Comments on: palmOne Announces the LifeDrive Mobile Manager

**Pocket Tunes is NOT the Deluxe version that streams w/ WiFi

**$50 aluminum harcase with rubber grip is bad to the bone
http://www.palmone.com/us/products/accessories/casesandcovers/3218WW.html

** I wonder if this is literally true or marketing speak for the screen going off?
"And you can listen to your music with the rest of the device turned off to conserve battery power"

** Music "multi-tasking" allows volume and track changes w/out leaving the present app.
This is a nice feaute for audiofiles. Amazing too how many PPC folks still believe Palm OS can only do 1 thing at a time.

** 64MB NVFS ... they didn't skimp

** Still packing it all in 16MB ROM ... amazing.

** Your data stays safe even on on a hard-reset!
All your information - including music, photos and documents - is safe. If you forget to recharge, or perform a hard reset, none of your information will be lost. All you have to do is recharge to regain access to your information.

** Optical illusion. It sure looks thicker than 3/4", but maybe being a thinner width than even a T3 makes that appear so? Should fit nicely in hand, but a little long.

** The back of the device is very elegant! But where are all the UL logos etc?
http://www.palmone.com/us/images/products/mobilemanagers/lifedrive/specs_photo2.jpg

** Hard resets on the bottom next to the Athena. Large enough for stylus tip. Somebody's listened! Then again Palms never crash, so it's moot. :-o

** Anyone seen the "protective sleeve"? Surely it's not that little Zire baggie that doubles as a marble carryer.

Beautiful. Looks like PalmOne is serious about survival this cycle. Now, does it work?

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Or maybe they did.

I keep hearing this "partition" scam is probably true. PalmOne has very little shame to advertise 64MB of memory. Your review and others seem to indicate this based on the sluggishness of even checking the clock button on the status bar ... 3 seconds!!!

The Zen of Palm has been dead for a while now, but partitioning "memory" onto the HDD is like kicking over the tombstone! I feared this after seeign the 64MB iteration on the T5. It's nothing more than a partition on the :-(

I'm gonna be a little safer carrying my T3 I guess.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Yes, but notice how they are conveniently avoiding saying anything official about the RAM. That is a red flag that they are trying to pull one over on us. Also, the fact that the HD is erased after a hard reset indicates that the 64 MB is likely a HD partition.

http://www.bargainpda.com/assets/3879.jpg

What good is a nice huge screen when the fonts are still huge as well...
Yes, we can run Fonts4OS5 and font smoother, but they don't work in browsers, so we're at the mercy of their small font support. And even in those apps where we can benefit from the likes fo Fonts4OS5, you choose a small font and go to the built in PIM apps, and you still get only 9-11 lines of text on a 320x320 screen, leaving the whole bottom half of the display blank.

Can we finally put OS5 to bed and move on to OS6/7/8 with TTF support and start making better use of the pixels...

Surur

http://www.palminfocenter.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=151231&highlight=&sid=f9858a167ded683d2a5e1e004bfee872#151231

As I said before, let's cut the bull and call it like it is: Palm cut corners on the LD design, just like it has cut corners on almost every other PDA it has released in the past three or four years. These decisions have come back to bite Palm in the a$$ over and over again, yet still they continue to pinch pennies where pennies should not be pinched. The LifeDrive will be a MASSIVE flop because it's ridiculously overpriced for what it offers.

I challenge ANY Palm Apologist/employee to show the above is not true. The silence will be deafening. I'm sick of seeing Palm destroy itself by making stupid cost-cutting decisions that result in messed up, poor value hardware: 32 MB RAM in Treo 600/650, CrapRAM™ in Tungsten 5, cheap phone components in Treo 600/650, crappy case for Tungsten E, BogusRAM™ in LifeDrive etc, etc.

Please keep PIC a "No Bull Zone".

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

Apples. Oranges.

..: eston
http://www.hyalineskies.com/

http://www.shopperwiz.com/shopdisplaydetail.asp?id=97033852&Ref=FROOGLE&ts=20050517&Key=221010767&L=005

Also it seems P1's battery life claims were widely overblown. 4 hours playing music with the screen off, and 104 minutes playing video of the microdrive. I wonder where the three days with dual wireless on comes from. Is it when the OS automatically switches if off after 10 minutes?

http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2525&review=palmOne+LifeDrive

Surur

Battery life was decent. In CNET Labs' tests, playing a looped MP3 playlist, the device petered out after 6 hours, 40 minutes--not bad as far as PDAs goes but below par compared to today's microdrive MP3 players, which average about 15 hours of battery life. We repeated the same test with a video using Kinoma Player and the LifeDrive lasted for 5 hours, 15 minutes.

http://reviews.cnet.com/PalmOne_LifeDrive/4505-3127_7-31383012-5.html?tag=top

And they rated it very good.

What rubbish.

First, enjoy the stares from civilians as you strut around in your gorky Scott eVest or Batman utility belt.

Second, no lag time with that PSP UMD? Riiiight.

Third, check the screen specs between that PSP vs the LD and then come back and clarify *which* has the "less than stellar video [screen resolution]."

