Palm Lifedrive review

Call us manic depressives, but isn’t it a little disconcerting to think your entire life can fit onto four gigs of hard-disk space?

Life in the palm of your hand

That’s what we thought. But it turns out that the built-in iPod Mini-inspired Hitachi Microdrive isn’t for preserving every detail of your meaningless existence but for storing the far more meaningful contents of your PC’s ‘My Documents’ folder – and anything else you can cram on there, including MP3s. Just a shame the built-in player sounds like a novelty greetings card and skips worse than a child whose laces are tied together.

Still, the large display promises full-screen video, and delivers, thanks to some nifty software that’ll transfer up to eight-and-a-half hours worth of your DVDs.

Let’s go to work

When you finally get down to some work, a special app’ ensures any tinkering you do is reflected in the original documents on your PC when you sync, and vice versa. Unfortunately, the lack of keyboard means getting to grips with stylus entry. And don’t expect this Palm to be as lickety split as the others – accessing that hard drive slows things down.

With no phone built in, you’ll have to rely on Bluetooth, but Palm has finally seen the light and included Wi-Fi for hot spot connectivity. You’ll want to watch that battery, though; what with movie playing, MP3 listening and Wi-Fi sniffing, it’ll suck itself dry in no time.