to open networks easily. Helps when I want to check my email while running around Manhattan! As with my old Zire 71, pictures look great on the screen and the slideshow feature is a bonus. Importing or viewing images via the SD card slot is easy with the included software. Another feature I am having fun with is video. Aside from watching video imported from my video camera (via SD card) I have been watching DVD ripped movies and TV shows. Both Black & White and color videos look great and play well. Once in a while I'll see a bit of a lag in playback. But experimentation with video size and compression seems to have made playback much smoother. (I have to recommend 3rd party video software for better results). And between the hard drive and extra SD cards I'll be watching movies and TV on my train/plane travels this summer! Overall I have to say the Lifedrive has surpassed my expectations. Check around for prices (and combine instore discounts and coupons) to get a better deal. Its well worth it. Pros: Its just damn fun! Cons: battery life when using for media "good but not as friendly as the Tungsten C or 5" nym lotay on  June 28, 2005 User rating: 8 This is a great advancement in PDAs to get 4gb in a palm. Well done to the producers. The only possible down side is the size of the unit is large and chunky. If something could be done to make this slimmer that would be brill, it may also encourage take by the female gender too!!! I personally found this unit not as friendly as the Tungsten C or the 5. But an excellent machine with is 4GB nonetheless. i now would like to see what Sony and Dell will do. Not to forget that Psion may make a come back too!!!! Pros: 4gb harddrive and software Cons: no keypad, large and chunky "Forget it!" Bill on  June 28, 2005 User rating: 1 Only had the new LifeDrive for a total of nine days and it's already unuseable. I can't boot the LifeDrive up, it gets stuck on the Palm Powered screen and Palm support can't seem to give me any advise on what to do about it or how to get it to boot properly. I should have known better than to buy this unit after having had to send my Palm Tungsten T2 in to Palm 3 times for repair during the warranty period. History is already starting to repeat itself. If you're considering buying this device, I would suggest you pass on it and save yourself a lot of aggravation. Pros: Are there any? Cons: Its packed it in already "Cool idea but not ready for prime time." trbill on  June 29, 2005 User rating: 3 Like with boats, the second happiest day in a LifeDrive owner's life if the day he buys it; the happiest is the day he returns it. Bought it 5 days ago; gave up today and returned it. Very disappointed as a loyal and happy Palm user since the Pilot 1000. I guess I'm spoiled by my iPod. Pros: Great screen, especially viewed sideways, and pretty good at accepting normal files from desktop. Cons: Too damn complicated to set up WiFi/e-mail and Palm's tech support, once great, now stinks. "Lives up to the hype" czrweezer on  July 2, 2005 User rating: 9 I love this LD. It does everything it says it it supposed to. Syncs seamlessly with cell phone sms, gprs, and with pc/server WIFI. The WIFI troubles are overstated, have had no real issues at all. 4GB HD is great. Sure you can pop 2GB SD in a T5 but you cant have WIFI too. LD does it all and does it right, all at the same time.Besides, pop a 2GB SD in a up the ante to 6 gigs. I have had mine for over a month and it out performs the 3 other PDAs I have had.This is a great product and I would reccommend this to anyone looking for a PDA. I reccommend it over DELL or Ipaqs. Pros: 4 gig HD; WIFI; Bluetooth; Giant traveling USB Drive; Works with MAC & Windows; MS Office compatible (Word; Powerpoint; Excel) Cons: Third party software needs more testing on this unit as many are buggy with this new Palm. "LifeDrive not a life saver" cedareden on  July 3, 2005 User rating: 4 I broke down and bought this as a Clie TH55 replacement, mainly for the large storage and built-in WIFI. Big disappointment! Unit crashes frequently in standard apps for no resolvable reason, drive IS slow no doubt about it, strange error messages about disk full and/or memory low when neither is the case. Pros: big bright screen, wifi works well Cons: crashes frequently, slow "Lifedrive is perfect for my needs..." blackraven on  July 3, 2005 User rating: 9 (Former m100, Palm V, & Sony Clie user) I've been using my Lifedrive for over a week now and must highly recomend it to those with similar needs... Wifi & Bluetooth connectivity are a must for me (e-mail & web access), both setup very easy and have worked flawless; Documents to Go is included as well as Adobe which support all my document needs; plenty of space for programs which I utilize most (psych & med); also plenty of memory for files, pics, music, & video (downloading the free TCPMP media player allows for Divx & Xvid viewing). There have been concerns about the "speed" of programs loading...compared to the flash based Palms, the programs are not instant loading...but most load in under 3 seconds (count...1...2...3) I personally don't need anything quicker then that. Another concern is the number of times it crashes...usually from hitting icons too fast or too many times before letting it load; it does take longer to restart, but I've only had to reset it twice in the past week & half (& have added many additional apps). A landscape mode button & a nice design/feel of the Lifedrive makeup for the above problems some users had. Lastly, yes, it does retail $499...but between the features, memory, cool factor, & being able to get it online for around $400, the Lifedrive is highly recommended! Pros: Wifi, Bluetooth, 4gig drive, Documents to Go, design Cons: Limited battery life under full strain, list price (although available for under $430) "Bad customer service and low refurbishing quality, bad record of your puchased product" anergis on  July 11, 2005 User rating: 3 I had a bad experience with Palm. In three months the wirelss chip died. After long phone concervation, they gave a service number. I sent them my palm, I paid mail cost and insurance. After two and a half weeks later I received a palm from them. The keys were damaged and display had a scratch. It was not my new palm, it was an older palm refurbished. We started again to talk them. They gave me another service number. The worst part, they were claiming that my palm is older sold in 2003. They didn't have a good record. Keep your receipt carefully otherwise they claim the same thing to you... Another important point is their bad refurbishing quality... Pros: Good features, large display, good user interface, long battery if you do not use wireless connectivity Cons: Low reliability, bad customer service, if you want to use wireless much then be aware of low battery life. "Unreliable and slow" aab on  July 13, 2005 User rating: 1 This has got the be the worst product I ever bought, in 2 weeks I lost ALL my data 3 times, and when it does work, it's extremely slow, even just moving from the name to phone to address feilds when entering contacts takes several seconds, meaning it is very long to enter a contact with more than 2 feilds (which is all of them). I've returned this for the much superior iPaq hx4700 that does much more for the same price and hasn't had a single problem in weeks, and a 4GB hard drive can be added to it for a very low cost. Pros: None whatsoever. Cons: Lost all data 3 times now! Very slow when it actually works. "A PVP With Office Documents" mjt13xx on  July 16, 2005 User rating: 9 Why pay $500 for a device to play your videos and MP3s who really has 50,000 songs (especially at a buck a pop). A device that can organize your contacts, create Office docs, surf the web wireless on WiFi or Bluetooth, and play your videos and MP3s on the built in hard drive or on the ever increasingly large SD cards. Its like a laptop that you can actually take with you everywhere. Pros: All the apps of a PDA and a PVP and wireless web Cons: Not a huge hard drive "Great Pda with tons of room to spare.." rwr005 on  July 25, 2005 User rating: 9 I have all the Pda's out there, it got to the point I sold them and said Ill just use a Lap Top and that it. But then all the web sites, different passwords, signin names,forget it yes pda was in my life again. So after an entesive research and buy and sell. I saw the Palm Drive with A 4 Gb Hardrive. Well heck my old but still working great Compaq has a 6 GB HD. I was sold got my hands on one and havenot put it down yet. haven't even learned all the tricks yet but I will. You wont be dissapointed. Have Fun... Pros: Lots of GB not MB plus SD card slot great wifi hookup. Cons: Takes a little getting use too, Maybe Not instant of on like other Pdas but remember does your Lap top with a HD shut right down ? "Not very frendly to a Ipaq Guy" Boyd001 on  July 26, 2005 User rating: 3 I REALLY wanted to Love this thing but, everywhere I turned I hit a snag. mostly due to the need to buy software, I was used to Windows media player, playing everything, (Like all of my wma's,ans wmv's) If you buy an add-on you can...Grrr... I didn't mind the slow read times because it does have a 4 gig hd. My first real pda was a palm III the Graffiti was easy to learn (I could write almost as fast as i could type),but Graffiti 2 is so different and after years of Ipaqs that have an enrty setting like Graffiti 1 the transition was frustrating. but if you buy an add-on you can correct this. Bottom line I tried it for a week and returned it for a Ipaq 2400 series. amd my productivity doubled...sorry Palm One. Good effort though. Pros: 4 Gigs a space, Great Screen, and Drive Mode Cons: Slow responce time, Graffiti 2, Hot sync button "Great Product - Once you figure it out" rejamesjr on  July 28, 2005 User rating: 9 OK...People I know consider me there guru on all things electronic. I think I am an advanced user of gadgets and computers. But darn this PalmOne Lifedrive was a real pain to get going, but was worth it after all. Setting up WiFi was real challenging, since nowhere did I see that WiFi is a "B" setting. My Router was set for "G" only. That was about two hours of scanning PalmOne's website and manuals. Yikes. But now it works great. I can get many wireless points around my office building and in the car while stuck in traffic waiting to get on the San Diego Freeways. Next....USB connection. After following step-by-step the PalmOne supplied setup instructions, my PC wouldn't recognize. Didn't even see it. Installed software, restarted three times before it recognized the LifeDrive. Then trying to get the Outlook 2003 to synch was another two hours. But tenacity persevered!!!! It works, connects, and communicates with all my CPU's at work and at home!!!! So after a month of using this great device, I would highly recommend it. When compared to a 4gb iPod for $199, then compare it to HP and Dell handhelds. You will understand why it is priced at $499. It has all the features and more of so many other products. I can't even seriously look at other PDA's. They have no storage unless you use an SD memory card. Yes, the LifeDrive at first looks like a maxed out T5, but hey it is! Software included - Docs to Go, Adobe Reader, Pocket Tunes MP player, VersaMail, makes for added value. The MP3 player doesn't like it too much if you are trying to multi-task. It will digi-skip if you are trying to use other apps. This program also caused the Life Drive to reboot at least four times for me. Then I found an update for Pocket Tunes and that problem ceased. I have over 200 mp3 files on here. Sort of my Best of collection. Great! My iPod stays home sometimes now. I read people had to wait long times for programs to load. I didn't find that to be the norm. Typically all programs launch quickly and without hiccups. The great color screen allows me to keep a photo album with me of family, friends, and other miscellaneous images. Currently I have over 100 images and movie clips. You know, those silly video attachments people forward around the world and you would want to share with people at the lunch table or the company water cooler. The ability to swap from Portrait to Landscape is a nice feature. Nice leather-type case to carry the LifeDrive in. You won’t need another one. Ok so here are some things I found silly for the $499 price tag. The included cable and power cord attach so insecurely to the LifeDrive, that you have to be gentle when they are attached. They detach easily and I think the contacts would probably break after much use .so be careful. I went ahead and took PalmOne’s offer of 20% off an accessory and bought the cradle. Again this is weak. The Palm has to be placed in the cradle with more care than a newborn baby. But at least it looks cool all lit up! So if PalmOne can write better setup documentation, and get a sturdier connection I could give this a higher rating. But since I have learned how to use the LifeDrive my life has been more portable and accessible. Pros: Storage - WiFi - MP3 - Nice Case - Great Software Included Cons: Connection Cables Lousy, Setup Help Needed, "Excellent handheld" slyasafox on  July 28, 2005 User rating: 9 I think the Life Drive is really cool it has lots of room for games,photos,contacts etc. I also liked the idea of being able to go on the internet connecting through the bluetooth setting on the palm. Pros: Lots of space, internet accessible,lots of cool features Cons: A little big in size ""Life Drive" == "Devil Fire"" jhcreedon on  July 29, 2005 User rating: 3 Well, my girlfriend joked that Life Drive rearranges to Devil Fire, and it is satanic in some ways. After all, it draws you in with a great looking screen, solid buttons, and generally well-designed exterior. But what happens? Crash after crash... To begin with, the HD/flash interface seems to slow it all down, with lags of 1-5 seconds when switching applications (including all-flash switches like Calendar-->Memo). This lag isn't just annoying -- it can quickly become nearly intolerable. The defenders will tell you "use SharkCache -- it resolves this problem." Unfortunately, SharkCache only speeds it up a bit, and has a max cache limit of 4 megabytes. I believe it is the problem with memory management that causes the crashes -- and by the plural, I mean up to 10 a day! Palm simply has not worked out the bugs in this unit, and I would get crashes *all the time* when using the standard software such as Calendar or Tasks. Further, the first unit I bought had a non-functioning wifi, and I had to return it after countless hours trying to navigate the notoriously poor Palm technical support line. In the end, I would recommend against the Life Drive. The pain of heartbreak is just too much, and having my hopes dashed so dramatically just wasn't worth it. Pros: Impresses all your friends . . . Cons: . . . until it crashes! "Paid $500 for a product that never fully worked!" rjandino on  August 2, 2005 User rating: 1 I expected that after I bought the Lifedrive its use would be seamless, and worth every penny. That was far from the case. From the beginning I had problems syncing my Versamail account with Outlook. Each time I called they tried to diagnose the same thing. Why do they ask for your record if they don't keep any notes. I called many times and it seems like no one was competent enough to solve my problem or had any knowledge of my previous calls. For $500 my problems should be solved immediately, the line to India should never get cut midway, and they should not try to pass the blame to the IT organization of my company. I will never buy another palm product. I can't believe they would allow a customer of a high end product go through so much angst. Shame on you palm! You are acting like a 3rd rate company. I will definitely speak with my wallet, return this piece of junk and buy something else. Pros: Portability of critical resources; Portability of outlook elements (tasks, calendar, e-mail) Cons: Trying to resolve technical problems took 5 calls, and it never got resolved. Phone connection hung up 3 three times when trying to fix technical problems. "HORRENDOUS! IT SHOULD BE RECALLED!" dovperel on  August 3, 2005 User rating: 1 MOST UNUSER FREINDLY COMPANY EVER! Spend 500 bucks and they cant even give a cradle.. just a flimsy wire where the connectors hang off and can bend easy. NO MANUAL! they told me to print it out! ITS 572 pages! The life drive crashes,, and you gotta wait minimum 5 minutes for it to reboot... the battery life is terrible. The web pages take forever. Im selling mine on ebay. Hope to recoup some of the money before its too late.. I will buy an HP product anyday of the week. Userfreindly customer service. Very reasonable prices. An operating system that works for all of its apps and is unversal to all Pocket PC platforms.. no cheap imitations of word, excel, or office apps.. that ruined my PC version of word! You surf with the actual microsoft internet explorer not the slow and cheap blazer... I WILL NEVER BUY PALM AGAIN! they will be out of the market soon.. this is a disaster for them. My lifedrive crashed 3 times today! they told me to uninstall for the 5 ths time.. screw them.. this is not why i spent big bucks for a cutting edge PDA to help my business. Dov Oh by the way.. you buy a cradle THAT ISNT A fire hazzard for 60 bucks... The case it comes with doesnt fit the palm! it squeezes it and sets off the buttons and drains the battery! Data viz software takes over your office files and changes them to the format without asking you,,, and it changes your files on your PC! The rubber footers fell off ! Pros: 4 gig HD, Screen Cons: PALM OS, Crashes, They dont even give a cradle "Great Deal - Perfect for Students" jmgrant2 on  August 5, 2005 User rating: 9 As a freshman entering college, I was looking for a device that could accomodate all of my needs. First, I wanted to buy a PDA so that I could take notes in class, store contacts, appointments, and the normal handheld organizing features. Then, I was considering buying a MP3 player, but it would be too expensive buying both. I decided to buy and PDA and as i shopped around I found a PDA that was also an mp3 player too. So that settled that problem. First of all, people keep complaining that the harddrive isn't big enough but they have been satified with 256mb for a long time, and now Palm creates a 4gig and they're complaining. (I don't understand). With such a large hard drive, this naturally creates some lag in performance. All of the other features are just great add-ons. WI-fi, bluetooth, video player, voice recorder (this will help a lot with lectures), accessing Word and Excel documents,... the list goes on and on. I shopped around a long time before I settled on this PDA, and i have read many reviews. People should