I'm with Mikecane on this. Simply b/c i prefer just to carry around one device rather than 3 or 4. I only have so many pockets and clip on cases. I've got a PDA that covers music, video, photos, PIMs, games, Office, utilities, and reference. Another that is my cellphone. Some ppl will want the best of all departments while others want the convenience of convergence

And I would hardly call a z31 the best at PDA. Not b/c it isn't some $500 LD, but IMHO, the screen looks ugly. May be b/c im used to hi-res screens. I'd say upgrade the z31 to at least a T|E. MSRP is $200, but a new T|E for $160 isn't too far out if bought elsewhere, which bumps us to $610 or so

As for video, I'd rather not have to pay *twice* for video -- once for DVD and then for UMD. With a PDA, I can have the legal DVD and either "illegally" rip it or seek the DiVXed AVI or MPEG rip of it on a P2P net (sneering at the MPAA!).

As for music exclusively, an iPod is still the best choice.

Over a year ago, it was between a z71, T|E, or the latest batch of Clie's at the time. Got the z71 for the SD card slot and digicam. Also figured P1 handhelds are more friendly towards running games.

Now, if my T3 were to die, it'd be between a zod2, another T3 if i could find one, or a LD

If the T3 can manage that, the LD should do as well.

I'm not talking about geeks like us having the ABILITY to run videos on overclocked, DVD hack videos through a 20 step process. I'm talking about whether PalmOne made this a "one-step" video x-fer process where the average "iPod like" user can EASILY put there DVDs or videos here for mobile use.

If this is a pain or video is not smooth, then the Mobile Manager is a waste of time.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Ripping your own DVD's is easy, but if you had seen it already on your wide screen TV, whats the point of seeing it again?

Surur

I wonder how quickly Pixel would run on a 416 MHz XScale vs. my poky Clie?

And it doesn't actually tell you anything useful.

I don't think he knows what a paragraph is. Frank Wilkinson will have a stroke if he reads this. Especially one of his countrymen!

** Stylus = T3 = Springloaded

** He's wrong about audio streaming. His unit may have it, but P1 says it's an extra $25 for PT Deluxe version. :-(

** Screen must be = to the new FANTASTIC T|E2 screen quality if it's that much > T|C. Wowzers.

** He noticed the width fitting excellent in the hand. Yep, she's thick and long, but the width is going to make holding this in portrait very comfortable. I love the Vx, TE, and T3 (thinnest width), but all three are a little wide for holding very long.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

You're right on the punctuation. This guy manages to make a run-on sentence drag on for 4 pages (with picture in it at half window width)

"OK we have audio capabilities, we are able to take voice vocal notes so we can use the microphone to relate any notes that we may want to leave ourselves and I can do this very easily and Lindsey can pick up anything that I have dictated into the device"

Henry

..but then again, I'm not entirely sure how dyslexia contributes to something like that, aside from it possibly creating issues when proofreading. Both my mother and my sister have it and the worst I ever see is justification for my sister's favorite saying: "Creative Spelling is a prerequisite for Creative Writing."

--
Of course, I don't know how interesting any of this really is, but now you've got it in your brain cells so you're stuck with it. --Gary Larson

I think the size is ok. Shorter and narrower than my tungsten c and barely thicker and heavier. Overall, I applaud their effort and wish them all the best.

---
David

------------------
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. - Sir Winston Churchill

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem - Henry Kissinger
------------------

I just got a E2 and the FIND bug is still there, at least not on my unit. Searches in Contacts stop at one screen and the "Find More" function only redisplays that screen. Are you (or is anyone) aware of any downloadable fix? I am surprised at Palm for this.

Thanks to you all for any assistance.

Atari-Portolio > HP95LX > HP100LX > HP300LX > HP320LX > Nino300 > Nino500 > HP620LX > Jornada680 > PalmV > Vx > m505 > T|T > T615C > T|T3 > T|E2 > (back to) T|T3

------------------
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm. - Sir Winston Churchill

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem - Henry Kissinger
------------------

I came into the online palm community only recently... around 1.25 years ago. Any1 know just how long pOS users have been requesting something in the likes of a LD?

http://www.bargainpda.com/default.asp?newsID=2525&review=palmOne+LifeDrive

AGREED! Put the PIM Apps/Data in *REAL REGULAR RAM* you fuggin dummies!!!!!

(cue Gekko correcting the calculation of 75X as not being entirely correct and obscuring the main point)

This is a very good-looking unit and I'm ready to upgrade from my T3, provided the early reviews don't reveal that it catches fire or falls apart in a strong wind. There is no such thing as a perfect PDA with every spec you want and no limitations or problems....but there are very very good ones. The T3 was a very very good one, and it looks like this one definitely is as well.

"Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel." - Proverbs 20:17

"There is only one boss, and that is the Customer, and he can fire everybody from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." - Sam Walton

I guess Palms will soon just be bricks for watching movies.

Anybody want to start a company that creates PDAs? We can license "Block Recognizer" from whomever M$ gets it from...

Jeeze man. My Apple Powerbook is 3 seconds or less... I can boot from power off in less time than your Dell coming out of sleep. Oh, and ah G4 1.33Ghz, 1GB RAM yadayada.

But, thank you very much, we appreciate your comments. *******.

Yippie for you. For the record, I've owned six. The Lifedrive will be number seven.

And, yes, this is a discussion forum, Gekko. Sad thing is, you haven't had anything useful to contribute for months. Yet, you keep posting here.

You have no leg to stand on when accusing others of not having anything relevant to say.

Pot? Kettle. Nice to meet you.

2) Did they fall apart within months of purchase?

3) Or are you just a dick with too much money and too little brains? (As is usual for that ilk...)

1. Yes, I'm clumsy, but I've only lost one - a Palm IIIe SE - to that by dropping it on the tile floor. My friend came over, picked up my Visor Neo, and thought it was sweet until he dropped it face first on my hardwood floor. He tried to hide it from me. It's hard to hide a broken glass top.

