Palm LifeDrive Mobile Manager
by Palm
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Palm LifeDrive Mobile Manager
Customer Review: Life Saver
Summary: 4 Stars
I've had the LifeDrive for 2 wks now.
1. The FIRST one I bought was a complete lemon. Performed 30+ soft resets and 8+ hard resets in less than 24 hrs. The unit would crash on its own software and was extremely slow! We returned it.
2. After much convincing and seeing how much faster the one in the store was, we bought a SECOND one the next day. I upgraded from a m130 and I must say this device is wonderful!
Pros
-Storage space + SDcard compatible
-Wireless hotsync (if you have a wireless network)
-Excellent picture quality
-Music is of decent quality, but a little quiet through the speaker
-Can copy things onto it like a USB thumb drive
-Can open and edit native word and excel documents (had to convert them w/my m130)
-A lot faster (could be mine was just ancient)
-Nice calculator/converter
Cons
-Size, A bit bulky
-Pricey, around $500
Battery Life- My m130 would last 2 wks before recharging. This one doesn't compare, but it also has many more features. WiFi, Bluetooth, and music will eat up your battery. I go about 3 days before I recharge. In addition to medium usage, that's of no Bluetooth, about 30 mins of WiFi, and some light music play everyday. I also love to play games on it.
WiFi- It works super fast when I hotsync, but pretty slow for internet usage. This could be the same with any pda, not sure.
Buttons- It will only recognize one button being pressed at a time. This is mainly used for gaming. However, there is software out there to fix this (Lifekeys).
AddIt- An annoying software built into the ROM to get you to buy other software. It also significantly slows your HotSync. I find deleting it and telling the HotSync to do nothing is the best solution. It will still be on the pda, but inactive.
Integration- It has no camera or cell phone, but I am bad about not charging things. I would much rather loose the use of one device vs. two or three.
Resets- My FIRST one reset all the time. I mean every 5 mins of usage. This SECOND one has only had 2 uncommanded resets ever. Mine is very stable and I have installed numerous 3rd party apps on it. The 2 resets were caused by incompatible apps from my old palm. It also only takes 2-3 mins for mine to reset which isn't a big deal to me.
OVERALL- I give it 4 of 5 due to the initial lemon I purchased. Yes, this has some initial quirks, but it is a wonderful product after they have been dealt with.
***UPDATE***
I've now owned the lifedrive for about 2 months. It has continued to work wonderfully and has handled everything I've thrown at it. It has soft reset maybe 6 times total, but again, it's usually upon initial install/trial of 3rd party apps. No hard resets.
The only conflict I've had is connecting with the computers at work. We can't install ANYTHING on it due to a lack of priviledges. This includes the software required to use the Lifedrive as a USB drive. To solve this, I bought a USB/SD card to transfer files at work to/from my lifedrive.
Customer Review: Palm Quality Control & Customer Service is below Sub Par
Summary: 1 Stars
BUYER BEWARE! Read the reviews before considering buying this. The screws keep falling out on my palm pilot, and I've found that this is a problem that many people have had (just google "Palm Replacement Screws"). If you buy this, there's a good chance that you'll be the next person having the exact same issue - so be warned. It may not seem serious, but screws coming out basically means your unit casing will come off and that leaves the memory and all the important things you write down in your schedule UNPROTECTED.
When I contacted them about the issue, I found out what the Palm company was really all about. That is, getting your money and not looking back. Instead of admitting that their is a serious design flaw with their product, and doing what they could to rememdy the situation....they figure this is another way they ought to try and add to their profit margin. Not very smart. I'm not even asking them to apologize for their imcompitant case designs (which would help them save face imho). What really gets me is that theres enough people that have this problem for it to be clearly visible to the higher ups, and some executives at the company actually made the decision that they would trade 75 cents in screws for the loss of their company name. And If the guys running the PALM company are idiots, then it's time to look elsewhere.
I can't believe they wouldn't just ship out replacements and try to fix the product designs. But as I reseacrch the net to try and find some decent replacement screws for my own unit in the meantime, I just keep finding more and more stories of good people (who don't have problems with screws coming out of other small electronics btw) who are in the same pathetic PALM ownership boat as me. Am I ever sorry I bought the unit. Besides the screws, it has reset on me on a number of occasions and luckily I'm religious about backing up data. Still, you lose some entries and its a major pain. In fact, I did miss a meeting once because I missed reentering it after the unit reset and lost data.
Well Palm won't be fattening their margins on me anymore, and I hope you heed the warning I give. I am in the market for a new Handheld, but I'll NEVER allow myself to get swindled by them again. They could've used the problem as an opportunity to show their customers that they do value us and score some points. Unfortunately for them and for us customers, the cold response I've gotten from them tells me that they really could care less and do not have a long term outlook on what it means to sell a business product as important as a scheduling device. It's best to stay away from them. I'm through giving PALM any more business. If you find a better company, please do share.
Customer Review: Mine is perfect
Summary: 5 Stars
I had the pleasure of reading some of your reviews, and quite frankly, I don't know if I should feel fortunate or laughing out loud, not to be rude, but literally, given that there is absolutely nothing wrong with mine.
After you received your LifeDrive, the unit turned on ok, the jacks don't fall out, the screen is not scratch etc, then, folks, there is nothing wrong with your unit. I can say with 99% confident that it is all software related.
Here's some advices for you that might help:
1). You should not use the operating software come with the CD; instead, you should download the latest version from the Palm site. And you should install the update 2.0. Then you need to know how the unit works, there are two storage areas in the unit, the internal memory and your 4 GB hard drive. You need to understand how backup works, and how to backup your cache as well as the files in the hard drive. Use Drive mode to backup your hard drive to your pc, and resync often for backing up the other portion. There is no need to use LifeDrive manager come with the CD.