learn how to write more accurate reviews; just because an item has one flaw, that doesn't mean it deserves an 1 or 2. Great product. Shop around; I only payed $415 for it brand new. Pros: Hard Drive, mp3 playback, voice recording, video player, wi-fi, ... Cons: audio-jack in retarded place (who cares though) "So beautiful; so tragic" virusdoc on  August 7, 2005 User rating: 3 I've only owned this device for 24 hours, and it has crashed 8 times going into a forced reboot. Now, it crashes every time I try to hotsynch it. This is a magnificent concept poorly executed. If you buy it, be prepared to troubleshoot it. I wish I could keep it, because it is a thing of beauty and offers many functions I need. But I got a PDA to simplify my life, not complicate it, and I don't have time to figure out why I keep getting "MemoryMgr.c: Fatal Error" when I hotsynch. Mine is going back. I'll try a Dell Axim. Pros: beautiful package; lots of functionality Cons: as unstable as they come "Why oh why couldn't this work?" jaley on  August 9, 2005 User rating: 2 Oh man - I wish I could have rated this a 10. In fact, the first week I owned it, I would have rated it a 10, hands down. However, about a week in, this thing started crashing on me, for no apparent reason. I'd try to access my "VersaMail" - and it would freeze. I'd be loading a webpage over Wi-Fi, and - another freeze. I would just be sitting there looking at a picture, and - yep, freeze. This is a great concept, and I wish this thing worked. Sadly, I had to scrap it, and bought an iPaq. Rats. Pros: Great Screen, Lots of HD Space, Slick Design Cons: Really unstable. "It is a shame for Palm!" atapias on  August 10, 2005 User rating: 3 I am a Consultant Engineer and I need a good handheld for working on the road and when traveling. I have been Palm user for years with a great satisfaction. The last I still have is the Tungsten T3, great as is! I have read most of the opinions before writing this comment just to see how LifeDrive is going on with users and because opinions are merely opinions! I would like to make a deep and more technical comment but space here is critic. Ok, the handheld has all you think it would have and, "when working", is great. In general terms, all features work fine: Bluetooth, Wireless, phone, Mail, Internet, all with a proper phone and connection service which is not easy, because Palm support is terrific bad and there is not information about. But.., but.., device crashes almost every day (7 times in 12 days) without no reason or explanation at all!!! If security is turned on (as It should!) then hard reset is is the only chance to restore the LifeDrive but you loose everything and most HotSync again to full restore the device; If security is off then a warm reset is possible to restore all. Most people don't know how to. And if you are on the road then, What?? Additionally, you get tired waiting the hard disk to work, but ??? Palm should review more than urgently a patch to solve this, otherwise LifeDrive is merely a Shame!! Pros: Let's say all in terms of features Cons: Only one: It crashes every day!! "Elegant and powerfull" massaroca on  August 11, 2005 User rating: 9 This gadget is amazing! You can store a lot of music, video or pictures... The screen is awesome! There are a lot of good softwares. You can use it like a pen drive (hard one!). The wi-fi connection is very easy and efficient! This is a new level in PDA life... Pros: Great 4 GB HD! Wi-fi! Mp3 player! Everything you need to be connected! Cons: Poor battery life... Could come with at least VGA or 1.3 MP camera, because it costs almost 500 dolars!!! "Crashes more often than Windows" mihalko on  August 12, 2005 User rating: 3 I thought the LD would be perfect for me. I needed a JumpDrive, an mp3 player, Excel and Word editing, and a replacement for my calendar and contacts program on my PalmVx (Datebk5). In hindsight, I should have purchased each of these separately and NOT a LifeDrive. I don't understand how anyone can give the LifeDrive a rating above a 3 simply because of how frequently the LD crashes unless they work for the company. There are two huge problems that seriously need to be address. 1) Crashes and crashes and then crashes again 2) Lag time My LD crashes at least 7 to 12 times a day and the soft reboot takes about 3 minutes. That is right, 20 minutes to a half hour of my day, everyday, is spent waiting for my LD to do a soft reboot! The lag time is unbearable. For example, there is a real cool feature that allows you to play music while you run other programs. However, you should only do this if you want to go nuts. The music sputters whenever the drive is being written to or read. Even without running other programs I still get occasional sputtering of the music, which drives me crazy. The combination of features on the LifeDrive are perfect. In fact, a rating of 10 would not be high enough of the damn thing worked. Pros: Features and 4GB Cons: Crashes & lag time "Great Product with One Strange Bug" middlebass on  August 13, 2005 User rating: 7 I love the LifeDrive as a replacement for a Handspring Visor Prism. The PDA fuinctionality has improved, and the wireless web and email capability is ideal for me. I use the Bluetooth to dial from a very large phonebook to my Sony Ericsson S710 phone. But I can't use the Lifedrive at one of my common wireless locations because that one requires a WEP key of ten hex zeroes, which is the ONLY key that the Lifedrive does not allow. Palm tech support considers this a feature, not a bug, and I find that response unacceptable. Pros: Combines PDA, web surfing, Blluetooth, document management and more in an elegant product with lots of disk space Cons: Weird bug in WEP key support "Should Be Called........The Death Drive" The Specialist on  August 13, 2005 User rating: 3 Not Worth It For The Money, (I wish That Sony still made the clie' UX50) Pros: Cool looking gaget, large screen, advanced features Cons: Too large, slow to access built in hard drive, freezes, Extremely fragile compared to other PDA's due to built in hard drive "Dashed hopes!" meadowlark on  August 17, 2005 User rating: 4 I purchased a LifeDrive for use in the hospital. The first one had serious problems within the first few days. The on-screen keyboard would disappear leaving a white space such that you couldn't input anything. The only way to fix it was a hard restart (which didn't always work). The device also froze often or simply restarted itself. I sent it back and got a replacement which had similar problems plus it crashed even more often--when loading up basic programs like the web browser or just loading on start. It would freeze while starting up such that it could not be turned off and then if you could get it turned off by a hard restart, it wouldn't turn back on. I finally gave up and sent the replacement back too. I am so sad! I had such high hopes for the LifeDrive. Pros: Has every feature imaginable! Cons: Endless errors and crashes--thus essentially nonfunctional "FRUSTRATION-crash, crash, crash" pastor_mark on  August 17, 2005 User rating: 2 Crashes constantly and causes my desktop to crash; a problem that is immediately remedied by the removal of the palm one software. Palm CS response :"What? We've never heard that before!" HUGE disappointment. Now palm wants to fight about the 30 day money back guarantee because they have never heard that it crashes: if you must try it, be prepared to return it-quickly. Pros: excel, wifi Cons: crash, crash, crash "Great to work with!" patiobird on  August 19, 2005 User rating: 8 Pros: Large memory for storage Cons: The price of the PDA is too expensive "Headphone jack problems" jasonb2612 on  August 23, 2005 User rating: 7 I really enjoy using this, but I'm not a power-user. It has some issues. Mine has a very loose headphone jack--it's fine riding in an airplane where I can just set the unit on the tray table; just can't use it walking around. OS reboots, which, I know it's necessary, but it takes a pretty long time to reboot. Multitasking is a problem too--don't try listening to MP3s while using Wi-Fi to check e-mail. That's caused a reboot more than once. But I'm VERY glad to have a Wi-Fi device. It's a little slow, but then it's NOT supposed to be a desktop PC! But by the same token, it's bulky, but it's pretty close in function to a full PC... Pros: Finally, Wi-Fi! Cons: Battery life thpppppt! "Solid Product" breeman666 on  August 27, 2005 User rating: 10 fist off I'd. Like to say that this is a good solid all around product. I had to get this for school, the teacher made it a required item. So i didnt have much choice in buying it. I've had it a little over a week now, and have had no problems. Now granted I'm not one to screw with something that isnt broken, so I haven't had to format the device at all like some other people in my class. THE DRIVE: The drive size on this thing is great, i can carry all of my utitlites on the puppy and still have plenty of room on it for mp3s and what not. As for people saying that the thing is slow all i have to say is what do you expect, its the first version of the thing its not going to be blazeingly fast. THE MUSIC: Ok so the it's sound is no where near that of a true mp3 player, but realy people, its not made to be a great mp3 player. If you want something like that, go get a Creative Labs Zen. Thats a lot less expensive and sounds better, stop complaining that its not as good as your Zen or Ipod. THE SCREEN: This things screen is great, its butififull, its crystal clear, and huge for a palm. THE SIZE: OK the things huge I'll give you that, but think of what all it has in it. you coulnt have gotten all that in the size of a T3 or a Zire. I personaly keep mine in the hard case, and leave it in my pocket when im not useing it. So it realy doesnt bother me haveing it in there. Personly i dont think its heavy, but i'm used to my 30-40lb book bag. THE NET: I've had some problems going to some sites, such as newegg, and here. but that may simply be that i need to get an up date for the broweser. if the site is mainly text theres no problem, but when theres alot of graffics it doesnt display all that well. In closeing I'd like to say that im glad i got the LifeDrive, and for me the device is worth it, but had my teacher not required it i would not have bough the thing. Pros: great all around product Cons: cost is high "Palm lifedrive the best" haydor on  August 29, 2005 User rating: 10 Pros: assolutamente fantastico da nn perdere Cons: sono rimasto sbalordito "Large Storage" GUARDIANTIGER99 on  August 29, 2005 User rating: 9 I have been Palm user since Palm III. I love my new Palm LiveDrive. It is like a mini-laptop, extra storage increases the power usage. Even current notebooks still have the same power usage issue, what make Palm LifeDrive different from it. It is the same power issue and we have to face it for now. For those who do not want to carry a bulky notebook, LifeDrive serves the need of size, speed, processing power and capacity. Regarding software compatibility, that is up to software manufacture to make their softwares to work with Palm OS. Sound like Microsoft Corp., isnt it? Every software vender is trying to make MS compatible. I have not heard MS make itself compatible to others yet? Pros: Large Storage Cons: Sort battary life "Fatal point missed" fz750 on  September 1, 2005 User rating: 5 Your review fails to cover/mention one vital (or fatal in my case) point - it may support bluetooth, but only ONE bluetooth device at a time. So, that bluetooth keyboard that you planned to use to write emails & SMS etc, forget it because your existing bluetooth connection from the cellphone to the device means the keyboard will never work... Extremley annoying (& poorly documented) omission from palm which, for me, means the lifedrive is next to useless. Other minor aspects are ongoing dodgy USB connectivity, and lack of included docking station. Pros: Does pretty much a bit of everything Cons: but not awfully well "It's almost like carrying your life in your pocket" facebeyondtheface on  September 1, 2005 User rating: 8 I purchased the lifedrive as soon as it came out, and to date overall I would say I'm very satisfied with it. It comes in really handy if you have a camera with a SD memory card, since you can empty the card into the life drive. The slide show is a nice feature. The picture and video quality are excellent. The voice recorder is a worthwhile feature. I have 2 GB of music on it, and still plenty of room for everything else. The system only crashed on me once. I was listening to music and changing the skins at the same time, so it reset itself, but then was fine right after. My only complaints about the lifedrive: it's a little slow at times, slightly heavy, when you're listening to music and using other programs at the same time the song skips when you open the other program if it's a program you haven't recently used, and finally the speakers aren't loud enough. Using headphones are fine, sound quality good. However, just using speakers, I found they're not loud enough, so I purchased portable creative speakers, which work great with it. Only problem I've ever had with the lifedrive is when I used it in drive mode. After you turn off drive mode, if you take the cable out of the lifedrive first everything is fine. However if you disconnect the cable from the computer first and then take the cable out of the lifedrive, then the lifedrive gets confused and can't access the hard drive anymore. The problem can be resolved by a soft reset, and then everything is fine. If these cons were addressed I would rate the lifedrive 10. Pros: LARGE HARD DRIVE, wi-fi and blue tooth, decent MP3 player, good software bundle, stylish look, no data is lost with a soft reset or machine running out of power when it's in use Cons: a little slow and choppy at times, speakers not load enough, doesn't stay on for very long when it's not in use "Top Tier PDA - Everything you need and more" jmstang on  September 8, 2005 User rating: 9 I must say this product is the perfect companion whether you are a student, business person, soccer mom, etc. Everyone who wants and needs to be organized, this is for you. I was initially going to buy a $300 mp3 player with voice recording capability so I could use it for school to record lectures - and listen to MP3s for the gym; but when I looked at the specs and capability of this lifedrive PDA, it was pretty much a no brainer. I am now not limited to simply listening to MP3s and recording lectures...I can now plan my schedule, write reports with my foldable keyboard, connect to the internet, manage all my financial accounts with the cool free software "My checkbook" that I found on cnet downloads, email, View word, excel, powerpoint, and pdf documents, and watch videos(the playback and audio is outstanding I might add). I haven't tried playin games on it, but I didn't buy it for that purpose..but it's nice to know that I could. I mean, come on, this thing is limitless. Obviously I'm very excited about this product. I've had it for about a week and simply love it. I think it's a wise investment, and if your not a tech junkie who tries to keep up with technology, it will last you for years to come. Any ordinary person like myself will be amazed and appreciative of the capablilities of the lifedrive. I really love being able to type reports. It saves a lot of weight and space, so you can leave that laptop at home. Of course, depending on what you do, it's not going to replace a laptop, though it can in a lot of basic areas, such as word processing, email, etc. The screen layout and being able to change to widescreen is cool for watching videos or when writing a report. It's very easy to navigate, and the lifedrive manager, and palm desktop software is a breeze to use. Its very lightweight, an I like the size of it as well. It's not too big yet not too small, so you won't be prone to lose it. I paid $400 for this online, and think it was well worth it. I'm sure it will go down in price as well, so those that get this for even less, kudos. The screen is very vibrant, even on the lowest setting which is what I use...so I honestly do not understand some of the reviews on cnet that complain about this. I compared to other top PDAs in the store and can't tell the. difference. These people must have eagle eyes or something. Here are the Cons: Like every product, there is room for improvement. Here is what I found so far. The mic on this recorder is sub-par. If you want to record lectures, meetings, etc. make sure you sit up front, or place it near the front, as most instructors will allow this. The mic just isn't sensitive enough to pick up distant sounds. That is a major NO NO in my book which is why a docked a full point for it. I wish palm had an external mic connection that resolved this issue, or software that would allow you to adjust the mic setting and recording quality. If they did, I would of gave this product a 10 with ease. The built in speaker is as good as the average tape recorder...which is not that good in my opinion, so headphones are a must. I didn't have high expectations for this thing to have a great surround sound speaker...it's sufficient however for watching a TV show or movie when your waiting for an appointment. When connected and heard through my car speakers or computer speakers it sounds great. Sounds excellent with headphones as well. I also want to comment on the reviews that complain about battery life. The battery seems very efficient thus far. I watched an hour of video, played 2 hours of Mp3s, recorded a 1 hour lecture and still have 65 percent battery life. I do have brightness set to real low however, and have set the device so that it shuts off in 1 minute when not in use. There is not a battery problem, unless perhaps you replace your Television set with this thing. If all you do is watch videos for hours and play games on end, then of course your going to run into issues. But if thats all you do, then by a dang portable DVD player or TV(yah, those things are guaranteed to eat your batteries a lot faster than the lifedrive) and don't knock this product. "You cannot change the battery" is also another criticism from this device. True, you can't, but give me a break, get a car charger or bring an ac adapter with you at work or school just in case...Wow, problem solved! As far as how long this battery will be able to keep up this kind of performance still remains to be seen...like I said, only had it for a week. I've read you can open up the device and change the battery, but like most ordinary people here, I wouldn't want to do that myself in fear of breaking it. But if the battery lasts for a year or two, then it's not a problem in my book. I still haven't untapped the full usage of this