2. Only a IIIc and a Visor.

3. No, I'm a developer, and the only way to absolutely, positively confirm that something works on each device is to test it yourself on each device. The Garnet simulator and Copilot only go so far. :)

..: eston
http://www.hyalineskies.com/

Geez, you guys have my sympathy these days. It must be hell developing for the schizo versions of this OS now!

The athena connector should have been built with a bridge adaptor for the universal connector in mind.

It's called socialism! The Sovereign State takes it's rightful pleasures over your possessions before you can have them. Afterall it's for the kids. Where's William Wallace when you all need him!

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

You're cracking me up. Did you actually read the posts?

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Bravo Palm! At least you can do *something* right!

I think it's more like what DON't they do (think soap and water...)

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

But we gotta go to you guys for our drugs and flu shots. In the end, it all works out.

"Unfortunately, there's one other hitch to the whole microdrive deal. Any form of hard-reset will erase the entire contents of the hard drive, without exception. When you issue the command for a hard reset, you're given two options: a fast erase that takes 5 minutes, and a "secure erase" that takes 30 minutes. Given that the Lifedrive has government-use security certification, a secure erase presumably entails zeroing out all the data on the drive so that it can't be restored or recovered. Either way, you can't simply reset the device and expect to have your files waiting when it boots. And the days of being able to restore from a hard reset with a single HotSync are over. The very nature of the LD's storage capacity renders moot any idea of backing up to an SD card, which could hold at most a quarter to a half of the drive's capacity."

Went from an m515 to the X50v. It was nice, but missed POS, so went "back" to the Z2. One thing if you are serious about your POS apps, try styletap. I was able to use MOST of my POS apps on my X50v (only one I had trouble with was docs to go). I just found that it took too many taps or strokes to get to the info I wanted; however, it is an AWESOME pda, but does way more than I need. IMO :)

All good things...

No kidding...my Microsoft DOS/Windows based PCs have been crushing for over 20 years, not to mention all the virus and other software issues.

My questions to you are:

- are you and others still using Microsoft Windows based PCs?
- And Why? Aren't you just one crash and reformat away from losing all the information?

- are you and others still using Microsoft Windows based PCs?

Personally? Nope, Linux.

- And Why? Aren't you just one crash and reformat away from losing all the information?

When you hard boot a PC it doesn't wipe the hard drive.

1. A hard reset can be *UNINTENTIONAL* and can be caused by applications. Meaning that you could think everything is all and well one day, until you turn on your lifedrive, run the calendar app, and you get a fatal error. You tap OK. It shows the Palm screen, and you have a HARD RESET. The contnts of your 4 gigabyte hard drive is all lost. So it isn't just intentional on the users part to do a hard reset, but it can occur randomly and spontaneously too. Add to that the instability of OS 5.4, and you've got chaos on your hands. Imagine losing 10,000 appointment entries and your whole life. That's not worth it

2. To respond to what "Dr. Opinion" said:
"Jeez, morons, put down the pizza and read the palmone site:
"Your data stays safe."

What the PalmOne site refers to is if your battery power goes dead, you won't lose your data. This has NOTHING to do with hard resets and what I mentioned before. Please think before posting irrelevant material

---------------

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceded our humanity" - ALBERT EINSTEIN

A soft reset reboots the device with no data loss and occurs in one of two types of instances.

In the first instance, an application crashes and a dialog is thrown on the Palm Powered device indicating that an error has occurred. There is one button in the dialog, labelled "Reset" that may or may not be responsive. Tapping this button initiates a soft reset.

In the second instance, pressing the reset button on the device also initiates a soft reset, or reboot, of the device.

A hard reset is a reboot which also deletes contents of device RAM. It cannot be initiated by a software crash and requires deliberate action by the user.

To initiate a hard reset, the user must press and hold the power button on the device, and then press the reset button. When the power button is released, a screen is displayed on the device asking the user to press the up button to delete all data and any other button to continue. It is only when the up button is pressed that a hard reset is performed and the RAM is flushed. Otherwise, a soft reset is performed.

Mike, maybe you can clarify here, but I personally have not seen or read of any instance where an application crash has occurred, and the device resets and deletes device RAM.

Voice of Doubt, unless you bring proof of your assertion, you're starting to sound more like a Voice of FUD.

Yes, but a user may have to deliberately do a hard reset after a software crash to regain control of the machine.

I personally have not seen or read of any instance where an application crash has occurred, and the device resets and deletes device RAM.

No, but after some software crashs a user may have no choice but to do a hard reset.

Whatever yuh soca dancing, curry eating Trini. (aka Guyanese wannabe) You should be listening to sparrow music, not doing intellectual things like using PDAs.

FYI, an application can cause BOTH soft resets and hard resets. This is fact, not fiction. If you doubt this, then you never got an intentional hard reset then NOT caused by you, the user. I've lost my data several times due to unintentional hard resets, so there.

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceded our humanity" - ALBERT EINSTEIN

Can do, but on Windows XP it's *very* rare.

If you are really worried about single point of failure on any computing device, LifeDrive or PC, the answer is to have a periodic backup solution in place, not dismissing a device completely. Have you ever been to a well-planned data center that doesn't have a comprehensive backup solution because their computers never fail?

The issue isn't whether a device will *never* fail and wipe your data, but how often it is likely to do it. Once in a blue moon an app crash will take out your WinXP system files. Very occasionally a hard drive will suffer mechanical failure. Hard resets on Palms occur a lot more frequently than either of those.