2). You must have some sort of Uninstall software installed in your unit, because chances are you will installed something and want to get rid of it. I am using Uninstall Manager from Palm, and it works great. Oh, and for the one who complaints about the unit turned itself off after 3 minutes of inactivity ... There are softwares to prevent that, check the web.
Now here is the truth. This unit by itself may be over-priced; however, the synergy this unit can provide after you cleverly match it with well chosen softwares will give you a return on investment that is completely unmatched even at 2 to 3 times their combined price point. It's like having an assistant working for you 24/7 and you pay him/her 50 cents a day.
My LifeDrive is a powerful breast after I mate it with the following personally chosen softwares: Uninstall Manager, DateBk5, ShadowPlan, DayNotez, Supernames 2.0, Repligo PDF Mobilizer. Doc to Go 8.0, SmartList to Go, MyBible, etc. You get the point. (alternatively, you can replaced Datebk5 with Agendus, and Supernames with Beyond Contact, ShadowPlan with ListPro, or Life Balance etc). I don't play games, watch videos, or listen to mp3, but you can if you like.
I have not had one single reset that I am not aware of. Perhaps the only down side is that the unit does take an extra second to load, but after a while, I hardly notice it. It doesn't have a camera which some of you might prefer. Other than this, great unit.
Customer Review: Good start, but not perfect yet.
Summary: 4 Stars
I got the Lifedrive one week ago to replace a sony Clie. The following comments are based on one week experience.
Pros:
1. New lifedrive manager software which in most cases obviate the need for hotsync. This is truly revolutionary.
2. Larger hard drive. Finally we are catching up with the rest of the world. You may be able to replace your iPod mini with this more versatile handheld.
3. Good voice recorder. I just got back from a meeting and recorded one whole days worth of talks from the back of a room with 60 people and record quality was quite good and no software bugs were noticed. In addition to the time allocated under your voice memo section, you can directly record to your hard drive allowing you to record more stuff.
4. This machine can store an enormous number of powerpoint presentations. This is a big plus for if you do any teaching e.g. quick review of a topic with a med student before a surgery.
5. Nice metallic finish. Looks better than cheap looking T5.
Cons:
1. Poor battery life. After a whole day of heavy use, the battery dies without warning.
2. Repeated powering down of the hard drive causing a few second delay in opening new applications. Annoying as hell!!!
3. No way to customize turning off the screen after a short period of inactivity. If you play chess on this machine, it becomes annoying. By the way, Hiarcs chess engine runs quite well on this machine(Downloadable for 39.99).
4. Adobe reader formats most documents well, but some with complex formatting turn into incomprehensible amorphous text.
5. Price. I don't understand why a piece of cheap looking electronics made in china should cost this much money.
6. No integrated cell phone or camera.
7. Some applications don't run on this device. I signed up for audible.com membership to get a $100 rebate. But so far I have been unable to make the audible manager recognize this device and download audiobooks to this device.
8. It is very disappointing palm decided to put the cheaper and slower WiFi. I suspect their next device will have the faster version.
9. Size. More bulky than other palm handhelds. Not a true shirt pocket device.
10. No headphone provided. Why can't they throw in a $10 headphone for this $499 device. I am using my old sony clie headphones which works fine.
Overall, 4 stars. I am sure I will find a lot more annoying problems as I use it more.
Customer Review: Stay clear of this piece of junk
Summary: 2 Stars
Luckily I got my Lifedrive for my birthday so I didn't have to shell out the 500 bucks or so that this piece of crap cost. I've owned a Palm PDA from every generation back to the very first Palm Pilot and was very excited to own this "top of the line" PDA from Palm, specially with all the cool features like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and of course: FOUR GYGABYTES OF STORAGE SPACE. Unfortunately I was in for a nasty surprise. First of all the Lifedrive's software suite sort of encourages you to take advantage of the possibility of importing your old programs and data from the desktop. I had a bunch of cool stuff on my tungsten so I gave it a shot, This is a BIG mistake.Almost nothing coming from the previous OS is compatible. The programs would either not work at all or be real buggy and make the lifedrive crash a lot. After several hours of fighting to get my old stuff into the LD, I gave it up and erased all palm desktop software and performed my first Hard REset which took a ridiculously long amount of time. I could have hard reset any of my other palms in 1/10th of the time it took me on this one reset. After I cleanly installed everything again and even updated to the latest patch from the website I managed to get the lifedrive to work and realized that this is one very Slow PDA. Native apps lag lazily for several seconds before they open and even turning this thing on or off took time! My old Tungsten E is a lightning bolt next to this clunker. The hard disk function did work properly and I managed to load tons of pics and music into it. The built in player software is ok but you can do a lot better with a third party app. I resent palm for not including a standard mini USB like they used to on some of their previous models. This seems like a cheap corporate money grubbing plot to push their crappy proprietary cable which is feels very flimsy and comes off a lot so don't dare move an inch if your transferring something into your LD or you could probably screw up the Hard Drive or who knows what else. In my case I didn't even get the satisfaction of killing my Life Drive by dropping it or jerking the cable off in the middle of a hot-sync. It just rached the mature old age of two months and turned into a "Death Drive" on its own. Since it completely froze and did nothing whn I tried to hard/soft or warm reset it, I called palm support and sent it back. They say that someday they will be sending me a refurbished unit. If they do it will be on e-bay faster than you can say "LIFEDRIVES STINK!"