pda. I'm pondering as to whether I should buy a GPS system for it, and a graphing calculator program. Any how, hope this review helps anyone out there. If you are like me and deciding between an MP3 player and a PDA, you should really consider the lifedrive. You get so much more, even if you have to shell out 1 or two more bills. Pros: Nice Video playback, easy to use software, MP3 player, life manager all rolled into one. One device does it all. Cons: Voice recorder could be better; Expensive, but worth it. "I love it! Its actually not the best, but its cheaper than a great PDA and a 4gig MP3 player!" zagaberoo on  September 9, 2005 User rating: 7 My cons seem to outweigh my pros, and they may. I myself love the device. The four gigs of storage are very nice (try adding the price and size of an iPod nano and a comprable PDA), but the music quality sometimes leaves something to be desired. The sound itself is superb, but inbetween songs, and sometimes during silence IN a song, you get bizarre static that can occasionally get very loud. The software for the music is absolutely fantasic! even if you opt away from the LifeDrive, invest in pocket tunes if you like PDA MP3 capability. Also, if you slide the leather case on too quickly while listening to music, it hits the volume up button and blasts you with full volume. The movie and picture software is overall excellent. For gamers who use emulators (LJP is the absolute ONLY emulator you need) you will be instantly pissed off. Whenever you press two buttons (ie run and jump) instead of doing those things, it cancels out and you simply stand still. I had to pay 12 dollars for a 3rd party hack to fix this. As for the battery, I charge every night so its NEVER a problem, even with heave movie and music activity. Over the months Ive had it, I have learned to completely ignore the sluggishness the HD provides. The crashing is annoying, especially with the 4GB scandisk with every reboot, but they are reasonably infrequent. The button configuration and screen rotation are ideal for gaming once palm fixes the problem or you shell out for the hack. For 500$, its a bit steep, but Im happy. Verdict: pass on it and pick up a tungsten with a gig SD for music if you dont have too many tunes and dont like video, get it if you have patience to get used to it and really like music and movies. Pros: Great storage, big buttons, Palm OS, great software for music, pictures, and movies Cons: Battery (which is still acceptable), sluggishness, reasonably frequent crashes, gaming issues, cost "The worst of palm" javo13 on  September 13, 2005 User rating: 1 The desktop software (lifedrive) erase files from my computer, i cant see videos and pictures, even read mi office files... Crash often than windows... Please dont buy this palm Pros: Nothing Nothing Nothing Cons: all. Erase PC Files "The Lifedrive Cycle = Crash>Lag>Reboot>Cra sh>Lag>Reboot>>> ;Repeat" jmlenz on  September 13, 2005 User rating: 3 After just 24hrs w/the LD the descision is easy...return this POS! Easy set-up and quick to connect to Wi-Fi/PC/bluetooth/etc. I purchased this primarily for internet connectivity on the go...bad idea. Web access is painfully slow and the thing will constantly freeze, and/or randomly restart(~3mins everytime!!!) This would be a nice piece if it worked. Pros: Nice screen, 4GB, looks great, easy set-up Cons: Lag!!! Oh the Lag!!! Crashes & Crashes often "Not ready for prime time / quirky" wrlsmarc on  September 14, 2005 User rating: 3 I really wanted to like this product. It is the first PDA that combines good connectivity with lots of storage capacity. What I got instead was a device that is quirky, crashes often and the wifi is not stable. I am returning it before my 30 day trial is up. I am still searching for that great PDA... Pros: Bluetooth, storage capacity, screen resolution Cons: wifi is not reliable, operating system is not stable "Great product." heldo2003 on  September 16, 2005 User rating: 9 Contrary to what most of the reviews say, i love my new lifedrive. i haven't had one problem with it like having to soft reset or hard reset. this is my first PDA so i dont know much but i am a computer geek so i know how a hard dive works. this hard drive is silent but since there is so much space programs do take a bit longer to load, although for a HDD its extremely fast. the battery does go dead rather quikly but i dont think palm could of made that better considering a hard dive take a lot of power as well as the 416MHz processor. i have noticed that some people say that not having a camera is a bad thing. if a camera was inside this device i believe it would be out of place. a high end consumer product with a low end camera, it just doesn't fit. plus if you want a bad camera just get one of those new camera phones or camera shoes. everything else already has a camera why does this. the lifedrive already syncs up with your phone if its bluetooth enabled. All i can say is this is a great product. Pros: Multimedia, no camera, huge screen, wifi, bluetooth, and of course the hard drive Cons: Battery life. "The lifedrive is the jack of all trades and master of none." sonsam on  September 16, 2005 User rating: 6 The lifedrive is ok. For anyone looking for a pda w/ a large HD, I would wait for something better to come along. Pros: 4 gb hard drive Cons: crashes, slow, itunes sucks, no craddle, turns off after 3 min., front face is glued on, "Took it back" Aledo on  September 19, 2005 User rating: 1 I bought it, unwrapped it and it froze up right after charging it. I have been using Palm since the original Pilot 1000 and have owned 5 Palm devices. Unfortunately, Palm is not giving me an alternative to PocketPC any longer. LifeDrive is sloooow! It requires multiple soft and hard resets which are slow (3-30mins respectively). I've been using Palm, for medical applications for years but I can't even get Epocrates to run smoothly on the LifeDrive. Whats more is that I installed the Palm Desktop on a new PC (only running windows OS and Office suite) and LifeDrive wouldn't Hotsync without causing a soft reset. I called Palm twice. They said that they weren't aware of any issues with the LifeDrive but when I spoke to 3rd party software companies...they were replete with problems involving this model. Whats needed is simple. Look at the iPod Nano...it has 4GB flash memory. Palm needs to stop dancing around the memory/HD/battery issue. They could easily do: 1. At least 2GB user accessible RAM 2. User Replaceable batteries 3. Beta test their product BEFORE they release it onto the public. I'm disappointed that CNET rated this so device so highly. I looked up the CNET rating before I purchased it and theirs is just not an accurate evaluation of this product. It really is an underwhelming and frustrating machine. Pros: 4GB HD, WiFi and BlueTooth, SD slot still included Cons: Extraordinarily unstable and slow "Lots of bang for money in my opinion" chicago841 on  September 21, 2005 User rating: 9 As close to a Laptop replacement as you can get. WiFi connection is great. Great PDA funcions. Email is easy. I think it has a great price point. Pros: It has it all Cons: 192 page manual "One of the best, tons of features" pboley1 on  September 25, 2005 User rating: 8 This a great PDA. The LifeDrive is not meant to be a phone, so why compare it to phones. It is a PDA with loads of functionality and easy to use right out of the box. The 4GB HD is something you don't appreciate until you don't have it. This was the deciding factor for me in buying this instead of a T5. With wi-fi, bluetooth, integrated hd, multimedia capabilities, this is at the head of the PDA class. Pros: Tons of features, flexibility Cons: expensive, but worth it; can't easily replace battery "Great, when it isn't rebooting" schulkd on  September 27, 2005 User rating: 1 The device is great when it isn't rebooting, which it does almost every time I use it. I use my Palms to store passwords and IP information. I use Yaps for passwords, works great. I store IP and work infor as memos. When I need info, I just do a system search. On my T3, T, Palm III and Palm V this method has worked. Too bad. I guess they had too much of their staff working with Microsoft on the new Windows based Palms. Kind of ironic that the first major hardware they release right before they go public with their Microsoft Palm has all the crashes typically associated with Windows! (OK, pre XP.) Even though the wireless and screen is great and having it as a USB drive is handy, the lack of stability totally undermines the usability of the device. Buy a Tungsten C. Pros: Sharp, bright screen, good wireless reception, decent performance Cons: Reboot randomly and almost everytime a search is performed "LifeDrive- will drive you nuts!" poochieboy2 on  September 28, 2005 User rating: 2 I thought LifeDrive would drive my life into a more organized one--but it did not. After upgrading from a mere Zire 72 (which worked exceptionally well for epocrates, calorie king and lots of skyscape and mobipocket books), I purchased the LifeDrive from Palmone. I found out that the thing resets over and over and when you are ready to show your friends your slideshow of your vacation it says---"low memory cannot run slide show"- I realize how unstable it is. The tech support is in Manila---which is OK because I am a Filipino-American, but the only solution is always a quick reset---my gosh it took me 72 hours to put back all my previous software and you want me to Quick reset? I returned the Lifedrive after 25 days of use, I said the headaches the waiting to reboot over 5 minutes drove me to the edge I am surprised the cnet editors scored it high--it is unbelievably a Palm flop! I am wondering how many people actualyy returned their LifeDrive---all of you who hates it say "I". I am a physician and the forums against the LifeDrive have been numerous. I am pretty sure the PDA I got was not defective---it is just the nature of the beast! Too bad I am stuck with the Palm as a lot of my software are palm. Anyone please help me find a replacement please!!!!!!!!!!!! Pros: big memory, wi-fi, nice screen Cons: resets very often, incompatible with third party sware "Full featured, with great memory" H8PainMD on  September 28, 2005 User rating: 8 I have found this a fully capable PDA, that does everything that I wanted and more. I have been able to carry many pictures and videos. I can load onto it powerpoint presentations. I have a host of medical programs on this PDA and it doesn't miss a beat. It is easy to use, and I don't have to use a cradle like other machines. Other PDAs cannot do much of what this can. If your real purpose is a music machine then get an IPOD. Pros: large storage capacity, with a great screen. Cons: A little weak for MP3, but I bought this for business use "Fragile and unreliable drive" kenox on  October 1, 2005 User rating: 3 Can't resist the colorful screen, so buy one and got it 3 days ago. Afterward I've been working on getting part of the software transger to it thru Tungsten T, but still working on it. It took me 20 hours now, and still counting.My software mainly are medical,(epocrates and Merck are not compatible w/ this devil),skyscape is ok, but can not load too many at a time.Journal to go cause another crash and somehow make isilo not working and crash together.I have 10 days to return to buydig.com. Guess the looking is not that important, will return it next week if it did not come alive. Also, did not see any difference between soft and hard reset. Pros: Great screen Cons: Crash easily and constantly "I ALMOST LOVE IT..." DaVi.tv on  October 2, 2005 User rating: 8 IT HAS GREAT FEATURES... I DO WISH IT HAD 624MHz & 6 GIG MICRODRIVE. IT'S A BIT SLOW @ TIMES...BUT I NEVER HAD TO REBOOT SO FAR. IT'S A NEAT GADJET THAT NEED'S TO BE REVISED. Pros: WiFi & BlueTooth & InFrared... Cons: 4 GIG HARD DRIVE,WHY NOT 6GIG'S @ LEAST. A BIT SLOW @ TIME'S, NO CRADLE INCLUDED. "Good for medical students" Carmen Sandiego on  October 4, 2005 User rating: 8 My first PDA was the Palm Tungsten T3, which I found very useful for use on the wards as a medical student. Unfortunately, it was lost, and I decided to go for a new Palm. The specifications of the LifeDrive were very attractive, and seemed to cover the things which I felt were lacking in the T3. Storage space is very important if you want to be storing a lot of eBooks (each around 8-30 MB). The 64 MB main memory of the T3 was not sufficient at all for me, and I used an SD card with it. The LifeDrive has ample space and I think its price which is rather expensive is justified considering how much you would be paying for SD cards to get the same storage space on another PDA. I now have extra space to store family photos, games, novels, maps and other software in addition to my medical books. I can also store most PowerPoint presentations of lectures I take. Another advantage in the LifeDrive is that files aren't erased if you forget to recharge the battery.. an annoying thing which occurred every now and then on the T3. WiFi is easy to set up and use, but the webpages are slow in loading.. I don't see that as a major problem though because I don't plan to use it for the internet a lot. It's useful if you only want to check important emails occasionally. The battery is quickly used up when WiFi is on, and I think a 20-30 minute session would probably drain all the charge. The LifeDrive is rather bulky compared to other PDA's, but with the right case it's not that bad looking.. and the large screen makes up for it. Before buying it, I read that the on/off switch is "odd".. I agree with that, but I don't find it too much of a problem. The option of locking the keys is useful. Music quality is tinny when heard directly from the speakers, it was the same with the T3, but I expect it to be alright with earphones. I would also like to test movie playing soon.. although it's probably best if it's plugged in the charger while playing. I was delighted to find Solitaire already installed on the LifeDrive.. but I didn't really like the lack of an option to view programs as a list.. except in Favourites mode. I like being able to see all available software on one page. There was also a problem transferring backed up files from my old Palm to the new one. I had to do it manually. But overall, I think the LifeDrive has met my demands from a PDA and it's useful for work, study, time organisation, email, and play (even if for games and photos mostly). I don't regret going for it. Pros: Large 4 GB capacity, WiFi, large screen Cons: Bulky, Slightly expensive, awkward on/off switch "Great multimedia palyback but too big and too slow" federico on  October 12, 2005 User rating: 6 If you want a digital agenda that you can carry easily in your pocket don't buy this device. I own a T5 and have been using the LifeDrive for almost a week. It is uncomfortable to carry this PDA around and it seems a little bit fragile. It also doesn't have quick access to the basic PDA applications like calendar and tasks, I guess because it is not designed primarily for that. The multimedia playback capability is definetily superior than any other Palm on the market. The videos look great and play smoothly. The Wifi feature is very useful and surfing the web, although a little slow to load pages, is a great experience. This device excells in what it is designed for: multimedia. The problem is, why would you buy a PDA for multimedia playback? It is still way to uncomfortable to watch a movie in a screen so small and if you just want to listen to mp3s, just get an iPod. Most people buy PDAs to get an easy to carry super agenda, in that respect the LifeDrive fails. Pros: Fast file transfer speed, great mp3 and video playback, almost perfect screen. Cons: Too big to carry in your pocket, slow accesing programs "Worst Thing Ever" summd14 on  October 14, 2005 User rating: 1 I bought this back in July and it is the worst thing ever. Starting the first day i bought it reset. The third day i had it it kept reseting and wouldn't go off. So you have to do a hard reset that would delete any pictures or important information on it. Then it did another Reset that was looping so i pressed the buttons that made it go to the reset menu but then it just turned off and never did anything so we sent it back after calling palm customer service which is terrible since the people on the line can't understand english so i hung up and we got another one and on the first day it started looping so i did the hard reset and got it back to the menu and turned it off and put it back in the box and sent it back to the store and got my large sum of money from them. I think this is the worst thing that palm ever made let me tell you i don't trust palm os 5.4 now i'm using my old palm vx and it's fine. Pros: Isn't worth to buy: There is nothing Cons: Low Battery, Resets Constantly "Not The Jack Of All Trades As Hoped" Kay M on  October 15, 2005 User rating: 3 I finally upgraded my Sony SJ22 PDA to what I thought was the answer to my prayers. As a doctor, for me the SJ22 was an extremely reliable machine but lacked the memory and OS to keep up with new software. Running programs from the memory stick was too slow. So the LifeDrive was purchased. It was a nightmare! Big-time problems with 3rd party apps resulted in constant rebooting until I had to removed everything. The product does many things, but does them poorly. Here's the partial list: 1. the MP3 had way too much backgroud noise caused by the hard-drive, making it essentially worthless; 2. The beam did not consistently work; 3. It crashed for no reason and after rebooting, I lost my voice recordings; 4. It took too much time to access information because of the hard-drive. When you are searching for information on a PDA, you want to retrive it quickly. Even waiting 3-5 second between moves is not acceptable, considering that you may have to make at least a half dozen individual moves to obtain the information. More importantly, when you try to go too fast between moves it will crash. Now you have to wait even longer to obtain the information! This is where a flash driven PDA is far superior; 5. Important 3rd party apps like Launcher X and E Wallet would lose data or crash; 6. the USB connection would always say that the device is not recognized, and that I should be connected to a USB 2 connection. But the computer is the latest model and has USB 2; 7. I could not connect to the File Transfer in order to transfer files to the internal drive. This was the main reason for the purchase; 8. The Wi-Fi is too weak, receiving only in the room containing the router; 9. The voice recorder did not maintain the previous recordings when a new message was added; 10. If you don't use it for a day, you have to do a soft reboot, then the date/time has