And guess what, that's why Palm PDAs all have the hotsync function.

Have fun hotsyncing 4GB of data every week.

I've been a Palm user for 5+ years and have never lost data due to unintentional hard reset.

Well aren't you the lucky one. ;-)

That said, I'm simply saying that I've never seen an application crash, the device resets itself, and when it comes back, the contents of device RAM is gone.

Research suggests, and I've heard of this but never done one, that there is also a System, or Warm, Reset that can be performed when you end up in a boot loop. See the following URL on PalmOne's Support site that goes into these three - soft, hard and warm - and a few others.

http://tinyurl.com/6c9tk

According to PalmOne's Support site, a warm reset is an incomplete soft reset that restarts the system but doesn't reinitialise the applications. It seems that it is the reinitialisation of a truly problematic application that causes the boot loop to occur. When the warm reset is performed though, the user can backup the device and then try to determine which application is the errant one.

It's a little late at this stage, Mike, but 79bmedia has an application that may have allowed you to diagnose on the fly, and then remove the problem app if you didn't want to go through them one by one. http://www.79bmedia.com/resetemu/index.html

And finally, Voice of Doubt, grow up.

"Your data stays safe."

"All your information - including music, photos and documents - is safe. If you forget to recharge, or [b]perform a hard reset[/b], none of your information will be lost. All you have to do is recharge to regain access to your information."

http://www.palmone.com/us/products/mobilemanagers/lifedrive/harddrive.epl

Really....I have actually experienced more PC HD crashes than unintended Palm hard resents since 1998. I think I may have to stop using PCs, since I run the risk of losing all my data.

"Have fun hotsyncing 4GB of data every week."

Sam, I am surprised that you don't know that the weekly sync will be an incremental sync, not a full "4GB" sync as you had suggested.

"Nearly 1.2 million people die each year on the world's roads, and the number will rise by 65% over the first two decades of this century, says a report published this week by the World Health Organization and the World Bank."

1.2 million lives!!! Can you believe that?

If I were you, I would sell your car right away and stay home all day.

Where did I ever say that I have been using a Windows XP PC since 1998?

You asked me about app crashes needing HD reformats under Windows. I said they were rare under Windows XP. You cited your experience of crashes since 1998, which I've just rubbished since they weren't under XP. Try to keep up with your own argument.

Last time I checked, Windows 98 were still made by Microsoft.

I guess you haven't checked since 2003 then, 'cos that's when they dropped it.

"Once again, the issue isn't whether a device will *never* fail and wipe your data, but how often it is likely to do it. The risk of losing all the data on your PC in a crash is there, but it's very small."

You just answered your own question. The risk of losing all the data on your LifeDrive in a crash is there, but it is very small.

I wasn't asking a question and, for the nth time, the chances of having to do a hard reset on your Palm are a lot greater than the chances on an app crash under Windows XP (or Linux) taking out the contents of your hard drive, so stop trying to compare the two.

"I can think of plenty of ways an incremental sync could be close on 4 GB."

Sure, but how realistic is that? And what % of LD users will actually experience a 4GB incremental sync weekly?

For the 'power users' the LD is targeted at it could easily happen.

I have not experiened any unintended hard reset on a Palm in a long time, and the risk, at least to me, is small to non-existent.

Well aren't you special? Perhaps you should ask a few other people (mike cane for example) about their experiences of Palms and hard resets.

You do know that Microsoft made other OSs before Windows XP, don't you? Yes, I asked you about crashes under windows. I did NOT ask you about crashes under windows XP. I have been using a MS OS PC (DOS and Windows) for 20+ years, and I have been through countless crashes and blue screens. Please remember that before Windows XP, there were Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, and 2000. However, I keep using a PC because the benefits outweighted the risk of HD crashing. I didn't let some HD crashes stop me from buying the next PC.

"Last time I checked, Windows 98 were still made by Microsoft.

I guess you haven't checked since 2003 then, 'cos that's when they dropped it."

Please note the past tense, "were", in my reply, which meant that Microsfot used to make Windows 98.

"I wasn't asking a question and, for the nth time, the chances of having to do a hard reset on your Palm are a lot greater than the chances on an app crash under Windows XP (or Linux) taking out the contents of your hard drive, so stop trying to compare the two."

Well, that has not been my experience. Unlike you, I use both Windows PC and Palm, so I actually have first-hand experience.

"I can think of plenty of ways an incremental sync could be close on 4 GB."

Sure, but how realistic is that? And what % of LD users will actually experience a 4GB incremental sync weekly?

For the 'power users' the LD is targeted at it could easily happen."

Really....care to give us some possible scenarios.

"Well aren't you special? Perhaps you should ask a few other people (mike cane for example) about their experiences of Palms and hard resets."

I don't have to. My personal experience is what counts. If it is other people's experience that you want, I can give you plenty of isolated examples of frequent crashing Windows. There are currently three Palm devices in my household, two Treo 650s and one Zire 71. My wife and I can't recall the last time we had to do an unintended hard reset. So, Sam, what kind of Palm device(s) do you use?

Since you want to compare crashes on Palms and PCs, it's only fair to compare the latest Palm with the latest version of Windows.

"I wasn't asking a question and, for the nth time, the chances of having to do a hard reset on your Palm are a lot greater than the chances on an app crash under Windows XP (or Linux) taking out the contents of your hard drive, so stop trying to compare the two."

Well, that has not been my experience. Unlike you, I use both Windows PC and Palm, so I actually have first-hand experience.

