In Brief

Surprisingly, given PalmOne's already dominant market share, the company has been gaining ground back from the Pocket PC camp this year, largely thanks to the popular Treo and Tungsten lines. But PalmOne still did not have a model that could truly challenge the Pocket PC in the multimedia area. Now it does. The LifeDrive not only handles photos, music and video with aplomb, it has an onboard 4GB hard drive to carry it all with you, hence the "LifeDrive" monicker. In addition, it's PalmOne's best Wi-Fi PDA to date, with a brand-new driver that is much more reliable and compatible than earlier implementations. Add Bluetooth for syncing and headset use, and you've got a nearly complete gadget.

What's missing? Well, we'd like to see a Treo version, with a built-in keyboard, but that's about it. Adding cellular would tax battery and weight limits, though. The bottom line is that the LifeDrive is the first Palm OS device we can really see replacing our laptop on some trips, with the addition of a portable folding keyboard. It's got all the wireless connectivity we need, as well as full-fledged email, Web browsing and Office document support. And we can use the nice big screen to show off photos of the kids and watch video downloads. We just wish it were a little less expensive.

In Depth

The LifeDrive goes overboard to make sure you can really take advantage of all that disk space with a great set of entertainment and productivity applications right in the box. Documents To Go provides MS Office viewing and editing, and VersaMail works with most POP3 and IMAP email accounts. The Blazer Web browser gets better and better with each new version, and the fast wireless access makes it shine.

A new Camera Companion app lets you offload and view pics from your SD digital camera card. And the excellent Pocket Tunes replaces the RealPlayer audio app on earlier Palms. Pocket Tunes supports Rhapsody and other protected music sources (although not WMA or iTunes, of course).

Two hardware innovations also add to the mix. The LifeDrive includes a voice recorder button, and a USB 2.0 interface for fast file transfers. Hotsyncing takes half the time with USB 2.0, and you'll need the speed for all those big media files you'll be carrying around. And of course there's that big 320-by-480 high-res color screen to show off your media.

The Media app is where you manage and view photos and videos, and even create slideshows set to music.

The LifeDrive also has a very cool new portrait/landscape display mode button that lets you switch instantly within any application for the best view. It's great for widescreen video previews and Excel spreadsheets.

The LifeDrive's wireless support is excellent, with built-in 802.11b and Bluetooth 1.1. Bluetooth lets you perform wireless syncs with your computer, and use a headset for audio playback. Both WEP and WPA encryption are supported for Wi-Fi, and we had no trouble getting connected to either our home MIMO router or at public hotspots. A 30-day free trial of T-Mobile Hotspot comes in the box.

Battery life was the one area we found the LifeDrive a little lacking, but understandably so given the heavy demands of the big screen, Wi-Fi, SD card slot and hard drive.

The bottom line is that we'd prefer it be a little cheaper and a tad smaller, but the LifeDrive lives up to its name in providing a complete platform for all your portable entertainment and productivity needs. It's not the best MP3 or video player (look to the iPod or Sony PSP for those), but it's a great all-round gadget that is a pleasure to use.