changed. The frustration of trying to resolve all the problems associated with this device was affecting the ability to update my work schedules, so I didn't have time to work through them. After a week, I returned the product and purchased a Tungsten 5 instead. What a difference! Not only was it less expensive, it was faster, smaller, quieter, 3rd party friendly, and 100% reliable. The increased change in internal memory from the SJ22 allowed me to download professional 3rd party apps that could easily be opened, and the file transfer of > 150 MB allowed for file storage of documents without the need for a memory card. I do use a memory card, but only for listening to music. My advice for those wanting to purchase a LifeDrive: DON'T! Instead, purchase a T5. You will be disappointed with the LifeDrive's slowness, large size, background noise, weak Wi-Fi, unreliable voice recorder, and just general poor quality. Maybe I just had a lemon, but even if it worked properly there would still be problems associated with the hard-drive format. I have been extremely pleased with the T5. I give it a 10! Pros: Has the potential of being the super PDA Cons: Fails to live up to the potential ""4 out of 5 returned to the store"- Retail manager" mtmurat on  October 16, 2005 User rating: 3 I have had 2 Lifedrives in as many weeks. The 1st was defective right from the box. The on-off button broke on the 2nd after two weeks. During those two weeks, the Lifedrive resets itself 2-3 times per day, taking several minutes to complete the soft reset. Also 4-6 second delay when launching apps. It's a much bulkier unit, and heavy. The local computer retailer manager told me 4 out of 5 are returned. This time I got a new Palm TX + a 2GB SD card for less than a Lefdrive. I have been reall happy with the TX. Pros: Screen, wifi, storage Cons: Unreliable, long resets, bulky "LifeDrive = Tremendous Disappointment" RDSK on  October 20, 2005 User rating: 1 When my previous Palm crapped out (Tungsten E) I was very excited when my I.T. guys said they were going to replace it with the LifeDrive. Shortly thereafter excitement turned into frustration. I'm a business professional on the road and thought 4GB of storage complimented with Dataviz's "Docs to Go" would be a dream come true. For roughly two hours the LifeDrive lived up to the hype then the wheels came off the bus. I was able to transfer 2GB worth of docs and spreadsheets to the LifeDrive. I opened the first few and the device performed as advertised. Eureka!!! I head out for a week and the first time I go to use it the thing locks up. I want to record a voice memo and can't the device to turn on. I assume the battery has died (which I'll get to later) so I plug it into the car charger and it comes to life. I check the battery status and its fully charged. I figure just a one time quirk. Later in the day I'm waiting at the airport and want to review a Power Point presentation. No dice. Dataviz can't open the document. Fine. Excel Spreadsheet with data for the same client. Nope. I know it worked earlier. I try at the top of the file and open a word doc and hooray it opens. Then I try another doc that is a spec sheet with photos and graphs. Kaboom!!! Not only did not open but the LifeDrive completely locked up. Now I can't even play solitaire. Later that night from the Hotel I phone Palm One support desk. I might as well have phoned the Ronald MacDonald for all the help they were. They are very efective at reading the documentation on the support website. In the end they suggested reseting the device. Thirty minutes later it comes back to life. Great! Oh wait. No data. I attempt to sinc to my laptop via bluetooth. Cannot find device. I am forced to sync using the usb cable and I am back in business. In three weeks I owned the Palm One LifeDrive I had ten days like the above. Many quirky errors, trouble syncing with workstation back at the office and or trouble syning with my laptop after I had connected to my office workstation. Never did get it to sync via BT. The power switch/screen lock caused several lockups that required a reset. Finally battery life on this Palm is horrendous for such an expensive device. My Tungsten E would last for days. Not a having a replaceable is a major flaw, particularly with a device that seems to drain the battery with in a few hours. I have returned the LifeDrive to Palm with a long list of comments. I have picked a Pocket PC IPAQ HX2750 and it is AMAZING. I don't why I was so hung on the Palm OS stuff. Pros: The LifeDrive has vast potential. Cons: The LifeDrive is unable to capture the above mentioned potential. "Great All-In-One Unit" jjennings2510 on  October 26, 2005 User rating: 9 I just want to say first that I actually own this pda. Unlike some people that bash devices without even owning them. This pda is awesome. It has a ton of memory for storing office files, music, photos, etc. As far as the lag I've been reading about it is hard to notice. Yes sometimes it does take a couple of seconds to switch applications but it's still faster than my old pda which I loved. (palm m515, it finally died on me) And most of the time its just as fast as the other palm pdas out there that use flash memory. It is bigger than my m515 but it's not huge. It fits comfortably in the hand and it can still fit in most pockets. The screen on it is terrific. It's vibrant and pictures and games look great on it. I also like the fact the the screen has a orientation button on the side that allows you to switch to landscape mode. It's easy to use this system with one hand because of the navigation keys. Battery life on this system is ok. When you're typing documents or reading ebooks etc. the life is pretty good. But when you start playing music or surfing the web it goes down a little. For me I've gotten an average of 6 hours of life per charge but that's with me surfing the net a little with music playing in the background and then watching some video clips. If you're only going to use this system for work then the battery will last longer. WiFi and bluetooth setup is very simple. Anyone can do it. I'm very gald that palm finally decided to add an led that changes colors when charging is complete. Charging takes about 2.5 hours when the battery is completely dead. Pocket tunes is a great mp3 player that is included on the system. It supports skins and if you upgrade it, it supports other audio formats (windows media, etc.) The only complaint I have with this system is the compatibilty with palm os 4 software. Most of it crashes the system so you have to check the websites for updates. But I just want to make it clear that this is NOT the only palm that suffers from this problem. ALL current generation pdas suffer from this problem (tungsten t5, t|x, tungsten e, etc.) I think it's because of the new file system palm uses (nvfs) so if you're thinking about going the t5 route then it's going to have the same problem. And it suffers from the same delays and it uses FLASH memory. and it only has 160mb of it. I think the problem lies within palm os 5 which is limiting todays hardware. Speaking of which p-tunes does skip whenever you have it playing in the background and you switch apps or save something to the hard drive. But once again I strongly feel that this is a limitation of the os which is NOT a true multi-tasking os. Sorry for blabbing but I just wanted to touch on the different things that I like and hate about this pda. It only comes with a usb cable, not the cradle which is something you will definitely want to invest in. it comes with a pretty good amount of software including docs to go for office files. Overall I am very satisfied with this pda and would recommend it to anyone. The price is a little steep but it's worth it. It's worth it but there's no reason why you should pay retail for it. Most sites are selling this unit for $399. I got mine for $380. only $30 more than the t5. What a bargain. But I know the T5s have dropped in price. Anywayz don't let people scare you away from this pda by saying it's buggy or slow. It's only buggy whenever you use incompatible software and it's not any slower than some of the other "top" palms (T5, T|x) All of the palms suffer from the software issue so it's recommended that you start fresh if you're upgrading from an older palm. It'll save you a lot of trouble. This is well worth the money especially if you find it for $399 the same price as a T|X which only has like 200mb of memory instead of 4gb. (4000mb for those that don't know) This unit will replace your laptop........it saved me from having to spend $2000 for a new one and it does the same thing. Games, movies, word processing, music, voice recording, web surfing, transfering files over a network, etc. and it's a lot smaller and cheaper. Highly recommended!!!!! ps Like I said before the only reason I gave this palm a 9 instead of a 10 is because of the software compatibility issues which are common to ALL current generation palms............. Pros: Huge 4gb Hard Drive Cons: Compatibility with older palm software "LifeDrive works for me - GREAT" afbcasejr on  November 7, 2005 User rating: 8 I've had Palm and iPaq products both. I ended up with a LifeDrive because I was headed out of town and needed something FAST, that I could get a a store on the way to the airport. LifeDrive filled the bill. It's fast enough, has huge storage capacity, handles all the business file formats I use, and connects through my tiny samsung phone via bluetooth. If I want a music palyer, I'll buy a Nano. If I want a DVD player, I'll buy one. I wanted something to replace some key laptop functions while travelling, in airports, in cabs ... and this is it. Now, if I can just get Skype or Vonage on this thing... Pros: Screen size, WiFi, Bluetooth, Storage, Synching Cons: Battery life may be an issue. "AESTHETICS =A+ FUNCTION= C+" eric1223 on  November 11, 2005 User rating: 5 so ive had mine for 3 mos now and what can i say, im not a business man and im still always late for everything, but i just gotta have it, a gadget freak, i use it more for entertainment, definitely music, which sucked because i replaced my ipod for it! IT JUST SKIPS AND FREEZES ramdomly, occasionally, sounds good though when ur not doing anything else, i must admit, ++ on the volume boost. VIDEO????i never played any of the damn videos and whatnot of whatever format and whathaveyous to upload the file, Y? PALM answer me! asf just dont seem to work or whatever codecs i used. god dont tell me im dumb. web broser is ok i guess. everuything else is fine. BUT FOR THE $500 price tag. PLEASE DO SOMETHING! UPDATE THE ENTIRE SYSTEM, IMPROVE AND SHOW THE CONSUMERS ITS GETTING BETTER, JUST ANYTHING UPDATER, MORE SOFTWARE, MORE ACCESORIES, MORE DOWNLOADS, MORE GROUPS, MORE ANYTHING, IF NO IMPROVEMENTS ARE SEEN WITHIN THE NEXT 3 MONTHS, expect this PDA to crowd the OUTLET/REFURBISHED/OPEN BOX SECTION OF ANY electronic retailer. for sure. SO IF YOURE IN THE MARKET FOR THIS BADBOY, HOLD ON FOR A FEW MORE MONTHS. THINGS ARENT LOOKIN SO GOOD FOR THIS ONE. i have high hopes for PALM so i guess im keepin until then. hope so. Pros: DESIGN, FEEL, LOOKER, ITS THE AUDI TT OF PDA. Cons: CRASHES FREQUENTLY, MP3 SKIPS, VIDEO???? U SURE? battery BAD "Its like a sprawling mansion infested with bugs!" pixil on  November 12, 2005 User rating: 3 Where do I begin. Like a lot of people I was attracted to this device for the 4GB HD and the potential this unit has to be the best out there. It has everything you could want in a PDA, but the bad far outweighs the good. From the day I received it, it was crashing at least 4 times a day, it froze constantly resulting in multiple hard resets (I'm up to 6 and I've had it for 3 weeks) which totally erases data and user settings, the wi-fi connection disconnected all the time even with the patch Palm offers, their email program Versamail cause frequent crashes along with the Documents To Go software. After all that I wanted to return the device and get a new one, but little did I know that PALM DOES NOT DO RETURNS FOR EXCHANGE. Buyer beware. You have to return the device, get a full refund and then buy it again? WHY?? Don't ask me, probably so they can say how many they've "sold". The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that I got a $100 discount from another vendor for trying their service which means I would get back $399 instead of $499 from Palm and would have to come out of pocket another $100 to buy another Life Drive!!! Not worth the headache...maybe next go-round. Pass on this one if you value your sanity. Pros: Lots of space, great screen, wi-fi, bt... Cons: Unbelievable amount of crashes, freezing, wi-fi connection drops frequently... "This unit is by far the worst since it will not power on after 10 uses." CoryMonroe on  November 13, 2005 User rating: 3 I use the palm with act for client database and I need to have this device functioning all day. Since I have owned it it works about 5% of the time no joke at all. I am so upset since I went and spent $500 on a organizer that no longer works. I have tried to trouble shoot this and I think the only solution is to junk it or send it back. Pros: User Friendly when it powers on Cons: Does not power up at all and when it does the battery goes out soon. "Did not work, Unable to sync, Made my T3 not sync. Now backward compatable with my T3 programs" juscause on  November 15, 2005 User rating: 1 Out of the box the factory cable did not work. Fortunately I had purchased a different one. The first sync did not work. I had to redo the software download 3 times to get the LifeDrive (LoserDevice) to sync. Then, it would not see my T3. Tried customer online support. Three different tech assuring me it works but it never did. Tried calling, two hours at my phone expense and a tech in the Phillipines, still unabel to get it working. I gave up, will pay $75.00 restock fee to get rid of this piece of junk. Pros: Nice ad, pretty picture Cons: All bad. Now backward compatable with any of my medical software. "Bulky...Puffy...TheLittleTrain ThatCould...Not" abcdefg0 on  November 26, 2005 User rating: 2 I bought the LifeDrive in a rush as I was going on a trip, because BestBuy had run out of the iPAQ I was looking for, and because I hate carrying my laptop. I needed storage for various kinds of documents, music, photos, access to wifi, bluetooth, and printing and slideshow for clients. Other than printing, the LifeDrive comes ready for everything else and with lots of storage (advantage over the iPAQ) and a large hi-res screen for real work. My first impression out-of-the-box with the LifeDrive was great: I bought it at 3 pm, drove to my office, had all documents synched by 4:30 pm, and was on the plane studying my slides by 7 pm. However... my love affair lasted but a couple of hours tops. Push buttons felt heavy; if by accident I pressed one of them too fast after another, the devide reset itself (imposing several minutes waits), which happened 4 times during my 4 hour flight. As other users have noted, commands are slow to execute (bec. of slow transfer from HD into RAM); 1-3 second loading times are common and seem like an eternity. Otherwise, the touchscreen and stylus interface worked very well and is nicely designed--a la Palm. Handling the LifeDrive felt OK at first, but very soon one notices its bulk and weight, particularly when you load it into your shirt pocket and withdraw it from it repeatedly, as handhelds are supposed to be handled. The case is sturdy and sleek--but working it with one hand feels that it is dangerously close to slipping off. The on-off button is awkwardly positioned and does not respond consistently; shutting-off is a 2-hand operation with this design and sometimes one must actuate the button 2 or 3 times before the LifeDrive shuts off. The second worst experience with this device (after the frequent resets) was that battery ran out in about 4 hours (when not using wifi or bluetooth) or 2-3 hours when browsing the web or communicating. Net result: I'm returning the LifeDrive to BestBuy after 14 days of use and I'm losing the $50 restocking fee. I think that LifeDrive version 1.0 is not ready for prime time. Recommendation: wait for a redesigned version 2.0, possibly without HD, but hopefully with high-capacity static memory and maybe a faster processor, both of which would place the LifeDrive in a competitive spot compared to the iPAQs. Pros: Sturdy, Nice Screen Interface, Large Storage Cons: Hefty, Slooow, Short Battery, Finicky OpSys "Good when it works. But works 60% of time." anyajade on  December 1, 2005 User rating: 5 I've owned my palm for a month and a half and it's completely crashed and I have to send it back for repair. I loved it when it worked. Having the photos, video and music on hand was great. I use Vindigo (software) and the contacts manager all the time. Unfortunately, I had quite a few problems with it that I wouldn't recommend this version of the Life Drive to anyone. First of all, I tend to turn the machine on and off frequently. It doesn't like that. For example,... I'll need someone's phone number. I turn it on, get the info and turn it off. Then... I realize, I need to look something up on Vindigo. Attempt to turn it on but nothing happens. I wait a few seconds, try to turn it on again... nothing. Eventually I get so frustrated I repeatedly attempt to turn on the machine and it either comes on eventually or reboots itself. This reeeeally sucks when you're trying to grab info on the go and you've got someone waiting on you for the information. Granted, this doesn't happen ALL the time, but it happens about 33% of the time. Too much. You can't play music and expect to have your life drive do anything else with any speed either. The minute you have music playing and attempt to look at documents, expect your music to skip and stall. AND the music quality to begin with is terrible. There's a constant hiss and unlike my mp3 player, when I hook it up to speakers, the music quality is exponentially bad. With just 64mb of ram and no way to upgrade, this is just plain bad. I've used up over 1/2 the ram just with basic applications. I don't dare load it up for fear of affecting the performance of the machine. And frankly, at this point,... it doesn't matter. The machine is kaputz anyway. Sadly, this is not the first Palm I've owned that has given me problems. The last one I had, a Palm Vx, I had to return FOUR TIMES before I got a unit that was reliable. The reason I've stuck with Palm though is because it's cross platform and because I like the features. I have a PC but want to get a Mac and I know that Pocket PC's aren't Mac friendly. Oh and the other thing I don't like about the life drive, is the significant lag time it takes to record information or switch applications. There's been times