LOL. Obviously. FYI, I know plenty about Windows, be it DOS or NT based.

"I can think of plenty of ways an incremental sync could be close on 4 GB."

Really....care to give us some possible scenarios.

I'll give you JUST ONE, because you should really learn to think for yourself. In the medical field, patients' notes, correspondence, test results, prescriptions etc need to be updated so frequently that a weekly incremental sync could easily run to 4 gigs.

"Well aren't you special? Perhaps you should ask a few other people (mike cane for example) about their experiences of Palms and hard resets."

I don't have to. My personal experience is what counts.

Wow, you really are special.

If it is other people's experience that you want, I can give you plenty of isolated examples of frequent crashing Windows.

See my first point.

There are currently three Palm devices in my household, two Treo 650s and one Zire 71. My wife and I can't recall the last time we had to do an unintended hard reset. So, Sam, what kind of Palm device(s) do you use?

T3. It's great.

If my PC camr wirh a kweboarx lhat wsa diffnmt them it is KO by me!

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Good point. I just came back from having an X50v, and yes, their 'version' of G1 was VERY nice; wish P1 could do the same.

All good things...

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6372

http://www.zicorp.com/decumaAlphabetic.htm

-- and I tried it on the TE. It's nice.

Hey, Buster- the keyboard analogy is completely apt here... the only reason Palm switched to the bastard child of Graffiti (Jot a.k.a. Graffiti 2) was because of the Xerox lawsuit mess. The lawsuit is over, and PalmOne is free to put original Graffiti back as a supported option.

I've used Graffiti 1 for almost 9 years now, and still use several Palm devices of various ages. G2 is slower to use - it's by definition NON-unistroke. When you switch back and forth to different devices (including Pocket PC with the beautiful "block recognizer") it's just not as simple as you seem to indicate with your statement. And Tealscript does an OK job at hacking in a mimicked G1,but why would I waste the money for a sub-par solution that Palmsource/PalmOne could just include for my $500.00 (or not fix but allow via non-supported beaming of the G1 files).

PalmSource/One should just acknowledge that stupid moves like insisting on making devices ONLY work with the inefficient Graffiti 2 are only keeping MORE people from upgrading to the "latest and greatest."

Why why why does PalmOne continue to treat the customer with "we will tell you what you want" rather than "what would you buy?".

So many people have taken the effort to track down the files and hack G1 into their G2 handhelds, most companies would consider that information "Market Research" into what their customers really want. Instead, Palm*'s attitude seems to be "G2 is not that hard to learn. Just give it up."

Just give it up. Enter into the land of deep relaxation and sweet dreams. Accept G2 and the torment is over. No more insomnia, outbursts, or related road rage.

Just give it up.

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

"Shipping" units that aren't even shipping, "free overnight shipping" but no units in stock to be shipped for ~2 weeks, and multiple OS versions floating around in the hands of reviewers. When will it ever cease!?

Sure, this is not the device of my dreams, and sure, I expect it will be cheaper "real soon now", i.e. after they make top dollar off of impulsive people like me, but the reviews confirm that the things I require are pretty much there in the lifedrive.

I'd like to see a complete review using a unit with a verified, correct version of PALM OS, etc, sometime soon.

Battery tests
To test a Palm OS handheld's battery life, we start with a fully charged cell. We set the device's screen brightness and volume settings to half, and we don't allow the device to enter Suspend mode. The battery-life test repeatedly plays a video clip using the Kinoma Player until the battery dies. Another test consists of playing an MP3 audio file using the handheld's default audio-player app; the MP3 file is repeatedly played in a loop, with the screen allowed to go into standby. If the handheld includes built-in wireless networking, the initial battery tests are conducted with the wireless networking disabled, then repeated with them activated. Battery life is reported in minutes.

It sounds as if they only play ONE mp3 file over and over on repeat! This probably 4 MB file would easily fit into the MB ram, and therefore use less battery power. If this is true then this does not replicate real world performance where playlists would me much longer, and people would occasionally or even frequently change tracks.

Surur

1. Pocket tunes will play audio on the background, but it becomes choppy when other I/O is taking place, e.g. when using WiFi.

2. I ran into quite a few problems restoring from my old T3.
An astronomy program I use, Astromist, was very stable on the T3, but crashed the Lifedrive frequently. 2sky and splashmoney made the transition without a hitch. My contacts, etc, restored ok, so I manually cleaned up the new device, and then re-installed other software I had added and now things seem to work ok. This was not the seemless transition I would have hoped for.

3. I'm not a big fan of reading manuals for devices that are supposed to be easy to use. Setting up the lifedrive was harder than the T3, e.g. adding a cell phone as a modem was harder since it;s now a buried menu item in preferences, instead of an app on the mail menu. [phonelink] But, compared with the IPAQ
running windows mobile 2003 2nd ed., it was still a lot easier.
If one is willing to read the docs, then setup should go pretty easily.

4. The lifedrive is slower than the T3. The hard drive introduces a noticeable delay, but the buffer cache seems to work pretty well. 2sky has a rather large database of celestial objects, which requires a lot of I/O when you zoom and pan the star maps. When it loads a new section of sky, it does pause for a second or two. I know this is really subjective, but I really didn't find the slight decrease in speed to be that offputting. To me, it seems far more responsive than the IPAQ 4705, even though that device has a 50% faster processor speed.

5. The delay that I do find a bit annoying is in handwriting recognition. When entering some letters, there is about a 2-3 second delay before it shows up on the screen. This feels a lot like when a letter didn't get picked up, so I then write it again, only to find that not I have an extra instance of the letter.

