Palm LifeDrive Mobile Manager

If you are caught between a TX and a Lifedrive--go with the TX. While the LifeDrive has more room, it is lacking in speed when compared to the TX. The TX is seamless when switching between applications. The LifeDrive will hang and freeze, when switching between applications, for what will seem like an eternity no reset is needed--just patience. Many claim that the system has hard reset many times, wiping out the internal memory, in the time that I've owned it, this has not happened. Ranking order for those wanting a Palm device: LifeDrive is good, E2 is better, TX is best.

I made the mistake of purchasing this product when it came on the market (and paid approximately $400). I was attracted by the capacity of the drive and the large display. Within weeks of using the device it began to freeze up and crash intermittently resulting in repeated data loss. At times the screen would go blank/"white" for no apparent reason when turned on and would require a system reset. The system reset occasionally would wipe out all of the software I installed on the device requiring me to reinstall everything and re-enter all of the product keys (this required hours of time). After several months of this and MANY hours on the phone with technical support the mini hard-drive completely failed: when the device was turned on it made clicking noises but would not boot (in case you're wondering, the device was handled carefully and had a nice Rhino metal case with foam padding: it was not dropped prior to this event). Technical support from the manufacturer was again useless and after returning the device and receiving a "repaired" version I was faced with the same problems. I was informed that a major "software update" was available ("2.0") which would fix many of the issues: after applying the update stability improved - for a while. However, after two months the hard drive once again failed. This time I was one month outside of the one year warranty (the warranty was not extended despite all of the problems with the device). I was informed that I would need to spend approximately $150 if I wanted to have it repaired. After reviewing my options and thinking about all of the misery I experienced with the device I decided it was not worth the cost of repair. I kept it for a while in the box in my closet, but it made me angry each time I looked at the box: eventually I simply threw the useless item away and purchased a Sony Clie UX-50 (wow, what a difference!). While the UX-50 was discontinued in the US, the hardware is VASTLY superior to that of the LifeDrive (I've had it now for two years without a single problem). It has an earlier version of the Palm OS which is more stable and, although it lacks some of the fancier features of the LifeDrive, I'd never go back. There were rumors that a version of Linux was in development by Palm to replace the unstable/horrible operating system on the LifeDrive - in the end I guess they were just rumors. How corporations like Plam get away with selling junk like the LifeDrive is difficult to understand. My next "PDA" will be an iPhone.

I've been using Palm products since the original Palm Pilot, and I was thrilled with this when I received it. Then it failed. Customer service was consistently superior to Dell's or HP's, but the refurbished replacement they sent me failed. The next refurbished replacement was defective. The refurbished replacement following that was also defective. They finally sent me a new replacement. That one has just failed, but now it's out of warranty. I will not be buying another Palm product again--ever.

BEWARE ... do NOT buy this or any palm handheld. I have had both an E2 and this LifeDrive and both have had loving care but both have died within a year . Palm will "graciously" repair it for $150 (plus shipping). so beware ... there is NO quality to be found here ... I suggest you look at a pocket pc or some OTHER device.

It is to bad that others are having such an awful time with life drive. I have had mine greater than 2 years. It has been everything I need with little problems. I like the Wi FI , pictures, and music capibilities. After reading these reviews now I am worried since it seems that it is just a matter of time before something happens to my life drive. At least I won't depend to keep anything permenate on it. My husband got it for me right after my second child was born. I use to spend hours on the internet looking up information while my baby breastfed...it was brillant for me. I viewed all my pics of him on it after I returned to work an while I was on call and missed him. I am now using the music capibilities on it with little problems. It is also nice and mobile to use the internet while letting my toddler play in the yard. It has been a wonderful mobile pda for me. I wish others had a better experience with lifedrive. I have loved mine. It saved my sanity and fed my obcession for my baby while I was away from him 24 hours while on call after I returned to work. After reading these reviews though...my experience with lifedrive seems really lucky. It will be interesting to see how long my luck lasts.

I have been using this for a couple of years now. Great email, GPS with TomTom receiver and software - through Bluetooth. Decent MP3 player.
Adequate spreadsheet and word viewing.