when I'm recording someone's contact info and the life drive hiccups and you can feel the machine whrrring like it's thinking. You might be jotting down a phone number and it does this right in the middle of it. Very annoying not to mention you look like a technoDORK who's too reliant on electronics. Yeah... okay... maybe I am... but I want my gizmos to work especially if I'm jotting down a person's phone number I'm hoping to impress! And BTW, if you haven't tried wifi on a handheld, see if you can demo it before buying a unit based on the fact it has wifi. The web browser is waaaay slower than you're probably used to on your computer. And... the life drive's wifi scanning interface needs to give the user more control over connections. It needs a facelift. The whole unit needs a face lift. Wait to buy the life drive. Wait until they come out with the next generation. Really. Pros: nice display. good feature set. Cons: Unreliable. Reboots often necessary. Doesn't do well with turning on and off frequently. "Resets, Freezes, Lockups... Took it back." joes.1 on  December 4, 2005 User rating: 2 Started to buy the TX, but bought this on an impulse,big mistake. I expect an occasional restart on a pda, but the Lifedrive pushed my patience past the limit. Constantly, and with no pattern, with only original software or 3rd party. While waiting for my refund check, I'm seriously researching the TX, or a pocket PC. Pros: Screen, features, storage,apps,multimedia Cons: All above are great but unreliable. "Great Device if this is what you are looking for" mulk76 on  December 12, 2005 User rating: 9 Complaints I've heard - Heavy? - No, not considering its got 4gigs in it and a nice clear screen, a features beyond anything else Sluggish - Not unless you desire a hardcore MP3 player or DVD player and in that case you bought the wrong device. Price - Not high considering I couldn't find any features it was missing. The only thing it didn't do was make toast. This unit is perfect for someone who wants one device to do almost everything but doesn't desire a multimedia device. I don't think palm was trying to make the best MP3 player, or the best video player. They did however create the best all-in-one portable. For the tech geek or the early adopter of technology this is a must have. Pros: More features, features and features, everything in one device Cons: Price, but not really bad considering the features. "Life drive or Death drive?" arpet on  December 15, 2005 User rating: 2 Bad. Don´t buy it. Pros: Capacity, screen. Cons: Noncompatibility with lot of aplications. Frequent neet to reset. Enormous amount of time wasted "I Must Have Been Very Bad to Receive This Lump of Coal" RobinLWms on  December 26, 2005 User rating: 4 I received the Life Drive for Christmas and it is going back to the store tomorrow. I have a Sony TH55, which I love, but it is time for an upgrade, so I hinted around about the Life Drive and got it. I was so excited when I unwrapped it. Unfortunately, the Life Drive took all the joy out of my holiday. There was a hint of the trouble to come when it took about 10 minutes to recover after the initial reset you have to do after installations. By that, I mean the LD stood frozen on the Palm Logo. It then proceeded to crash all over the place. I don't mean it crashed a few times. I mean it crashed and reset itself maybe 30 times, and after each resetting, it stood frozen on that logo for about 5 minutes before you could use it again. It was horrible. I had no idea when it was going to crash. When I pressed on the "file" icon, it crashed and reset itself (5 minutes wait frozen on the Logo). I pressed P-tunes, same thing, but was fine after I added a few MP3s (FYI: there is a static-type noise between songs that's annoying, especially for the price). The LD literally crashed all day until the grand finale. I loaded a couple of word docs into files, using the Life Drive Manager (which is really cool), and made the mistake of thinking I could now utilize the "files" icon. A major crash ensued. It crashed, reset itself, showed the Palm Logo with the moving loading bar then the second Palm Logo, crashed and proceeded to repeat this process, non-stop, for over an hour. I couldn't turn it off and couldn't stop it. A soft reset was only a small interruption and it went right back into its crash and reset mode, until I performed a hard reset. The hard reset took 30 minutes and erased everything. Okay, so now there is nothing on the LD, except what was there before the software installation and I'm upset because I uninstalled my TH55 before installing the LD, so that PDA is useless, unless I get the CD and install it again. Not me. I'm determined to give the Life Drive another chance, so I load it up, wait the 10 minutes after reset. It looks beautiful. I touched something in the calendar, it crashed and stayed frozen on the Palm Logo for 30 minutes. I had to perform another hard reset, since the Life Drive ignored my request for a soft one. I read the reviews on the LD and was under the impression the crashes occurred with multi-tasking. This was not the case. It just kept crashing. All of this said, I'm sorry to return it because it is such a good idea. It has a voice recorder, which is hard to find, and it's very nice looking, and who isn't seduced by all that hard drive space. I do wish it had come in black and had a camera. Who am I kidding? There is no sense wishing, since the LD is nothing more than a good idea. It's back to the net for me. I like the Palm OS system, so I guess I will give the T/X a try. Pros: beautiful screen, sleek design, voice recorder capabilities, Life Drive Manager Cons: too many system crashes, slow recovery after system crashes, case provided in the box is too snug "one of the best" pSully on  January 5, 2006 User rating: 10 this is one of the best PDAs i have found. I was never really a big palm fan until this product came out. Very good size and weight. The buttons were very useful both on the front of the device and side. The large screen also made using the product very useful when showing off photos or videos. Howeever if your looking for a portable video player this should not be at the top of your list, slow and grainy. WiFi is great easy to set up but i think this is were palmOne failed. Webpages load very slow. It gets very annoying when waiting to see a webpage taking nearly a couple of minutes to load. Another thing that i felt was a small drawback was the power switch is not a button but a sliding swith. very annoying when switching on and off which sometimes takes a couple of seconds to load. Also when i first got it, for the first week if froze and automatically required a soft reseet to continue to use the device. Not a big deal becasue i didnt lose any data but it seem that maybe this product came out ahead of its time when integrating a harddrive and the pda interface. Being the first to do so not a bad job. Overall if you look for a PDA this the best one on the market to this day. It is a step up from the other PDAs and a step down from a labtop.Very sleek and stylish, and very durable. Ahead of its time. Pros: large hard drive, beautiful screen, integration is excellent Cons: slow at times when loading web pages or applications "LifeDrive not bad, Palm support is a minus 9!" sjreidhead on  January 5, 2006 User rating: 9 During the past 2 weeks I have gone through 2 T/X's (see my review) that were the worst piece of (barnyard substance) I've ever used. Throwing caution to the wind I returned the 2nd T/X to Staples and popped for the LifeDrive. My worst fears were realized when the software from the T/X would not delete and I could not install the LifeDrive software. On New Year's Day I finally gave up and called Microsoft tech support for XP. I was fortunate enough to get a guy who spoke decent English and seemed to kow what he was doing, and was familiar with the LifeDrive. After nearly 2 hours of experimenting, he discovered there is a piece of uninstalll code missing in the LifeDrive install software! He talked me through downloading a the major uninstall files for XP and we completely removed all Palm software (I'd backed my 10 years of accumulated Palm docs into Outlook). The LifeDrive disk worked beautifully. I did immediately download the updated software for the device. Unlike the T/X, the LifeDrive seems to like 3rd party software. I am having a problem downloading ebooks and docs from such places as memoware onto the LifeDrive itself. So I called Palm Tech Support (what a contradiction in terms!) After 40 futile minutes of begging to speak to a supervisor, I finally hung up on the moron. I knew more about the product than she did. She was rude, patronizing, and no earthly idea what she was doing, and knew nothing about the product. I never did get to speak to a supervisor! I am still working out the software bugs. Be aware that you cannot install large apps directly onto the 'device' but must install to the LifeDrive. I added a 1G expansion card and am having no problems there. I am still having problems installing the small doc programs. I've figured a way to back end into it. If Palm's support was half-way decent I could get some help. And I do want to thank the management of my local Staples. Fortunately they know that I am familiar with Palm and tech items so they honored my complaints and did as much as possible to accomodate me. Pros: It is quirky, but not bad. Cons: Palm support does not exist. The original software is bad, very bad. "This thing works for me" g-mat on  January 7, 2006 User rating: 8 Maybe I am just an easy customer but it seems to me most folks on this thread are being way to picky (of course, for the price I suppose picky is justified). I bought this to do 3 things - surf the wireless web, store video and pictures, and listen to MP3s. So far it has done all of those beautifully. Are there some kinks? Absolutely. The Blazer web browser is not as stable as it could be , for instance. However, I have not tried other PDAs such as the Axim but I have to believe they have their quirks too. This is a solid device and I asm keeping very entertained with the huge amount of stuff they have packed in here. Pros: Large storage for music/videos with PDA apps as well Cons: It IS a little bulky, and maybe some kinks to work out "Its a great gadget. Period!!!" arunnp on  January 7, 2006 User rating: 9 I dont know about what others say regarding this piece of ingenuity. It has given me all that I have been looking for. Battery life is great, on-board memory is great, the interface looks better than ever with the tiltable screen app. Wifi/Bluetooth provides better connectivity. I never had any problems so far with any 3rd party softwares and believe me I try them everytime I get a chance. As the only negative that I can state are the very rare instances when the drive seems a bit sluggish and may cause reset. And my greatest dismay would be the absence of a good in-built megapixel cam. Pricing is a question of personal requirement. You have to pay for the best. The Lifedrive was never intended to be a PocketPC or a replacement. It is a digital pocket manager. And I believe it lives upto its name. Anyway the best PALM of all time !!! Pros: Wifi, Bluetooth, 4GB HD, awesome display...the list goes on... Cons: No inbuilt camera, minimally and rarely sluggish "NonStop Rebooting" steevay on  January 24, 2006 User rating: 3 I've owned the lifedrive for about 2 months now. When I first got it, I tried using it everyday... so for a month I was turning it on daily, and resetting and reformatting... multiple times each day. I thought I got a defective one, but it seems like that's just how the Lifedrive is. The design of the lifedrive is still in its beta stages.. If you try to do anything outside of the ordinary, it will crash on you and go into a loop of restarting itself until it burns out. This happens when: -you surf the net and encounter an error on the page, a broken link, or a broken image -when you try to open a document -WHENEVER YOU SYNC with the computer.. beware It also randomly deletes the WIFI connection and you have to reformat if you want the functionality. It is truly TOO unreliable than to be anything other than (to make a comparison).. a public computer you log onto to check your email. You probably won't be able to store any personal data on here, because you'll see after several crashes it's not worth the effort of reloading everything on. But this would come in handy if you needed to get on the internet in a cafe or somewhere and didnt bring a computer.. assuming it doesnt crash before you get to type in the URL. Pros: good concept and features Cons: unstable, crashes, loses information nonstop "Beware---Defective pieces" hiteshwarsingh on  January 25, 2006 User rating: 2 The piece I bought from the day i bought it hangs every time i try to pair it to any cell phone. Beware of fatal errors when you are saving your vital docs in Documnets to go. Customer care at palm- mis lead you and make you go in circles. I would recomend another product. Pros: User friendly with good storage space Cons: Restarts constantly, doesn't save at times- Unreliable "Sluggish OS, Heavy Device" cdtphilpot on  January 29, 2006 User rating: 3 I bought this to stay organized. I'm a student and in the national guard, so I stay pretty busy. I also like the hard drive so I can put movies on it. However I had this device for 10 days and I have to soft reset it on average of 4 times a day. Most of the problems comes from trying to multi-task, or trying to connect on wi-fi. The screen is great, so it the ability to view digital camera pictures, but the slow OS and constant resetting is not worth it. Pros: Big Screen, Hard Drive Cons: Heavy, Slow OS "Better of with a new IPOD" zoeynutz on  February 10, 2006 User rating: 3 buy the new Ipod, does more and works better! Pros: nice big screen. Cons: doesnt function as well as the ipod i replaced it with! "Outstanding value, price is $699AU at the moment." algreig2 on  February 15, 2006 User rating: 10 This is an outstanding business tool, it does play mp3s but that is not its main focus, it does play videos and handle photos well, drop in the Camera card (SD) and it will adjust the images to suit its display without changing the files on the card. But that is not its main focus. Battery life is fine for business, you can listen to music when early for an appointment, but not all day. Its ability to pose as a USB thumb drive is fantastic, and I can use it to sync with my Linux business desktop using jPilot or Evolution or KDEPim. The OS beats Windows mobile hands down. If you want to play, buy an iPod, but if you want a substantial business tool, get a Life Drive. Pros: Not Available Cons: Not Available "Please Continue Your Search, Lifedrive Issues" qbangas on  February 16, 2006 User rating: 5 I have had Palms for nearly 15 years. I have moved among the brands a little including Palm, Handspring, Treo and Kyocera. This is the worst model I have ever used. It is slower than my wife's E2 with is many years old now. It takes about 30 seconds to be ready to use, 30 sec to load the program you select and another 30sec to be ready for input. I anticipated ipod like harddrive access time, think again. It is very expensive and doesn't remain compatible with much of my previous palm software (actually any of my previous software). I am a physician and I use this on a daily basis, so this is really irritating. Since I now only have a few actual palm programs I am now considering the previously unherad of idea of going to a windows pda. Very dissappointing. It is too big to fit in your pocket and seems easy to scratch and damage. Pros: Great Screen, voice recorder, a lot of storage spaceno memory lost when battery dies Cons: Speakers, Harddrive access time, plastic case, software issues "Not for this price" Elbasha77 on  February 16, 2006 User rating: 3 As a Torontonian I went and bought this baby cause I wanted internet on the go and playing my favorite shows when I have nothing to do at work. So I got get it from Bestbuy, it costs me $804 flat. I take it go home and start playing with the WiFi, I get nothing. So I figure hey lets play with the 4 gig hard drive. I download my Mpeg file into it and disconnect from the computer to play it. It gives me error message that the file is corupted or too big so it won't play. Turns out I have to format the file for it to play this little hand held. Fine how long does it take to format Fear Factor and Servivor to put it on it??? 2.5-3 hours. YES that is how long it takes. Finally when it was done and I was relifed that the computer didn't freeze after taking that long to reformat for it. I wanted to watch them and see how they look on the Palm. Guess what??? u don't get to see the full screen playing the Media file. Only partial part of it. So I press the display botton to make it into landscape give it bigger canvas to play on, GUESS WHAT??? still small, and to make things worth the speakers are as crappy as they come. Just buzzing all over the place. I figured okay lets try the MP3. Hey it doesn't need to be formated for it nice. But the sound still sucks. I guess I have to always use a head phone to listen to it. FINE. Hey I know, I'll take it at work and try logging into the net, in a 72 floor building someone will have free internet somewhere GUESS WHAT?? everything is protected or the signal isn't strong enough for me to stay connected. So there u have it. With 804 dollars I get an MP3 player with 4 gig hard drive, that is all really. This baby is going back to the store ASAP. I want my MONEY back. Pros: 4 gig of memory Cons: Only good for music with a head set. "Great product, resets were software gliches" cvaughn on  February 19, 2006 User rating: 9 I love my new LifeDrive! I've been looking for something like this, but I wasn't sold on a Treo because it doesn't use grafitti, and I actually like using a separate PDA and cell phone. Like other reviewers I initially had some unexpected resets. As soon as I discovered which 3rd party applications were causing the problem, I deleted those apps and the problem was solved. If I really want to keep one of those apps, I can go to the website and and look for an upgrade version of the software. The WiFi works great with my home network and local hotspots. I haven't signed up for the TMobile 30-day free trial because most of the places around here have FREE WiFi. Video looks great on my LIfeDrive, so I'm hoping that I'll soon be able to download individual TV shows, like you can with the video iPod. I don't plan to use my LifeDrive for music,as I use my regular iPod for that. Transferring Word and Excel docs from my laptop to the LifeDrive is very easy. I think I'll be able to leave my laptop at home and travel with the LifeDrive. I like the LIfeDrive "pop up" stylus/pen. I also purchased the Universal Wireless Keyboard and it works just fine. (Even though the package doesn't list LIfeDrive as one of the compatible products.) I highly recommend purchasing a HARD CASE to protect this expensive toy. Office Max threw mine in for free when I mentioned an internet offer from a competitor that included the hard case. Bottom line...........very, very cool for work and play. Pros: 4GB hard drive, WiFi, horizontal screen, work in Word, Excel Cons: resets caused by software glitches "Don't buy one" roadgecko352 on  February 22, 2006 User rating: 1 I thought my Life Drive was the greatest thing ever until they day it decided not to turn back on. I have sent it in to the repair center twice already and it still is not useful as more than a paperweight. For the past 3 months I have been "working" with Palm to get my issue resolved and I am still waiting to be able to actualy use my Life Drive. Pros: great screen resolution, large software selecton, lots of memory, lots of functions Cons: Hareware fails, basic software will not let you edit documents "Lifedrive So-so" seking0011 on  February 26, 2006 User rating: 4 Cons. I purchased the lifedrive 3 weeks ago, i already had 7 crashes,to reset takes to long, average 2 minutes. and one time it took 15 minutes! to reset. not to many free app.