6. The screen seems to have slightly better color saturation, than the T3, but is not as nice to my eyes as the wonderful screen of the IPAQ.

7. Blazer is a nice improvement over the browser on the T3.
I was actually able to perform and OTA, over the air, software install with blazer. Tabbed browsing would be nice though. Blazer is certainly nicer than a stock version of PIE, Pocket Internet Explorer, on the IPAQ. But, to PIE's credit though, you can add extensions to it to add considerable extra functionality to it. [although at significant extra cost]

8. The WIFI hardware and software seem considerably more refined than using the palm one SDIO wifi card. It easy to configure multiple wifi connections and performance seems good for handheld. My memory is a bit fuzzy with respect to the IPAQ, but I'd say that wifi works at least as well on the lifedrive, perhaps a bit better. [ a side by side comparison is needed to be sure.]

9. I think I may have found a possible explanation for reports of varying OS'es installed on lifedrives in early reviews. The device os info obtained via the menu bar is 5.4.8, but via other tools like filez, it is reported as 5.40017.

10. initial device startup is a bit slower than the T3 after a reset, but not obnoxiously so. Soft resets do take a couple minutes though, which is pretty annoying.

11. It doesn't look like Bluetooth has been improved much. 115200 is still the max serial speed. There really should be an option to set it to 256 and 512K baud to suuport tethering to
BT modem devices.

12. It's big-ish, but not too big. It does fit in my hand nicely. It fits in my pants pocket too. Shirt pockets are not really big enough. Smaller would have been better, but I think this is the price for adding a 1660mAh battery and hard drive.

I haven't had the device long enough to gauge battery life, although I suspect that it will be pretty good.

I'm sure my impressions will change over time. But, at this point, I'm reasonably satisfied with this device as a replacement for my T3.

I also have some additional comments.

wifi receiver sensitivity is good for a handheld, but not great compared to notebook.

As for battery life, it looks like I should get at least a day of web and email use over wifi - not great, but adequate. Your mileage may vary.

Also, I'm beginning to be somewhat less enchanted with the Blazer browser. I've run across some pages on the weather underground and weather.com which make it run really slowly and
sometimes report that the page is too big to render. Perhaps their content has changed, but I don't recall the T3's browser
having problems with these sites.

The intermittently slow text input is still the only thing about this unit that I find actually annoying. Overall, I'm still fairly pleased with the unit.

If people think the world needs yet another review, I'll be happy to stop being anonymous and write one up, but hopefully, the "real" reviewers will produce soon instead.

I don't see any reason TECHNICALLY that the Lifedrive couldn't be upgraded to Palm OS 6 Cobalt.

However, I wouldn't hold your breath for Palm OS 6 Cobalt to be released, quite possibly EVER, especially for a handheld. (Smartphones might be a different story). I say this with hung head, but I believe that it has entered the storied halls of 'vapourware'.

So, yes, technically, no, since you'll never see it.

Now, unless Palm dies, they will eventually have to release some new operating system, at some point down the line. I would say that a lifedrive should be able to be upgraded to that operating system, although, we really don't have a good idea of what the next true iteration of Palm OS will look like, besides some far-out comments about Linux implementation.

Bottom line: If you're buying LD, buy it expecting to become friends with OS Garnet. No upgrade is on the horizon, however technically feasible it may be.

Cheers

Consider the following definitions of "vaporware" gleaned from Google.

• description of software/features that is/are not currently available but may never be available.


• "software" advertised, and sometimes sold, that does not yet exist in a releasable form.


• A product (typically software) which marketers promote heavily before making it available, but the product is never actually released.


• A semi-affectionate slang term for software which has been announced and perhaps even demonstrated, but not delivered to commercial customers.

That will require someone including it on a new handheld or making it available as an upgrade. And if that never happens, it's vaporware - not because it was never developed but because it never made it to market.

--
Palm Pilot Pro -> III -> Vx -> m500 -> m515 -> ???

February 10th, 2004, San Jose, California. The annual PalmSource developer conference kicked off with a keynote speech from David Nagel, CEO of PalmSource. Read on for PalmInfocenter's coverage of the opening keynote and Nagel's remarks on the current state of affairs in the Palm Economy.

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6550

Yes, Nagel knew Cobalt was not on target, but no CEO with half a brain (this includes Nagel... barely) is going to trash his company's sole product for the sake of honesty (or more accurately, transparency). The fact that he would benefit financially by pumping up vaporware doesn't mean much - what he did was what would be expected of ANYONE in his position.

All this Cobalt dreaming by newbies here is really sad. Reminds me of welfare kiddies waiting up all night on Christmas Eve hoping to see Santa Claus, only to find out the next day that Santa completely forgot about them. Again.

News flash: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Cobalt* are all fictional characters. Time to grow up, kiddies...

*Mike Cane: Notice how suddenly all the PalmOS apologists like Mike Mace, your Mistress hackbod and Ben Combee have seemingly dropped off the face of the Earth? Must be working overtime along with Nagel's elves and the China MobileSoft Pied Pipers in an effort to use alchemy to "TRANSFORM" the lead balloon also known as Cobalt into the Golden Saviour, PalmLinux. Step 1 of the transformation (Calcination) is under way, with PalmSource's remaining software engineers being cremated as we speak...

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

That is to say, flash-based storage and more REAL ram

And we're still awaiting official word/clarification on the two (at least) different OS revisions on the LD review units floating around out there.

