A new spin on a palmtop (or inside it)

For several years, technology pundits have predicted the death of the palmtop computer.

"This is the cell phone age," they say. "Who's going to carry around a separate gadget just to look up names and numbers?"

But for the same several years, PalmOne (formerly Palm Computing) has had the same answer: "We're not dead yet!"

And sure enough, PalmOne has so far managed to keep one or two steps ahead of the cell phone. Its latest palmtops offer bigger, better screens, smooth music and video playback, wireless networking, Microsoft Office document editing and memory-card expansion slots. Furthermore, the Palm operating system can run a vast library of add-on programs--everything from databases to games and tip calculators.

But this week, PalmOne took the wraps off a new model with the cleverest enhancement yet: a hard drive.

This device, called the LifeDrive, is the first hard-drive palmtop ever released outside of Japan. In retrospect, the idea seems obvious. After all, hard drives are already small enough to spin away inside iPods and camcorders. And Palm organizers can already open and edit Microsoft Office documents, show pictures and videos, and play music. Palmtops could be the new laptops, if it weren't for their limited storage capacity.

Spinning away inside the LifeDrive is a silent, 1-inch, 4GB hard drive. You can hook it up to a Mac or PC and fill it with files that you want to take on the road. (You're not limited to files that the LifeDrive can actually open, like Office and multimedia files; you can also use the LifeDrive as a data bucket that simply shuttles big files around from computer to computer.)

So the idea is unassailable. How's the product?

First, the good news. The LifeDrive ($500) is a looker. It's a handsome metal slab--edges softly beveled beneath, crisply folded on top--that looks great on a boardroom table or a tray table in first class.

At the touch of a button on the left side, the picture on the bright 480-by-320-pixel touch screen rotates 90 degrees, the better to display spreadsheets, Word documents and landscape-orientation photos.

At 4.8 by 2.9 by 0.7 inches, the LifeDrive fits comfortably in your hand, but it's much thicker and taller than other palmtops. PalmOne had to make room for a beefier battery (it lasts a couple of days) to power the hard drive, which is the first moving part ever to appear in a Palm organizer.

As palmtops go, this one is loaded. It has a built-in microphone for spoken Notes to Self, and a surprisingly loud speaker on the back (plus a headphone jack).

Like many Palms, this one has an SD memory-card slot. If you insert the card from a digital camera, the photos appear immediately on the screen. A new utility program offers to copy them onto the hard drive, freeing up the memory card for more shooting. Photographers have a new best friend.

The LifeDrive offers two wireless technologies: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The first lets you hop onto Internet hot spots in airports, coffee shops and offices. At that point, you can use the LifeDrive's slow but attractive mini-browser, send instant messages, check your e-mail, and even open attachments like photos and Office documents. PalmOne's e-mail program comes with presets for 100 e-mail systems (AOL, Gmail, .Mac, AT&T, Yahoo, Cablevision and more).

The Bluetooth transmitter communicates with other Bluetooth gizmos within about 30 feet. The biggest benefits are that you can synchronize (HotSync) your organizer's data with a computer without a cable, shoot files through the air to other palmtops or laptops, and get onto the Internet through a Bluetooth cell phone that remains nestled in your pocket. Most of this works beautifully, although

the LifeDrive didn't recognize one Bluetooth phone at all: the Treo 650 from, of all companies, PalmOne. (Right hand, meet left hand.)

As with other palmtops, you connect it to a Mac or PC using a USB cable, and it automatically synchronizes your address book, calendar and Microsoft Outlook e-mail, so you always have the latest information on your pocket machine.

But this palmtop's relationship to your laptop or desktop computer can be a good deal more flexible--and complicated. For example, attach the LifeDrive to any Mac or PC with a USB cable, and a couple of taps turns on Drive Mode, which makes the LifeDrive show up as an external hard drive. You can load it up with computer files and folders just by dragging them. Or, seated at any computer, you can open files directly from the palmtop's hard drive, without copying them first--a nice way to handle private documents when you're using somebody else's computer.

Then there's yet another option called LifeDrive Manager (for Windows only). When you drag files and folders from your PC onto the LifeDrive Manager icon, you're offered three useful choices: Copy (just copies them to the palmtop); Format for Device (scales down pictures and movies so they'll fit the palmtop screen); and Keep Synchronized. This third, powerful option does for everyday PC files and folders what the original PalmPilot did for phone numbers and calendar: keeps your PC data mirrored on the palmtop.

And now the bad news.

It seems clear that creating the LifeDrive was a huge, cantankerous technical challenge, because a number of rough edges remain.

Some are minor. For example, the AOL Mail preset can receive but not send messages (a problem PalmOne says it has fixed since sending out review units). In the PowerPoint viewer, a third of the screen is lost to a Notes area that you can't hide. And after every LifeDrive Manager copy job, you must dismiss the "Copying successful" message on the PC--no matter how many times you click "Do not show me this dialog box again," it always shows you the box again.

There's no flip cover to protect that gorgeous screen, either. You'll have to fuss with a carrying case.

The most serious cause for pause, though, is the LifeDrive's unfortunate case of narcolepsy. To save power, the hard drive stops spinning between uses. That's fine. What's not so fine, however, is that it takes six seconds to spin up again and feed its data into the palmtop's memory so you can use it.

As a result, your work is frequently interrupted by maddening, six-second visits to the dead zone. Everything is frozen on the screen, no button works and your workflow comes to a crashing halt. There's no progress bar or "wait" cursor, either--only a little light at the top of the case tells you: "Please hold; your work is very important to us."

These lapses are particularly frequent just after you've turned on the LifeDrive for the very first time. Open the calendar: six seconds. Switch to Week view: six seconds. Open the address book: six seconds. Back to the Home screen: six seconds.

According to PalmOne, these lockouts should disappear over time. Once you've used a program or feature for the first time, it remains in memory, so that it appears instantaneously thereafter.

That may be true if you do nothing but cycle among the same three smallish programs all day. But on a device as ambitious as this one, nobody's going to use the same three functions forever. Sooner or later, you'll open some new program, switch to a new view or open something that's big enough to push out whatever's already in memory--and it's back to Lockjaw Land.

There's so much to love about the LifeDrive: its magnificent handling of pictures, music and movies; its two flavors of wireless; its auto-synching of PC files and folders; the accuracy and speed of its handwriting-recognition system; and, of course, the brilliance of the entire concept.

If you have the patience for those little six-second lapses, then this device could replace a laptop during many of your out-of-office experiences. Otherwise, though, try before you buy. If you're a busy person who hates to be put on hold, you'll be tempted to rename this palmtop the Life'sTooShortDrive.