Palm LifeDrive Mobile Manager > Reviews (5)

Great leap forward from Palm. This has solved all the memory capacity problems I had with my old Palm Tungsten T. I now have everything I want in one place, no need for memory cards, although these can be used if you wish. Bulkier than my old Palm but just as easy to carry around.

For PDA virgins: This unit combines your diary, address book, MP3 player, email, photo album and to-do lists with a calculator and an alarm clock! Sorry, it won't make your tea! Very easy to connect to your computer just follow the simple instructions on the installation CD.

For PDA up-grades: You may find some programmes don't work, ie games - its just too fast, and Graffiti 2 is slightly different but I have found this fairly easy to adjust to.

The Massive Memory: You've got 64Mb application memory plus 4Gb LifeDrive memory. Most programs will run from the Lifedrive memory with very little reduction of speed, which is much better than using a plug-inmemory card.

Features: The huge memory allows you to store and play music and video files making your MP3 player redundant unless you want to go jogging.
In "drive mode" (a Palm programme) the unit can be connected to any computer as an external USB removeable drive without any set-up requirements, enabling fast transfer of files. I have found this useful when working away from the office transferring files from my laptop to third party computers.

With built in Bluetooth and WiFi, it makes connecting to the web and doing emails easy. Although I haven't used this much, I have had no problems with this. Linking it to my mobile phone is easy.

Running Word, Excel and Powerpoint programmes really are easy as there is sufficient memory for running the programme and doing the work.

Disadvantages: Although its the same height and width as most other Palms, at 19mm thick it feels almost double the thickness of my old Palm.
There is a bit of a lag in switching on as it always fires up the hard drive as well as the flash memory.

I recommend this for heavy PDA users ie. not just a diary book.