Then again Cobalt only takes 0.0MB since it is vaporware, so maybe it'll work.

Option 2: Wait on a Chinese cell fone to be released this fall for OS6. Learning those characters is not that hard, but at least you can multitask on a 2.2" 8bit screen!

Pat Horne; www.churchoflivingfaith.com

Can you state with any authority if the alleged 6-second lag time reported in the NYT would have been alleviated -- if not nearly-eliminated -- had the LD (or *any* theoretical POS device) been designed with, say, 128MB of *real* RAM instead of this appearent 32MB FRAM and 64MB HD partition? That lag time would have only come up with large media files or when, say, D2G files were being fetched from the HD. Yes? No?

BTW, if the upcoming DevCon doesn't finally reveal that list of those Eleven Licensees Nagel touted earlier this year, I for one will be greatly disappointed.

That is to say, flash-based storage and more REAL ram

Precisely.

Palm was too cheap to just supply 128 MB REAL RAM™ and use the Microdrive like a big SD card. The Rube Goldberg-style partitioning of the harddrive into BogusRAM™ is yet another example of Palm trying to get too clever for its own good and making a mess of a device just to save the less than $10 it would have cost to supply better hardware. For a $500 PDA, that's completely unacceptable. Palm's product managers should have been fired a LOOOOOONG time ago...

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

For me personally, I don't want another substandard camera in my life - I've use a real low-end professional camera, so I'm a bit spoiled. When they can get the resolution up to the point where text can be photographed and OCR'ed, then I'll be wanting a camera in my PDA too.

That said, in looking for that, I notice the Tungsten C is discontinued on the PalmOne Canada site. I imagine in the US too once stock runs out. Strange. This lifedrive needs a clip-on keyboard (HP and Clie-esque) http://h30143.www3.hp.com/images/options/FA302A.jpg

Looks promising... until I read about the 123Mhz processor. Surely that wouldn't cut it for high quality full frame rate Video?

PLEASE post the VZ90 review! I want to see how a year-old Clie for Japan only runs circles around the latest disappointing P1 effort.

The OS is easily convertible to English for most menus. A few of the menus (like the word "Unfiled" in categories, etc.) are hard coded and will persist. It's a simple matter of modifying the libraries (if you know your way around PalmOS) or downloading the modified files from someone who's already done the work and HotSyncing them like you would with any regular application.

I feel it's quite HEAVY + a bit too big for a daily-use PDA, though: 3.4 x 4.3 x 0.9 inches and 9.5 ounces.

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

Wrong AGAIN, Cane. You can get video at 30 FPS. RTFM please. Oh I forgot - you're running a CLIE S320 these days since your craptastic Tungsten E began to smell like sh1t.

Name me any other Palm that gives support to MPEG files. CLIEs support Quicktime and MPEG files from the desktop. Just make sure to rename your pr0n MPEGs according to the CLIE dumba$$ numbering system, load and enjoy.

The other poster was correct about TCPMP. The Core kicks serious a$$. I'm amazed that Picard has provided the Palm community FOR FREE something that PalmOne/Source were too dumb/lazy to create: a good video player. I haven't tried the latest TCPMP beta on my VZ90, but I'll bet the results are truly pr0n-worthy...

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

Am I seeing things?! Did he finally ADMIT that SOMETHING about CLIEs is effed?!!?

Hey, all I know is that when I was at SONYSTYLE, Bubba, they had to CONVERT the Molly MPEG to run on the TH55 demo model.

NEXT!

In a word... WOW! Hadn't tried TCPMP before, was using MMPlayer. The "unstable" version only (0.65), indicated it was early development, but this app really rocks! It's very functional already, and plays full frame rate / full resolution video flawlessly on my T3.
I would class TCPMP as a must have "killer app" for LifeDrive (and T3 of course). Time to go and add another 1GB SD Card to my collection, which will hold about 5x 1 hour TV shows (with ads removed).

Enjoy your >giggle< CLIEs.

NetFrontLinux - the next major cellphone OS?: http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=8060#111823

And the Tungsten C had copped liver? Perhaps you mean PalmOne finally has WiFi and Bluetooth in the same box. But then that's only remarkable because most everyone else has been there forever (including Sony Clie's).

http://tech2.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/technology/circuits/19pogue.html

That's because you had everything in RAM. This six second stuff sounds like everything is on a hard drive partition.

Geez, this would be like using the GENIO again!

But this is now 2005 - not 1999. The Zen of Palm won't sell in a PDA culture expecting Wi-Fi, VGA screens, multi GB storage, Microsoft Office compatibility, MP3, MPEG, DiVX and everything else eschewed by the laughable "Zen of Palm" spin. The Zen of Palm is dead. Long live the Zen!

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

• Pocket size
• Fast response
• Easy to use
• Low cost and high value
• Worry-free battery life
• Seamless connection with PCs

I think it can/should still be an enduring goal for PDA makers - even while adding features and functionality. These characteristics/expectations are reasonable and should be attainable given the technology and economics of 2005. I believe DELL, INTC, and MSFT will eventually get us there.

http://tinyurl.com/brfxj

=========

# How to identify
# "LifeDrive" logo, centered above screen. This is the first mobile manager to bear this name.

# Silver metal exterior, rounded edges.

# 4GB hard drive in addition to 64MB Program Memory. Do not confuse it with the Tungsten T5, whose hard drive is 256MB.

=========

T5 has a hard drive?!

