Being a person who (a) wants the maximum cool tool support and (b) believes in the value of an intermediate device between a small handheld and a notebook, once I purchased my Treo 650 a couple weeks ago, my mind wandered right back over to the Lifedrive.
The Lifedrive's popularity in geek circles is on the rise. Although impressive and cool immediately, many of us were disappointed with reports of (1) slow application start-up times, (2) application incompatibility like Fitaly, (3) instability, (4) really time-consuming and data losing resets and (5) poor battery life. Well, most of that's handled -- already.
There's been a Lifedrive update. Their's a new caching program (SharkCache) to elimate most load time issues and besides people seem to quickly adjust their expections to the slight delays.
There's now a hack to run Fitaly using SkinDIA. More apps have been updated. There's a way to quickly reset only the RAM instead of the whole hard drive.
So, the question is, just because I have a Treo 650, does that mean I can't have this other amazing device called a Lifedrive? Let's set aside fiscal sanity for a moment.
It seems logical to me that these two Palm's could be made to complement each other's talents. Via Bluetooth, couldn't I use the Wi-fi in the Lifedrive on my Treo? Could I download quicker with that Wi-fi? And couldn't I use the ubiquitous Edge on my Cingular Treo to augment what's available to my Lifedrive?
If you like the lifedrive, surely a Treo 650 would be the ideal cell phone compared to getting some other phone and then carrying one of those little portable keyboards around? (Of course, this assumes you can afford the 650 and that you enjoy thumb typing.)
Treo 650:
Cell Phone
Ubiquitous Net connection via Edge
Great little Qwerty keyboard
Camera
Lifedrive:
Wi-fi
4 gig hard drive
Bigger horizontal screen
If I got a Lifedrive, I can see using it like this:
Master PDA: because it has 4 gigs, I would put more on it. More reference material. More notes. More podcasts and my favorite 60 songs of the moment. More photos - creating some little photo albums.
The companion for my camera. This would be the fastest way to offload pix from my camera.
Browser of choice. At home over wi-fi, I wouldn't have to use my Powerbook to read. I could use the less obtrusive, less heavy, pocketable Lifedrive. Reading horizontally, especially with RSS feeds which are more text-heavy and friendly to a smaller device.
Book Replacement. Using it horizontally, this could be a very comfortable way to read. Even better than my Zire. The bigger screen compared to my Treo would be nice.
I'm sure there are other uses as well. If it is a hassle to synch both of these devices to my calendar, then maybe this is not as good an idea as I thought. But, if that's no problem, I'm off. I'll bring the Lifedrive whenever possible when I go out and when not will just operate with the Treo 650. Compared to schlepping my 15" Powerbook, the Lifedrive seems like no trouble at all.
I'll probably wait a while on all this because I am still kneedeep in the Treo learning curve and I do live in a world of fiscal constraints no matter how hard I try to imagine otherwise.
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