Owned my Lifedrive for just a couple months when it started to have problems. Had it back to Palm under warrantee 3 seperate times and they couldn't fix it. Finally they just replaced the unit with another that was "reconditioned". Just a few months later, I have the same problem again (device will not turn on).... and now the warantee is over! I know of two other lifedrive owners, and one of them is having the exact same problem. Stay away from Palm!!!

Somebody should file a class action lawsuit against Palm for selling the defective Palm Lifedrive. My second (a replacement) Lifefedrive just froze in the middle of use, just like the first one. I had the same problem with the first one after only 2 days, got the second one. I figured the Hotsync caused the problem, so I never used the Hotsync nor additional softwares on the second and it lasted about a year. Shame to Palm for selling junk product and offering no support. Negative 4 stars for this product and Palm customer service.

I've had my LifeDrive since it came out and love it. Sure, the wifi is slow but I don't use it that often. I imagine the newer models are faster if you really need it for the internet. I have had times when it froze on me but I was able to track down the fixes on the discusssion groups and get it going again. The problems were usually caused by my installing incompatible software. I just recently lost the ability to use the stylus for input making the unit unusable. But I kept messing with it with resets and reboots and was finally able to get the stylus setting software to take the input and it's working great now. I know that it's just a matter of time tho as none of these things last forever and I was sad to find they aren't making it still. Guess I'll have to go for the TX when at last my beloved LifeDrive dies.

I was one of the few lucky ones with this item.

The Good:

1. Works well with Franklin-Covey Plan Plus software.
2. Works well with Bluetooth keyboard.
3. Wifi and bluetooth work.
4. Hard drive space.
5. Documents-to-go software works well for me. May be too simplistic for some....
6. Holds many tunes.
7. Music sounds very good--I don't need an Ipod, and Palms manipulate data, also.
8. Syncs very well.
9. Battery is very good, I think.
10.Can view photos very well.
11.Most updated Palm software works.
12.Very good screen.
13.Huge selection of software for Palms.
14.Persistent memory on all Palms from Tungsten E2 and better.

The Bad:

1. Soft reset requires an agonizingly long time (many minutes).
2. Often requires soft reset if hasn't been used for a few days.
3. Versamail now crashes because of too many messages (may be my fault--shouldn't do this, though--may be software flaw, also).
4. Headphone jack is in wrong place (on bottom instead of top), and it becomes loose.
5. Picky about SD/MMC cards. My older ADATA 2GB MMC card won't work (it did work in the Tungsten E). As I understand it, SD/MMC cards that work currently are limited to 2GB. I haven't really needed them, however.
6. Not very good at multitasking. May automatically soft-reset.
7. Included Blazer web browser software is out-of-date and limiting (warnings to update the browser from servers may appear). As far as I know, upgrade is not yet possible.
8. Wifi uses up battery much more quickly.
9. Sync cable uses stupid proprietary short and insecure connectors for both syncing and charging.
10.Can be pokey.
11.Most useful software uses up my wallet--not much useful freeware is available for Palms.

The Ugly:

1. I can't believe that anyone obtains a rich experience in web browsing with any PDA or PDA/phone.
2. Bulky and heavy.
3. Good physical protection is essential.
4. I fear the inevitability of battery replacement: Palms always require unsoldering leads of old batteries/resoldering leads of new batteries to the PCB. Obviously, Palm wants me to buy a new Palm product when the battery dies: This is bad for the environment and my finances. Battery replacement is risky. Fixing a Palm (out of warranty) is equivalent to purchasing new in costliness.
5. Palm's branded accessories are pricey and often inferior (their pricey keyboard still uses infrared instead of bluetooth).
6. The Lifedrive before it was discontinued was really pricey.
7. The consensus is that the Palm T|X is superior, and, it always was cheaper than the Lifedrive before the latter was discontinued.
8. I wouldn't trust my Lifedrive to store important photos and then to delete photos on my camera memory card for more space--I would use the Lifedrive soley as a backup and keep the good photos on my card as well.
9. It's definitely best to check for compatibility of software before purchasing and installing. Not all Palm-compatible software is compatible with Lifedrive.
10. Palm replaces faulty units with refurbs.
11. Bundled 3rd party software for Word, Excel docs, etc., is not absolutely compatible: Such docs are not "native."
12. Very difficult to get Linux on these or even to sync with Linux. (I could sync with the Tungsten E in Linux.) Definitely, neither action is straightforward for Lifedrive.
13. It's best not to sync with legacy Palm apps (from an old Palm). Many people said this ruined their Lifedrives--again, check for compatibility and upgrade to the latest versions.
14. I'm not sure that I would trust a refurb Lifedrive; prices are getting tempting, however.
15. Pocket PC users are correct: Graffiti (Palm's shorthand for writing data with the stylus into a Palm doc) is "baggage." Yeah, I'm "biased": I can do it, but I'm not very good at it! Graffiti definitely has vocal adherents--I congratulate them for successes! The Lifedrive uses Graffiti 2 (What's wrong with simply writing in plain hand or cursive?)