And I notice under What's In The Box that they are no longer including a free screen protector. Hey, Ed Colligan -- did YOU sign off on that bit of stinginess?!

http://tinyurl.com/dlltk

Yeah - noty a lot of mention of this which is odd because including WiFile was a good move. Correct me if I am wrong - but the version of wifif that you can buy will let you browse your network shares using both wifi and bt - so should it not be the same here? With the BT it will involve extra config though i assume.

Take two: http://tinyurl.com/9pgca

I'm tempted to say 57 seconds ain't bad -- but who am I kidding?!!?

VisorDeluxe->Vx->500->505->515->T1->T2->SJ33->Z71->T3->Z72->Treo650->Z72

Can it really save battery by using the power-sucking HD for everyting instead of micro amount of battery required to keep data for traditional RAM setup?

REAL RAM™ takes some overhead to keep data in memory when the device is turned off. I don't have the figures (only Palm's engineers can say for sure) but I suspect the Microdrive's overhead is greater than that required for sustaining files in REAL RAM™. [I believe Mr. Combee is back doing his Palm Apologist function again.]

Let's cut the bull and call it like it is: Palm cut corners on the LD design, just like it has cut corners on almost every other PDA it has released in the past three years. These decisions have come back to bite Palm in the a$$ over and over again, yet still they continue to pinch pennies where pennies should not be pinched.

Please keep PIC a "No Bull Zone".

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

Palm no longer realizes that improved FUNCTIONALITY should always be a design goal. Especially when it's easily + ineexpensively implemented.

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

How ironic coming from someone who's signature is five lines obsessed with crap!!!

Sheesh, the more I look at what P1 does, the more I wish they had gone and gotten some help from HandEra. Those people were implementing "solutions" a long time ago that P1 can't seem to catch up to years down the line. (Ok, ok, don't slam me for exaggerating a little; I'm just increasingly frustrated with where this is heading. Please prove me wrong P1 and PSRC; I'd love to have to eat my words. But in case you haven't noticed, the FUD is running pretty thick lately, and much of that is among loyal users!)

Still waiting for a "color HandEra"!

Double Amen to that. I just don't ever see palmOne giving us something like this, I am sad to say...

If you're still dreaming of a "Color HandEra", check out a European CLIE TH55 (Wi-Fi + Bluetooth). New ones sell for $600 (if you can find them) and used ones occasionally pop up on eBay. Other than having to use overpriced Memory Sticks instead of CompactFlash cards, the TH55/E is probably as close to being the perfect traditional tablet style PalmOS PDA as we'll ever see.

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

======

(*) "small" could be megabytes, of course. People are finicky about such "small" amounts, however...

There is 3.85 GB on the HDD which acts as a built in SD card.

There is a 64MB partition on the HDD which acts as NVFS memory.

There is 32 Mb real memory, of which 16 Mb is ROM for the OS, 10 MB for DB cache and 6MB for "dynamic heap".

Courtesy of bcombee.
http://www.palminfocenter.com/comment_view.asp?ID=7849#107624

Surur

Also, while memory is getting cheap, I challenge you to show where you can get a PPC model with the specs of the LifeDrive AND a 4 GB Microdrive or 4 GB CompactFlash card for only $300 as you imply. I think you're full of sh1t, but please feel free to prove me wrong... Ska.

------------------------
Press release: CUPERTINO, California — February 11, 2005 — Apple® announced today that Steve Jobs will begin selling his own feces to Apple Cultists beginning March 1. Apple's new iPoo™ lineup is expected to easily surpass the iPod shuffle as the company's most popular product. Yes, Apple Cultists can already easily create their own iPoo™, but feces didn't seem cool until Jobs told them it was cool. Remember, kids: the ONLY cool feces is Jobs' highly individualistic, rebellious iPoo™ (coming soon in six different colors/flavors, including the red [hematochezia] and black [melena] U2 GI bleed model)

------------------------
Sony CLIE UX100: 128 MB real RAM, OLED screen. All the PDA anyone really ever wanted.
------------------------

Say hello to my little friend...

==> If it uses the PPT from Docs To Go, no. There are 3rd party presentation kits that work with older Palms, I'm assuming they will update for the LD

2) Is the HDD response response TRULY slow enough to make it a showstopper?

==> Probably not.

3) Is the email client, always on, all the time, like Blackberry? Does email get PUSHED or is it PULLED?

==> I'm assuming it works like Versamail on the T3... set it to pull mail at any designated timeframe. You are only getting hardware, not a complete networked device like the Blackberry.

4)Im planning to purchase the virtual keyboard? www.vkb.co.il to go with this. How does one assess compatibility of the device?

==> dunno...

5) Whenever Skype mobile gets released, is this compatible with it?

==> You are asking if a new device is compatable with software that hasn't been released (or even written)?? I guess that would be up to Skype.

If someone makes a VoIP client, then yes. Until then, nope.

mobileministrymagazine.blogspot.com
antoinerjwright.com

Its an interesting device, but not appealing to me. Nokia seems very focussed on the consumer market, and may get high volume by doing this. That device is just too large, clunky and consumer orientated to pull out in a meeting. The business market seems to dictate which devices success or fail. (cf. blackberry).

On the other hand, by focussing on comsumer demand, and satisfying this, Nokia may eventually make an end run on the whole handheld market while MS and Palm fight over the geeks.

In the end though I feel Nokia is another Sony: A behemoth with poor focus and poor execution, who does not have the commitment to see the fight through. On the other hand I agree that Nokia is to be feared by all handheld makers, and MS has explicitly and publicly recognized this on a number of occasions.

Surur