(at least not yet) bulky when in pocket, no case with belt clip yet. tapping when scrolling doesn't work well. not able to transfer your calendar from zire 31 to lifedrive.or any other palm product. battery life does not last long to run lifedrive. one major overlook feature,no scrolling button. movies must be be formated to play in lifedrive (supplied in lifedrive cd)drawback takes to long to format a regular movie. when playing mp3's there is a delay when clcking to next song. when adding pocket-tunes deluxe. lifedrive drive will ask for license to play your favorite mp3 song from subscribed online music store,and sometimes will ask you for a license even on your own mp3's (stick to bundle pocket-tunes) it only takes Sd card No Xd cards games are very limited. low volumen when using pda own speaker. use headphones for listening. no e.q. to pump-up bass/treble/high e.t.c. Pros. large 4gig drive (actual 3.4 after o/s) can be used to transfer data from pc to pc. good wi-fi after updating to ver2.0 can be used as a recorder, (as long you keep holding the button) good clock alarm. pda built in a hard case. for the price of 449.99 they could built something better, you can get a laptop for that price range with better features. Pros: like having a miniloptop (almost) Cons: Slow / Crashes a lot and more read my review. "I´ll get back to my old PALM V" serguti2 on  March 8, 2006 User rating: 2 I had all type of PDA, Since the PALM PILOT Personal 512k to this one and some Windows CE and PocketPC (iPaq). I spend a lot of money to buy this LIFEDRIVE and I will get back to my PALM V. I recommend do not buy this!. The OS is slower that ever! (I got the upgrade 2.0 to fix the MP3 player and other errors that the original soft had). The e-mail have a lot of bugs and frizzes the PALM, I never did some many soft resets on a device like in this one. Pros: Multimedia Cons: OS need development, also it is BIG! "Good Gadget, not for me" cerruti2827 on  March 22, 2006 User rating: 6 Just wanted to share my experience. I have to use it to read medical books and for epocrates, a medical software. It takes atleast 5 seconds for it to load information when tapped. After using it for three months, these 5 seconds seem like 5 hours to me specially when i have to use it upteen times an hour. Now I have ordered Tungsten E2, hoping that it would be faster. Pros: as advertised Cons: slow, heavy "Excellent tool for carrying all your papers with you." Geolink on  March 27, 2006 User rating: 9 I am a technical person. For sometimes, I have been looking for a PDA to store my technical papers & references. I have been carrying a thick briefcase for long time. Lifedrive seems to be exactly what I was looking for. This morning, I downloaded an eighteen page PDF with some color geologic plots. It took about a minute to transform the format. Then, I was able to read the file with readable font and even expand the plots. This makes it possible to gradually make a library of my technical materials, tables, presentations, ...tec. I like the idea. I also bought a wireless keypad which works fine. Now, I can use the set as a small wordprocessing unit for some seious writing. This, I hope, librates me from sitting in front of my desktop or carrying a laptop around. Overall, I am happy & excited about this unit. Regarding the music & other cool staff, I let others report on that. To be honest, I did not buy this unit for that purpose. Pros: Can read complex PDF, word, & PPT documents. Cons: I do not know "Nastalgia for my E100" Under_clocker on  March 27, 2006 User rating: 8 OK first let me say that if you are geek this is probably a must have. I am an animator. I can tote around my animations,movies and even play divx(I have a third party program to play divx) on my life drive. The life drive holds loads of mp3s and from what I can determine. when playing mp3s you loose about 15% batt life per hour. So I would estimate you can get about 5 hours out if playing mp3s if you turn off wifi and blue tooth... That should be sufficient for office use well at least in my case. But then I can bring in a sepparte power supply for work. Now I have read comparisons to the ipod video...Let me say that those comparisons are rather silly because the ipod and the lifedrive are two different kinds of devices. The ipod can not act as an organizer or have the computing abilities that the palm does. The ipod is basicaly a single use device. The life drive is a powerfull computing device, it plays video,mp3s,and records voice.It has all the pim functions you can ever use. I have equiped mine with a few great little programs like a guitar tuner and a divx player. This is prob the best palm I have ever owned. The Device reminds me of is my old E100. Which still functions today. The e100 was not palm it was windows ce -casio. Great multi-media unit and very dependable. Rock solid unit. Heavy, big, but worked and never failed me. I would compare the life drive in size to that device. One other thing about the life drive that make me sing the body electric and its praises is that its made out of Metal! SO heres the deal. If you need a multi-purpose device then the life drive is all that. If on the other hand you are looking for video and mp3s ONLY then the ipod is what you need. I Very much like and recomend this device. Pros: Great for multi-media and office Cons: Slow re-boot. battery life a scad low. "Great pocket pc for any occasion" bilbothewise on  March 29, 2006 User rating: 8 I got one of these despite the many people bashing the product. I have a couple things to tell them. First of all is the price.... I was told that it was way too expensive for the features.....HELLO!!!! what are you thinking? I put together a couple of products that would come out to about the same specs. First of all if you were to buy an ordinary palm, you would pay about $200 and higher. Then if you bought a memory card with 4 gigs, that would be about another $200 and maybe higher. plus if you added the other functions, that would be even more money. Minimum price is about $420. This one is less than that. Next is the size. If you put together a palm that had 4 gigs of storage, wireless technology, sd and other slots and the many other features.....YOU AREN'T GOING TO HAVE A PALM THE SIZE OF AN IPOD!!!!! There are only a certain amount of ways you can cram all that into one. Battery life...... I got some people saying it had terrible battery life. Have you ever tried other palms or ipaqs or dells?? Their batteries may be replacable but this one beats them all! This battery lasts over 4 hours....ok.....compare that also to laptops. If you watched movies on them their batteries would barely make 4 hours. Ok? Helpful? I really enjoy mine.... it is the perfect companion for any occasion. Pros: Great storage device with all the functions of a regular palm. Cons: Non user replacing battery. "Very nice unit, but nothing's perfect" rborgner on  March 31, 2006 User rating: 8 I've been using handhelds for about 7 years now, starting with a Handspring (had 3 of them, ending with a Prism), one Sony Clie (Sorry to see them exit the arena); this is my second Palm, the first one a Tungsten T5 which still works quite well. I was happy to see the LifeDrive go on sale at Palm, so I guess there goes the argument that it's too pricy (does this mean they're coming out with a new product?). I also got the wireless keyboard for free, so much the better! One of the reasons I got it was that I hated having to remove my memory card when I wanted to use WiFi, which I use much more than Bluetooth (My Samsung doesn't even come up on their list of Bluetooth phones). I use an I-pod for music, so the quality of its MP3 player is not a big issue. I didn't use the MP3 player on the T5 much either, although I did use it for Audio books, which sounded fine through headphones or my car adapter. Getting back to the LifeDrive; overall I'd have to give it excellent grades for quality, usability and features. The hard drive lag is somewhat annoying at times, but my Pentium 4 at work and home suffer from occasional lags as well, and is a slight lag really that critical to its use? I don't think so. One program I use is Mapopolis, and since I live in the NYC area, I really appreciate the large hard drive for storing all the maps I use. I haven't really used the media functions yet, but look forward to storing my favorite digital photos and even creating slide shows to bore all my friends when I come back from vacation. The unit does get a little warm with use, but anyone who has ever used a laptop really understands heat, and I know some cell phones that get even hotter with use! Naturally, everyone would love a unit that lasted for one month without having to recharge, but let's face it, most of us have an extra set of cables so that we can charge it at work as well as home. I bought the cradle when I got my T5, and that works just fine with the LifeDrive (thank you Palm, for NOT changing the plug style). I do play games on the LifeDrive, but mostly stylus operated games, so the control issues stated in other reviews don't really affect me. Overall, I think it's a great unit and look forward to using it for both work and play. Pros: Screen size and quality, enormous memory, built-in WiFi Cons: Response time, heat generation, size (as compared to other Palms) "The mobile P.A. for the Pro on the Go" AHDesign on  April 1, 2006 User rating: 9 I purchased my Lifedrive in late November or early December, and have used it to its fullest potential and more. As a professional with a mobile service and hundreds of contacts, files, and dates to keep track of, this little device, compared to lugging my laptop around, could not make life any easier. I keep all of my corporate information on my Lifedrive, so whenever I am at a clients office I can send them any file they would like right there in the conference room, whether via bluetooth directly to there comps or put it up on there server for all to view. The best thing about this device is a REAL webbrowser and a REAL email client. I can get the whole email, as it was sent, WITH attachments. Admitably, not all att. can be seen directly on the PDA. I take it everywhere I go. Friends, business, family, trips. With the ability to view videos and documents, I keep a world of entertainment on it too. Yes, the music player is not theater quality, and yes the video is not movie screen spectacular, but this is not an iPod, DVD player, or a PS2. It's a Personal Digital Assistant. And it does that like NO other device out there. Now add a fully intergrated phone...and you quite possible have the best little portable device on the market. Pros: WiFi, Bluetooth, SMS, IrDA, REAL email, View PDA, Edit MS Office Doc: Word, Excel, PP, Play music, watch videos in several formats, and a 4Gb HD Cons: No database edit (access would be great), Screen kind of small, resolution O.K., minor software issues at first "Fantastic palm. Great if you don't want to lug around a laptop." political_freak on  April 10, 2006 User rating: 9 This is a great plam pad that can do it all. It has all the connectivity you could want and enough storage for movies, music, photos, documents and more! Great buy! Pros: Large Storage, Beautiful Screen, Full Length Movies, Music, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Cons: Long wait for reset. "Read many of the other reviews, I'm pretty happy." jbr92 on  April 13, 2006 User rating: 8 I had a Siemens smart phone before this. It made me nuts! I'd rather have both the pda and the cell. This item being blue-tooth, it works great with my razr. I agree that it is a bit slow and I have had it reset once in 2 weeks. I suppose I have worked with Microsofts OS for so long, it really didn't phase me much. I have found that loading large apps to the hard drive was challenging and the Palm support as well as the software support was incorrect in their suggestions. I would not think this is a tool for those, who may be at all, technically challenged. I have found that it has met all of my expectations so far. I went with a score of 8, only because of Palms support and (lack) of knowledge base. I LOVE gadgets and enjoy the challenges they present. I have recently purchased the GPS add on and the new 1g SDII with usb connect-ability. So I'll post back on that. Oh, and the price? I paid over 700.00 for that smart phone. So this was 429.00 and my Razr was 99.00. I think this was the better deal! 8-) Pros: Sturdy and Secure. I had a pocket PC before and I am so far much happier with this. My needs are simple, and it's probably more than I really need, but I'm a die hard gadget freak. Cons: Apps seem slow, sync's took some figuring out for loading large files, support is lacking. "Good all around portable widget" Anonymous on  April 14, 2006 User rating: 7 I've had my Palm Lifedrive sice September 2005, and have found it to be a pretty solid performer since I updated it with Lifedrive Update 2.0. That solved the randomly weird crashes it *used* to have. I use it for everything from keeping track of my schedule to reading e-books to updateing Word and Excel files, listening to music to surfing the web to survive those horrid meetings that one seems to get stuck in--and they seem to last forever (thank the Goddess for WiFi in my office building!!)... I've been very pleased with battery life and the optional Palm IR keyboard--it doesn't drain the battery very fast, and I can leave the 'beam recieve' turned off which improves the longevity and usability. Over all, this was worth the price--albiet I paid a discounted one thru my company's employee purchase programme...I don't regret getting this at all! Pros: *Almost* a laptop...just a lot smaller Cons: A little slow on the web... "Crash......................" Jmaxxz on  April 17, 2006 User rating: 2 Beware!!!!!!!!!!! Pros: Worked for 5 min Cons: it crashes all the time "Good solid features - Dies way too soon" Anonymous on  April 17, 2006 User rating: 5 I own and have used my Lifedrive for two weeks. I also own a Tungsten/T so I am familiar with the product. I was in need to store and transfer large files - which the lifedrive does for me very well. Overall the product performs exactly like its advertisement says. I did have a problem with the life of the unit once it was turned off. I pruchased my first LifeDrive at Circuit City. This unit lost all of its "brains" overnight. I would charge it during the day and by the next day - no power in the battery. Circuit City was great! They swapped units with no issues. The second unit worked better. It, at least, will last 3 days before running out of battery power with it turned off. While I find this *VERY* annoying - it does not appear to ruin the unit for me. Others may find this to be a real problem though. Since it occurred on two units, I assume it is a design flaw, not a unit flaw. So good unit, but buyer beware!!! Pros: Good features, most work pretty well. Overall descent product. Cons: Loses power in 3 days. Slow. "Great Device" avery1410 on  April 19, 2006 User rating: 9 Pros: Great for work Cons: occasional freezing "Still crazy about the Palm..." rkochevar on  April 27, 2006 User rating: 9 I've been a fan of Palms since the US Robotics days. I recently had my old Palm III stolen, and decided to go the whole nine and spring for the LifeDrive. I've had it for a couple of months and have been very pleased. In addition to all the typical stuff I've always loved about Palm products -- integration with Outlook, simple interface, solid performance -- I've found it to be a perfectly serviceable mp3 player, a fun game platform (and I thought I'd never see Spaceward Ho! again once I trashed my Mac LC!), and a handy portable hard drive. I've just played a little bit with using it to access Web sites -- my impression is that the shortcomings have more to do with most Web content not being designed for such a small screen, rather than problems with the Palm itself. (It will be interesting to see what happens as tiny Web-ready devices become more widespread!) Of course you could find purpose-built devices that would do each of these things better -- this will never replace a PSP or an iPod -- I find that it does all of them well enough to be worth carrying around all day, every day. Pros: Amazing display, extensive capabilities, nice storage Cons: Slow at times and a bit heavy "Great device" RobDen65 on  May 15, 2006 User rating: 8 A wonderful PDA. I am not well-versed on other PDAs but this one is pretty darn reliable. And it looks pretty! Pros: Does everything but wash the car Cons: a bit bulky "Finally! A PDA that complements a laptop." syciprider on  May 28, 2006 User rating: 8 Finally, something for packrats like me. As a busy worker bee who manages a couple of dozen ppl and who also goes to school on the side, every minute I am idle must be used for studying, reading or looking up references for my work and people. The Life Drive is the answer for me. Everything from my MBA papers to my music lessons to must dos can be carried around and viewed at anywhere. Hardware issues: IIRC there was a firmware update that took care of the crashes mentioned below? I have not experienced any unintenional hard or soft resets. Price: Palm has discounted the LD so those of you who were on the fence because of the price should reconsider I got mine for $380. Pros: The screen can be set up portrait/landscape AND left hand/right hand. Finally, a nod