OK. It seems that PDAs (from both Pocket PC makers and Palm) are among many complex but flawed devices that have many advocates, detractors, lemons, and successes: They are all flaky, at least to some extent. Palm was right (finally) to pull the Lifedrive (they waited far too long). They should instead upgrade and enhance the T|X so that larger SD/MMC cards are usable (such as 4GB and 8GB and even larger). Even more to the point: Perhaps, Palm should combine many of the consumer-friendly concepts of the Lifedrive with those of the relatively reliable, much better liked T|X, to create a new, better, more reliable, and more consumer-friendly Palm (one that's lightyears more powerful than the Z22 that's also aimed at consumers). Successfully achieving this would make the Lifedrive a distant memory (admittedly, a really painful one for many). The Lifedrive originally was a good concept that, unfortunately, failed miserably in execution: It was a noble attempt of Palm to reach out to ordinary consumers and their common needs as well to those of its normal business-oriented clientele....

When it works, it works beautifully, unfortunately the older it gets the less it works, at least that's what happened to me. Mine lasted one year. It was incredibly buggy and crashed out frequently from day one (preinstalled Versamail was the biggest culprit). It takes about two to three minutes to reboot every time it crashes out on you, and after a while I just hoped that it would turn on after a crash. I installed Iambic's Agendus, which I've used various versions of since my Newton and the Lifedrive didn't like it at all. It crashed and rebooted left and right because of it. The internet browser has a bug that doesn't allow you to download anything like patches. You'll get an error message saying that your harddisk or card is full.
The last I heard the Lifedrive has been discontinued and there are no plans of a v.o 2.0. Which is a shame really, as they had the makings of a nice piece of equipment had they worked on it a little more.

I gave the LifeDrive a chance for a year. It was my 2nd Palm device. The old Tungsten E was more reliable. Even though the Tungsten E would lose data once the battery drain, I knew how to work around it...use backup software and charge it every other day. Once I knew how to work around the Tungten E's quirks then it became a reliable hardware for me. I do not know how to work around LifeDrive's quirks. The LifeDrive worked most of the time, but you always had a sense that it may not work one day and you are not clear how to fix it or prevent some issues from happening again. Sometimes it would not come on even though the day before it was fully charged. I had to charge it again for some reason. My current problem is that when I turn it on I can only see my contacts and the WiFi screen seems to be in loop (keeps flashing on and off). It will not let me use any other applications. I reset it and nothing has changed. I should have went with the Palm TX instead. Palm owes buyers an apology for creating such an expensive item that is not reliable.

Loved everything about this product, until I paid out my cash for it. After only using it for a few weeks it must have took some sort of knock in my coat pocket (yeah, yeah, my own fault, yada, yada). It's not like I was rough with it or anything but the device developed the "Click of death". So it is no longer "bootable". To be honest if the fundamental drive aspect of this device is that it is so vulnerable to shocks then I see no reason to trust my "Life" to it. Yet another gadget in the Gadget Drawer Of History.

My Lifedrive died after a year and will not reset. I've tried the soft reset, hard reset and hard reset with the Lifedrive charging in its cradle. Palm support is non-existent. They gave a lame suggestion (the hard reset in the cradle) when I first contacted them and now they have not responded to my follow up message. In addition the form on their website to request support has stopped working. I have to say the address book was really handy and it was useful to be able to read e-books on the PDA. However, I can't possibly recommend getting a Lifedrive because of the poor support and the danger of losing important data which cannot readily be transferred to a non-Palm PDA even if you have been doing regular synchronizations with a desktop computer.