for lefties like me. Wi-fi sync. Life Drive Manager is an Explorer type app that works separately from Palm Desktop. This makes it easy to manage the HD. TONS of space for files. I keep all my school documents and large, image filled reference files (pdf) in it without the need for SD cards. No Wifi in the bus? Sync it in the morning and it loads you up with news to read for the trip. Files stay intact even if you run out of battery power. The sync/charge cable will work with inexpensive ($5.00) car chargers that accept a USB plug. No need to buy proprietary car kits for juice on the road. Seamless transition from my old Palm (Tungsten E). Cons: HD "memory" slower than RAM/ROM. But this is true for every HD equipped gadget and PCs. Sometimes a song will stutter or Graffiti will take a blink or two to show letters after you input it. It's heavy and a bit thick. Forget about sticking it in your shirt pocket. I keep mine in an aluminum case and my front pants pocket. A pro here is you can break someone's skull with it. Battery life: I haven't tested it very well but it seems that it gives up a day of normal use compared to a non HD equipped Palm. Tnx Pros: So many little extras that enhance useability Cons: Big and heavy. HD slower than RAM/ROM "Bluetooth and LD....what a joke" LD wasted money on  June 1, 2006 User rating: 1 Do not believe all the hype about using this unit with ur cellphone using Bluetooth. I have had a LD for 6 weeks already and have had no problems with it at all. Thw WiFi works great and connecting to my computer and transfering files great. My problem started when I wanted to upgrade my cellphone to one with Bluetooth so I can use it so I can go on the internet when I'm out on the road. Well I'm with Sprint and not one of their phones are compatable with the Bluetooth. In fact only 2 networks have phones that are compatable...Cingular and T-mobile. Here is where it gets really funny. Palmone gives you a list of phones that will work....well out of the entire list Cingular only currently sell 2 of the phones and T-mobile only sells 1....the rest are discontinued. Now Palmone have also come out with an update but this is for phones that are even older. When speaking with Palmone Tech support about this all the girl would say to me is read the website and then she hung up on me. As far as I am concerned it is a waste of time and money for Palmone to even advertise that they have Bluetooth on this PDA. All I can say is Buyer Beware.... Pros: great screen size, and features Cons: Bluetooth not compatable with ceellphones "Very good, but died after six months" Sussuaran on  June 2, 2006 User rating: 5 The unit is superb at what it does. Regarding video, once you forget about the built-in video player and make the switch to TCPMP, you'll be fine and amazed. However, my Lifedrive started exhibiting strange behaviours a week ago (six months after purchase). At first, I had to push the reset button every time I wanted to switch it on. Then it'd start turning on in the middle of the night by itself and draining battery. Then, when I went to format it for the second time on the same day, the image became heavily distorted and the device turned off, never to turn back on again. Beware, 4GB micro-HDs inside PDAs is still a very new (and thus unstable) technology. Pros: Superb set of applications, wireless connectivity options, great storage and video playback (with 3rd party app) Cons: Too thick, unstable unless LifeDrive Update 2.0 is installed "good idea gone bad" pmpmpm on  August 11, 2006 User rating: 3 lifedrive was a great idea, but mine (two of them) never really worked out. very unstable platform for relatively non-rigorous use. first set died at 6 months, which hurts considering price and dependency on data. paid $40 to expedite replacement. second one died at 6 months. palm wanted $150 to repair. $400 + $40 + $150 = an extremely expensive 12 month experience (this coming from someone who bought the original palm, a palmIII, a palmIIIc, a palmV, and a tungstenC - so I was a die-hard...) and then there was lifedrive ... Pros: good screen, great storage, wifi... Cons: unstable platform, unreliable, no company backing "Battery STINKS" crystalviolet5 on  August 15, 2006 User rating: 4 I am on LifeDrive # 2. The first one wouldn't fully charge. I called Palm & they told me to reset it and wait another 2 hours. I did, and it did nothing. I exchanged it for another one and seem to be having the exact same problem. For such an expensive piece of equipment, you'd think Palm could get something as simple as the battery right!!! Pros: Tons of features.... Cons: Stinky battery "Not a good peice of electronics" sattay74 on  August 23, 2006 User rating: 3 I used it for 2 weeks. Its not a secure, stable PDA. We never know what can make it reboot ( or hang ) like Windows Me. Password can easily be escaped by just rebooting it. In 2 weeks I dont remember how many times it restarted and at last its hanged and never started and I had to return it. Pros: software that supports many document format including imaging Cons: not stable, not reliable, not secure "Simply a piece of junk" larryaustin1 on  August 25, 2006 User rating: 1 The Palm life drive is the biggest piece of garbage the company has ever made. I first bought mine in Oct. 2006. Since that time I have had to exchange it 4 times because the devices would not boot. The reason is the hard drive would always go bad. I have my 4th life drive now and it also has some problems with the power switch. I wish I could turn this device in for a refund. Anyone who buys this device is making a big mistake. Pros: able to view movies Cons: hard drive chashes and device does not boot. "Good PDA for professional use," balug on  September 3, 2006 User rating: 6 One of my first PDA, i wanted to buy HP ipaq, (now i regret why i didnt go for HP), Life drive has a pretty unstable OS crashes too frequently atleat 15 times a day, especially if u are playing games. And it is battery draining, i also have a loose connetion with my charger port on the pda within 2 months . there is a lag in switching from one application to another, and there is a static (some scratchy noise)while playing audio.compared to windows mobile OS palm looks less glamorous and less bright. The system hangs if i play motoracer for 10 minutes and takes about 2 minutes to come back to life. I have problem with java applications when using the browser. And the notepad (compared to windows) has a limited scroll for each page. and you will have to switch to another page bofore u jot down anything. Pros: Large screen, wifi bluetooth are good,addit lT is useful. Cons: bulky, less battery life, frequent crashes, "Very Expensive Paperweight" Chshrecat1 on  September 9, 2006 User rating: 1 Many users (myself included) are reporting problems with the LifeDrive shutting off and not turning on again. Palm denies this is an ongoing problem (design flaw?) and offers a return and repair, but the repair on my LifeDrive lasted exactly 2 months before it shut down again. It is now being repaired again. Definitely NOT worth the money; it's completely undependable Pros: 4g Memory, Cons: Unreliable, expensive "Gives me the impression that I haven’t had bought anything so useful (and cool) for the last years" jmaglian on  September 14, 2006 User rating: 9 Just great, a very nice balance between what I need in my daily professional work periods and my relaxing time periods within. Shows extreme flexibility. When you are working, it helps me to be more efficient sparing me some precious minutes, when I am not working I can choose-: quite fun games? music? internet? read some news articles ? Two of them at the same time? That’s a possibility! It really gives you the impression you can do or discover anything, reach anyone you want It works very well with my cell phone (witch is a bit old) synchronizing extremely ease using I.R. Gives me the impression that I haven’t had bought anything so useful (and cool) for the last years! Great cost/benefit relation! If you have the chance (and, of course, really need it) take it. Just remember-: It is not a toy. Pros: Great cost / benefit relation! Cons: Little heavy, it should come with a touch screen protection (seems to be always with fingerprints) "Crashes - unreliable - terrible!" KerryLA on  September 14, 2006 User rating: 1 I upgraded to the LifeDrive from a very old Palm Visor. I used that old PDA reliably for years. Thinking I'm getting another great Palm product, I invested in the LifeDrive. It worked for a couple of weeks. I went on vacation and didn't use it. When I returned, I had my first loop and reset and had to do a hard erase. Things went down hill from there. Over the last two months, I've had to call customer support at least once a week because I would get an error message or the device would reset itself. Every time, the advice was to do a quick erase - making it impossible to use the LifeDrive outside of the office (I would lose everything I added). Then when the 90 day free customer support ended and they wanted to charge me $25 for the call (to resolve a reoccuring problem mind you). I protested and asked to speak to a manager to waive the fee. The tech hung up on me. They should pay me for the number of hours I've devoted to trouble-shooting this device! If I hadn't gone on vacation after purchasing the lifedrive, I would have noticed the problems and returned it within the 30 day period. Now I'm stuck with a $400 device that can't be used. Help!!! I read on a review of the life drive on Amazon that there are rumors of a lawsuit. Any truth to that? We should be compensated not only for the lemon but for the time we lost trying to use it! Pros: Lots of features Cons: Sad that you can't reliably use the features! "A waste of $400" colossians128 on  September 16, 2006 User rating: 3 Hotsyncs are very flaky! WiFi internet connections very flaky! S/W downloads from PalmOne mostly don't run after hotsync, or else fail to recognize registration key code. Don't waste your money with Palm, go with Dell. Pros: A lot of s/w available Cons: Can't download most s/w however. "lifedrive hanged after only 1 month of use" azmiahmad on  September 22, 2006 User rating: 1 Dont buy such a lousy product. It jammed after only 1 month of use. The user support was slow in responding and even after 1 week of calls they only wanted to change my charger but not the unit?!? There is something very wrong with them if they don't back up such a pda. Pros: before it hanged, it worked perfect Cons: no user support. user phone support not helpful "Not what I expected" oscarcolorado on  October 4, 2006 User rating: 4 I'd better bought a TREO. The mp3 player is noisy, a 4GB hard drive looks obsolete with all those big SD cards around. My LifeDrive crashes a lot, and I mean A LOT! It's heavy and bulky. Screen looks good and it's big, that's good. Think twice before buying one, I think there's a lot of PDAs to suit your needs. Pros: Screen, 4Gb space Cons: Heavy, bulky, slow, crashes a lot "It's really a small computer.." Maggiedoll84 on  October 15, 2006 User rating: 9 I love my lifedrive, although I'm not even sure it could be classified as a PDA.. It seems to be the first in a line of small actual handheld computers. The specs may not be impressive compared to a laptop or desktop, but for something that fits in the palm of my hand? AWESOME! I'm sure it will take awhile to perfect this concept, and for it to catch on, but it is very much a nearly full-functional computer. I look back at desktops and laptops I've had as a child and college student.. It's probably of similar specs of my first laptop. With the right software (much of which comes with it) it can be everything.. a fully functional computer right in my hand. Great for games on the go, for having huge documents at the touch of a button, news and other RSS feeds, and a library of music. Pros: lots of storage space, doubles as an MP3 player Cons: larger than most PDAs "Does it all!" cathy323 on  October 28, 2006 User rating: 9 I love this device. I haven't had the reset problems folks report and I'm a pretty intense audio and video user. WiFi is a little slow, but it works. I'm much more pleased with the audio quality through headphones than with the integrated speaker. Pros: Video, screen size Cons: Speaker output "Behind the times" frankwes1 on  November 9, 2006 User rating: 4 Besides the fact that the LifeDrive freezes a lot and you have to take the memory card out and start over, it is severely retarded in available GB. When you can buy a Creative Zen Vision: W with 30GB or 60GB and have files including photos,documents and MP3 on there, AND it has a calendar, I just can't justify keeping my LifeDrive anymore. It has become outdated. When they make a Palm that truly does it all and has 30GB, that will get my attention. Pros: Lg screen, Palm calendaring Cons: Not enough GB hard-drive, freezes "i can't believe this" crazyjob on  November 22, 2006 User rating: 1 I really do not recommend anyone to buy this product, i bought it for $400 since it was on sale. I thought i have a good deal, but suddenly it frozed and it just totally stopped working in just within 24hour period. holy! If you guys really want to get a nice PDA go for the Palm TX. Pros: Can support multiple files, including MP3 Avi etc Cons: Constantly freezing, please read ahead "Great toy, if you adjust your expectations downward" fr114 on  November 23, 2006 User rating: 6 I did plenty of research on this one, making sure to check the negative reviews as well as positive ones to make sure there wasn't anything there I couldn't live with. I did notice that a lot of negative reviews came from previous PDA owners who had something to compare to, while those who were new to the gadget seemed much more satisfied. That being said, I am new to the PDA world myself. However, the one comment I read frequently was the complaint that the device crashed frequently. I'm very sorry to report that it's true. It's like a bad dream where Win 95/98 comes back to haunt me. It doesn't seem to be any particular program that causes the crash, as it's crashed after running a variety of applications. Once it's crashed, it reboots itself and after what seems like forever, it brings up the "date and time" screen and asks you to confirm. This date and time screen has itself caused the device to crash at least once. How sad is that! Despite this rather large flaw, I've gotten quite attached to the little gadget, so I've decided that I'm just going to adjust my expectations downward a little bit, just like the good old Pentium I - Win 95 days, where you would expect it to crash two or three times daily. Perhaps someday they will come out with a more stable operating system. In the meantime, I will try to enjoy the multitude of tasks that it can potentially perform, and ignore the annoying crash and reboot sequence that occurs seemingly at random. I should also mention that if you plan to use it as a replacement mp3 player, you will be a tad disappointed with the fact that it 'skips' every time the hard drive light comes on (so, every time you try to run another program, or anytime something runs in the background). So, not a very functional music player, although better than a kick in the pants if you don't want to spend another 200 bucks after dropping 500 bucks on this puppy. Keep in mind that although I've been hard on this particular model, I read the reviews for the TX and it seemed to have similar problems with crashing, so I don't think it's a model-specific problem. Pros: Lots of built in features Cons: Unstable operating system "REPAIR, REPAIR" Canwood1 on  December 15, 2006 User rating: 3 Bought this unit with high expectaions as I have been a Palm user for the past 8 years. Lifedrive unit crashes often and processor seems to lag between applictions. I have had the unit for 5 weeks now and had to return it to Palm as the hard drive failed. I was without the unit for 1 week and the replacement they sent me has to be sent back as the battery will not come up to charge and has no capacity. I will now be without the unit for another week and more shipping charges. Very unreliable!!!! Pros: Hard Drive Size Cons: Screen looks washed out in any type of sunlight, heavy, crashes often, in 2X for repair so far "Excellent PDA; A must for Palm fans" Lardo on  December 20, 2006 User rating: 9 As a long time Palm user, I must say this product is quite an innovation. My problem of disc space has been addressed by the 4 Gig HD and the SD slot comes in handy if you need more space. However, the slow processing time is evident as it takes quite some hang time when launching applications. Fortunately, 3rd Party enhancement softwares (i.e. Shark Cache, Resco Locker, etc.) are available and can significantly speed-up things on the LifeDrive. Overall, this is a fine product specially suited for the professional consumers. Pros: 4Gig HD; Brilliant Screen; Good aesthetics Cons: Slow processor/response time "Great Product! This is my first PDA." ix_envy_xi on  December 22, 2006 User rating: 8 This is my first PDA so I am not familiar with other devices. The Lifedrive is a great product in my opinion. I am a high school student and I am using it to take notes in school and also as a replacement media player. Transfers between my computer and the lifedrive were unexpectedly fast. Screen is great. Music and video playback are mediocre(Haven't figured out how to fast-forward when playing back video if possible). Battery life is also mediocre. It seem pretty sturdy but I am still being very careful with it. I really like the Documents to Go feature because it makes it so much easier for me to takes notes or type up papers while in school. Overall I am very much so satisfied with the Palm Lifedrive. Pros: The Lifedrive has many great features. Easy transfers between PC and PDA. Cons: Slightly heavy and big, but it is expected because of the built in hard drive and all of it's features. "Worth the money" wrirscinst on  January 2, 2007 User rating: 8 There have been many negative comments all probably warrented but I guess I got lucky. I recieved mine as a gift bought from best buy, and I have had to do one soft reset do to user error. A couple off issues I want to address are volume, wi-fi and downloading music, with real. The volume is effected by the muic that is playing, in that if it has been dubbed or transfered more than once it will loose its clarity, the same issue you will get with any other mp3 player. On the preferences you will find a volume boost option this is neat and actually works., it even boosts up the volume on the external speaker. The wi-fi is very good, but logging on tho the internet is slow do not get up-set because you know that this product runs with 802.11b, it is not g so it