Palm Lifedrive Mobile Manager (Refurbished)

The device I received would not take a charge. I returned it, and my money was promptly refunded.

After a year, the Lifedrive froze while starting up. I tried resetting, including several hard resets, which the unit would never complete. A call to Palm Tech Support did no good - they want me to send it back for repair (at my own expense, since it's past the warranty period).

it holds a lot of information/books etc, and therefore makes a great reference if you are a professional, travel, etc. Also, it is quite good at finding access to the internet. Unfortunately, I didn't heed the warnings of others. It's hard drive has broken after 6 months of use. Now its a great paper weight!

I have heard a lot about these things freezing up and dying, but thats only because something was installed wrong on it. i have had mine for 3 years now, and it only died once, because i downloaded free solitaire games off the internet. i reset it, and it works fine. so convenient to be able to edit all of my microsoft office applications on the go. i went to hawaii and took this with me, and was able to use the moblie manager feature to upload my digital cameras sd card onto it, so i could continue to take pictures. the mp3 player has always worked perfectly for me. the interent applications are fantastic.

Well...I am on my 4th and soon to be on my 5th...thank God for an extended warranty from Staples...since I have had mine, It has either been sent off or broke down. I was a loyal Palm user but the life drive is a pure piece of tech. junk...steer clear!!!

I purchased this product and quickly learned the reason as to why it's been discontinued. It is HORRIBLY slow. It freezes up when trying to simply search for wireless networks, or when switching between screens. Then I installed some medical programs on it and it was even slower. Finally I uploaded one photograph to it......ONE!! And the thing got stuck in a reset loop. It just kept resetting itself, and no matter what buttons i pushed or for how long it just kept turning on and off and on and off. When I taped it back up in the box to return, it was still resetting itself. I think the battery died not long after I shipped it back.

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.

I purchased the lifedrive to use at work and at home. Well I have had it for 7 or 9 months and now it will not work. Nothing more than a paperweight. It shows that it is charging but it never charges to completion. It will not turn on even when you dock it to your computer. I have tried the reset button to no avail. My lifedrive is dead in less than a year. I'm looking for a replacement and I'm currently looking at the HP 2495 or 2795.

Batteries SUCK!! - one day without a charge and zappo! NADDA JUICE!!! WI-FI & BlueTooth work good - nice cross platform with MAC and PC - but WOW - the battery life is TERRIBLE!!!!! - great screen resolution. Nice features - BUT BATTERY LIFE IS SUCKING THE LIFE OUT OF MY LIFEDRIVE!!!!!

The only reason I gave this product 3 stars is partly due to the fact that I paid only $250 for mine (which is a bargain compared to what I would have paid for a TX) and it "at least" does what it advertises it will do out of the box. Beyond that this LifeDrive is insanely unstable and will crash at least 3 times a day.
Flipping the device over will proudly reveal "made in China" stamped on the back and no offense to anyone reading this, but the performance of this device aptly shows it. The LifeDrive features are nice and I appreciate being able to carry a vast amount of media around with me and have the luxury of previewing it on my device. But I am offended that back in the day Palm charged $500+ for a buggy device like this. That isn't even considering the fact that there are many customer complaints stating that the device is lucky to last beyond a year's use. Using this device made me yearn for my Blackberry in that it has yet to crash given the tasks I throw at it. What happened Palm?

I LOVED my LifeDrive for the 7 weeks it functioned. They replaced the unit. Only to find that the second died after only one hour. One stuck in a loop, the other just froze. Tech support is always friendly, but can give me no solution but to offer another. I don't want it. I even offered to take a "lesser" model...and stay a Palm customer (as I have been for 10+ years)...but it does not fit into their procedure. It is the last Palm product I will ever own...and a costly $500 mistake to have a cool PDA for 7 weeks of operation. DON'T DO IT!!!

I purchased a Life Drive just over a year ago. Tried to hot sync when I got it home with no success. Returned it to place of purchase, and they couldn't get it to hot sync either, so they replaced it. Took it home and successfully hot synced the device. Loaded contacts, calendar events, an Excel spreadsheet, and an outside software program that I had successfully used on my last handheld. Within six months, the device was not hot syncing. Device started freezing up, and having to be reset, then jumblimg information, ending in a complete lock-up of the device. At this point, I can get to the home page, and nowhere else. Doesn't bode well for me when I go onto the Palm website and no longer see the Life Drive available for purchase.