will be a little slower, but you will get internet and cruise the web within minutes. Rax FILES do not transfer to the lifedrive nor really any other device that is not REAL. Buy software or cd-rw and rip them into Mp3, then transfer it works. All in all this device is great and does what it is supposed to do. Pros: Easy to use, Works good for buisness and game. Cons: Battery life could be better. "great until it inevitably stops working" dan2779 on  January 24, 2007 User rating: 3 Man, what a bummer! I really liked this product; I even spent $30 to upgrade to pockettunes 4.0. Now it won't turn on (I don't think it's related to that download, because it's done this before but turned on with "reset", which it won't do now), and I'm really disappointed. Please don't buy it; it's unreliable, unstable, and obsolete at this point. You can get a TX with a 4GB SD card for less money (or probably an 8GB, for that matter), and it's totally reliable (at least from what I hear), and much faster despite the slower processor. Aside from that, hard drives use a ton of power, and if you are constantly switching back and forth between applications you can kiss your battery life goodbye. So, get the TX if you need a Palm. Pros: basically a mini-computer, when it works Cons: slow due to unnecessary and obsolete 4GB hard drive "Excellent PDA" phattirepilot on  January 31, 2007 User rating: 9 I've had a very good experience using my Lifedrive for the past year now. It's the most capable PDA I've ever had. In previous PDA's I would synchronize all the basic, select info I wanted to carry with me. With the Lifedrive I just take everything with me. I use Dataviz Smart-to-Go to sync MS Access files to my PDA and it works quite well. I also use Dataviz Beyond Contacts to sync multiple Outlook folders with the PDA and it also works very well. Other than that I haven't found much need for any other 3rd party software. I think this is a very functional and elegant machine and I've really enjoyed using it the past year. Pros: Carry excel and word docs with you without a conversion step, WiFi hooks up great for e-mail and web, holds LOTS of stuff--sync all your file folders and take it all with you. Cons: There's a little bit of a lag because of the hard drive, but the lag is nothing like a desktop or laptop... it's just that some operations are a little bit slower than your typical PDA. "A good idea spoiled by faulty hardware." brewerw on  February 4, 2007 User rating: 2 I am a physician who depends on my handheld to keep track of the constantly changing minutiae of medical science: Medications, side effects, drug interactions, protocols for therapy, formulae for interpreting lab data, etc. I also keep track of administrative memoranda and changing rules for coverage and compliance with state and federal laws. I need a reliable device. This device locks up frequently and has had to be replaced 4 times. Palm now tells me that I should not carry it with me. I thought I purchased a handheld not a desktop computer. Furthermore the keyboard sold to go with the handheld has never worked and attempts to use it freeze the operating system and require a hard reset. I am disgusted with this inadequate product and am considering a switch to a different vendor. Unfortunately, I purchased a 3 year service agreement. I asked palm to exchange this device for a cheaper, more reliable handheld, but they refused. I guess they prefer to mail me a new one every two months. Don't buy this piece of junk. Pros: Lots of memory Cons: My device has been replaced 4 times in 8 months for hard drive failure. The palm representative told me it was my fault the hard drive failed because I carry the handheld in my pocket. "Very bad experience" brutus201 on  February 6, 2007 User rating: 2 I actually enjoyed using the Lifedrive when it was operating, altho I had to reset it way too often. However, in the space of a little more than a year, I had to send it to Palm for repairs 3 times! They finally just shipped me a new unit and, sure enough, it died after about 3 months. With that kind of reliability, I'll never but another one. Pros: when it worked, it was pretty functional Cons: I had to reset way too often and just died several times "versatile, multi-use, perfect for my needs." jwgeorgen on  February 14, 2007 User rating: 9 I have used several Palm devices since the IIIe and the LifeDrive is by far the most versatile and reliable. I use my LifeDrive primarily for business purposes and initiate all of my paperwork on my handheld. Using Mark/Space's Missing Sync, I am able to keep my calendars and contacts synchronized with my Mac desktop and MacBook via either the USB cable or Bluetooth. When I attend a seminar or workshop, I can easily enter notes using my wireless keyboard and never have to be concerned about running out of space or power. Then when I sync my LifeDrive with my computer, I can open the doc in Word and review. After loosing information countless times on my Zire 71 when the power button was accidentally depressed when in transport, the non-volatile memory and safety position on the power switch guarantee that will not happen again. I find the customizable buttons to be quite helpful by putting my frequently-used applications in easily accessible locations. Then, of course, there is my non-professional use. Although I have an iPod, I find that I use the LifeDrive frequently to listen to MP3s and to run occasional photo slideshows. I can do some rudimentary web browsing and can collect my mail whenever I have access to the internet. The TFT screen is sharp and the ability to view in both landscape and portrait formats makes my LifeDrive even more personally adaptable. As far as I'm concerned, the LifeDrive is the perfect handheld for my professional AND recreational purposes. Pros: Non-volatile memory, safety position on on/off switch, bluetooth, wifi, bundled software, ample storage, landscape and portrait views Cons: occasional soft resets, problems avoided by using shareware application, "OnGuard" "Ever Learning, but not able to come to the truth." philaphilly on  February 17, 2007 User rating: 8 I bought my in Nov, 06. Maybe I made it through the crash phase. Mine hasn't crashed and burned yet! I keep adding and adding stuff. I have created numerous excel files for work that I transport to my work computer. I have been burning MP3's and DVD's which is pretty cool. I'm looking to add GPS. Pros: Excel files, Drive Mode for work, MP3, Loads DVD's Cons: Wish it had external battery replacement. "Not the product I thought it should be!" SJ9873 on  February 26, 2007 User rating: 3 I have owned my Palm LifeDrive for over a year now. It has plenty of storage space on the drive for pictures, music, and other stuff. The downside to this device is that I continually have problems with the HotSync software. The HotSync software hangs during synchronization repeatedly. I have reformatted and reloaded this PDA more times than I care to count, always with the same problems. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the Palm software to my notebook computer, including a complete format and reload of the notebook computer and software with same results. Palm Support sucks. No live person to talk to, only a "Users Forum" which was of little help. For what I have invested in this device in software, accessories, and time spent trying to make it work right, it definitely ain't worth what I paid for it! Pros: Plenty of storage space on the internal hard drive. Can perform the tasks of 3 different devices. Cons: Continuous problems with synchronization. "Nothing but headaches." gabe92577 on  March 9, 2007 User rating: 4 I had issues with this device from the beginning. The charging cable doesnt connect very well to the device. Support is like pullling teeth, they want to fight doing anything for you. My device lasted until a few days outside the manufacturers warranty and died. Browsing the internet is not practical at all, it is extremely slow and you cant see any of the screen. Do not buy. Pros: Movies, mp3s, internet access. Cons: Browsing is cumbersome, charging issues, no support. "Lousy product, even worse customer service" smackey17 on  March 23, 2007 User rating: 1 It's big and it's horsey, but with all it's supposed capability I thought it would be worth the extra weight. But from the very beginning I had problems. It gets very hot and tends to shut down on its own. The screen interface is very quirky and so I almost always had to use the keyboard to enter data. After about two weeks I was regretting my decision to buy this thing, but because I paid over $400 I tried to make it work. The final straw came when the thing just died. Dead. Nothing. Got the usual customer service runaround. A couple of hangups by the phone menu system. Finally, I got a live body after a 30-minute wait. I was told that their records showed I bought the piece of crap 1 year before I actually had. To verify that I wasn't lying I was supposed to MAIL in the proof of purchase and receipt. I mailed in copies then waited to hear back. After ten days I tried calling them. Again, a couple of system hang ups. Another 30 minutes on hold. Then I get a rep who can't find what I'd sent them. I offered to fax it to him then and there. He said "no." I got pissed off and hung up. Not the most mature thing to do, but at this point I was feeling like a fool. I tossed the LifeDrive in the garbage can that afternoon. I feel better. Pros: On paper it sounds great. Cons: In reality the product is dud "Jurassic PDA Effort" vmaxmaxx on  March 26, 2007 User rating: 1 Upgraded from Palm Vx to this... what a mistake! Too many Sync problems to list, support service is poor, terrible battery life. Going to donate it to Fred Flintstone! Pros: Good Paper Weight Cons: Good Paper Weight "Complete Deception... see why." eliepe on  March 28, 2007 User rating: 1 Palm OS is totaly uncompatible with today's standards. Despite the basics, avaible in every palm since more than 10 years, the lifedriver doesn`t offer you any up-to-date technical possibilities. Theee are some reason why: 1-This palm offers a rather primitive web access program, AND is not upgradable. No un-to-date Javascript, no flash media, no e-mail attachement dowload, no youtube, no internet radio, no videos, no sound. No information what so ever on the palm site to inform you about any other internet fonctionality. 2- Every single applications is uncompatible with the widely used file formats such as ADOBE PDF, MS Office , WMA sound format, and many others. You must have your laptop with you every minute to be functional. With pocket pc, everything is compatible. No fake ms word or excel and no powerpoint limitation, no pdf limitation! 3- Skype, MSN, YahooMessenger, are all unavailable on this palm. What is wi-fi, internet, if you can`t even us any of these every-day-used very popular programs? 4- The 4GB are great, but any palm or pocket pc coupled with a memory card, of 2, 4 ,8GB or any available and expendable size, does the same job. The 4GB are not weel integrated and most of the applications can't run on it. You better look at the only 64MB system memero it offers... rapidly filled if you are a moderate user. 5- No CAMERA. 2007 people. NO CAMERA. not even a VGA camera. every cell phone selled today has a camera. 6-Heavy, way too big. Better cary a 10 inch sony laptop with all the functionality you can imagine! 7-Every single available application on this palm is deceiving. If i was in 1991, i would be astonished. but wake up people, we are in 2007 and pocketpc offers it all! 8- Sound quality extremele poor. If you like music, better buy a 10$ noname mp3 player. Despite, they don't offer any earphone in the pack. (1 dollar shop sells it for 1$!!). What are we paying 500$ again? .... Its been only a week i've been carying my lifedrive, and i could give you another 100 issues.... beleive me, search for something else. Today's pda offers and include GPS, G3, GSM Phone, 2 Cameras,FM radio, TV, compatible software and much much more. Lifedrive is of another era. Thanks Pros: 4GB, handy, doog battery life Cons: Uncompatibility, Internet , crashes continiously "WASTE OF MONEY" MEDICPA on  April 9, 2007 User rating: 1 This is probably one of the worst pda's on the market and the support from palm is horrible. I bought a Dell AIXM and cut my loses never again palm. Pros: too many problems with the unit to find pros Cons: slow, problems with wifi, sync. problems locks up ....... "Terrible Device & Lousy Support" snichols1968 on  October 16, 2007 User rating: 2 Bought in Oct 2006. After 1 1/2 months had to send in for warranty repair. Software crashes all of the time. Downloading is slow. Internet and Audio cause crashes. Technical support is a joke!! They are not friendly or supportive. After one year is has failed 4 different times and is currently not working. At 9 months I called customer support for a 2nd repair and they said it was out of warranty (supposed to be 1 year). Battery life is terrible! Cannot download most formats. Finally went over to a Windows Mobile device. SOOO much easier and better. I have owned 5 different Palm devices prior to this. I will NEVER buy another palm again! This company does not even support what it sells. Do yourself a favor and stay away from any Palm devices. Pros: Nice screen and button Cons: Everything else "Piece of Junk - Went back to my T-3" Tech Junkie on  November 22, 2007 User rating: 2 I think Palm knew this product before they ever put it up for sale. I haven't even had mine for a year & they have already stopped selling it. It has a locking system so it won't accidently turn on when, but, if an alarm goes off, it will turn on and NEVER turn off. Then the reset wipes everything off. - At this point all I'll use it for is games!!! $400. for a "gameboy"!!!!! Pros: Does alot of stuff Cons: Resets, won't hold stylist, looses info, battery runs out "Great work tool, or GPS" ericmiram on  January 4, 2008 User rating: 7 I use mine mainly as a GPS device now ! A bit too bulky... Pros: Versatile, Wi-Fi, Cons: Size, Price "Great Tool, But The Iphone may takes its place" RE/MAX REALTOR on  January 14, 2008 User rating: 5 I can call in for a very simple reason and I have to pay them. We never seem to ever be able to use a remedy other than a hard reset which is a real scary thing for me as a older palm I own caused a great deal of anxiety for me when it was reset and now not being able to sync to my computer. I also have several desk top Icons of data that was saved there and is not on the palm due to the way they chose to reset the palm. So far the new LifeDrive has reset and syncs with no problem. The new I phone though is capable of just about everything the Palm will do for me. Pros: Capable of many things and a good solution for most Cons: Technical Support always wants to charge you & reset is always their solution "Many little problems deprave this good palm" Diogo Cysne on  February 17, 2008 User rating: 6 Talking about PDAs, the Palm LifeDrive was my biggest disappointment, but not my worst review. Well, the first thing you think when see the Life Drive is: "Wow! This must be a great PDA!". Yes, I agree, the Life Drive's design is majestic, imposing. But the problems begin here: it's heavy! The LifeDrive is too heavy and big for a PDA, so it's very, very, VERY difficult to carry it on your pocket (don't try it, serious)! The generous HD is Life Drives wondest and worst characteristic! It is a powerful HD (4GB), no one doubts that, but it's too heavy for the Intel 416MHz processor! Result: the LifeDrive brakes a lot! Even in single operations (like seeing photos) you are forced to wait a considerable amount of time! It's so slow that even the webpages are affected, becoming to slow to load (even with a good Wi-Fi connection)! An irritant thing for a PDA! The Palm INC says that the LifeDrive is excellent for media, but don't believe: the MP3 quality sound is bad (not terrible, but much more inferior than the other Palms) and the video exhibition is really boring, BRAKING A LOT (see? Other HD's fault)! So, if you want to use the LifeDrive as a MP4, give up from this idea! LifeDrive's screen is really marvelous. Its brightness can overshadow the excellent Tungsten E2! And a good thing: that intolerable Grafitti space is digital, so you can tunr it on whenever you want (I never turned it on). Concluding my review, the LifeDrive is a good PDA, but it's too overpriced when you consider its several problems! Any other cheapper palm can do what LifeDrive does: the Tungsten E2 is an excellent media player and the TX is astounding for work. And the LifeDrive is an extinct Palm product, so finding it in good conditions can be very difficult. Pros: The 4GB Hard Drive, good Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connection, the astounding screen and the excellent design. Cons: The 4GB Hard Drive (deja vú), a bad media support, insignificant battery life and the huge weight for a palm. Too slow for lots of operations, braking lots and lots of times (HD's fault)! "When its working its great..." macdadi on  February 23, 2008 User rating: 5 I'm a healthcare professional who wanted a mobile way to have access to drug and diagnostic information, The Lifedrive seemed to fit the bill...for a while. I'm on my second one in less than a year, and the second one just died. Palm doesn't care about supporting pdas, only phones. I've been waiting over a week for them to send me an e-mail so I can rreturn the pos. I'm looking for a windows mobile handheld... Pros: Big hard drive Cons: Flawed design; battery dies "Not worth the expense" farnkc on  April 10, 2008 User rating: 5 A throw-away device. Repair was half the price of a new one. Go with a less expensive model. Pros: does just about everything Cons: died in 18 months; expensive "Big, slow and bad screen" dlatimer_1969 on  May 8, 2008 User rating: 3 Upgraded from T3 due to desire for more memory and internet capability. Have had the unit since about August of 2006 and use it primarily for accessing medical databases. Immediately found it to be much slower to load than the T3. Wireless had limited range. Probably would have rated it about a 7 at that time. Subtle digitizer problems started about 1 year in and have progressively worsened. Apparently costs ~ 150.00 to repair. I also have a hard time moving things from internal to flash memory. Looks like it has been discontinued by Palm. For the almost 500.00 this cost when I bought it, I am very unsatisified. Pros: Large memory capacity built in (4GB) Cons: Slow loading, huge digitizer problems, short battery life     CNET is an independent and unbiased source of reviews. Please read our Editorial and Disclosure Policy. (Close Window)

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