From 10/13/2005 till now and it has been replaced twice and now it is dead again and does not work at all. It only works for about 3 to 4 months and then it dies.
If there is a production problem, the should solve it and accept that there is a problem and solve it.Now I will have to buy another one and it is not going to be Palm. I have been using Palm handhelds for about 10 years now.

This product is not at all what I had hoped for. After using the Palm Tungsten T5 and being a loyal follower of all of the Palm line, I was excited to receive this product. That excitement went south in a hurry. Initially, the product is about half again as bulky as the Tungsten, but that wasn't a big deal. The synchronization process was slower than the Tungsten's, but again I could deal with that. The sticking point when the thing locked up 4 times in one morning. After that I returned it immediately and bought a Palm Tungsten TX from another supplier.

It arrived on time, but the palm didn't work from the first time, I never received an answer from J&R and after all I changed thru the palm support.

With a huge capacity and an ability to open documents and adobe files, it enabled me to carry all my documents and some books, which are PDF, with me and made my life easier. As a doctor, resources are plentifull and the ability to have them in hand all the time is very helpfull. I tried the music player and discovered an excelent sound quality with headphones, bad with the speaker, but still better than cellphones. I waited a long time for it to be available and I am enjoying it.

la palm lifedrive presenta demasiados bloqueos y se debe reiniciar mas de lo que se puede tolerar. los documentos se alteran v.g. se pasan de word a .db.

The lifedrive does everything my old 505c Palm did, and the one before that. It also moves large files between office and home so that my briefcase is lighter. Most of the "gee whiz" features don't set up or work as cleanly as the core Palm functions. But I have computers that handle the gee whiz stuff on an ordinary basis.

This PDA had so much memory and so many features, I discover something new every day. My previous (and first) PDA was the very basic Z22. I had no idea that a PDA could have the capability of the Lifedrive. This really is the closest thing to carrying around a laptop. I am enjoying all of the bells and whistles of the Lifedrive and have hit no major snags yet.

Used infrequently while traveling, in lieu of a laptop. Dead as a door nail in 7 months. Thankfully it's in warranty, but unfortunately all data is lost. Will likely be replaced by a reconditioned product per Palm warranty ... and that reconditioned product will only be warrantied for up to 90 days, regardless of the warranty period left on the original.

I chose Palm because of its reputation, but I'm disappointed with this product and wish I chose the iPAQ instead. After all the Palm add-ons, etc., it would have cost about the same.

I won't be purchasing another Palm product again.

The Lifedrive is an absolute ripe off. It's no wonder it cannot be purchased on the Palmone web site. It's like having a regular pda with 64MB of storage attached to an uncooperative 4GB SD card. Most third party software doesn't recognize this space, therefore it's difficult to download directly the this extra storage and the device space limits what you can transfer there. The moblie manager allows you to drag and drop files directly into the Lifedrive area, but then you can't find them. It crashes often, gets hot during use, and you have to buy the sync cradle separately. It come with a "sync cord" that causes the unit to fall or get knocked off the work station. The "hard case" is a piece of thin,flimsy. tin with rubber on the back. The unit is slow, and difficult to work with. It's like having dial up in your palm. I don't know when I've been more disappointed in a product. I'm sending my lifedrive and that worthless tin case back for a refund.

I sent my LifeDrive back after just two days. It was increatably slow and the usb cable failed to connect to my pc unless I held it firmly in place. My advice,,,don't buy this product.

The Palm Life Driver is so easy, versatile (stores files, Music,photos,memos, addresses, etc, etc, etc) and lots of memory. Don't mess it up by adding a phone. You'll want this way longer than your next phone server.

I just started to use my lifedrive only a few weeks a go and i am already experiencing some problems.The betray is very weak,its only good for not even 1.5 hours.Also it gets frozen very often.

Great product, but unless you need this much storage, you may want to look at Treo... Wish it was a bit lighter, but for all that it does, I can't complain.

What More Can I say, It's a Palm and it Drives My Life.
Easy to use and very compatible. If it could only zip my wifes lip and mow the lawn it would be a super Palm.

After much consideration of the many reviews online about the Life Drive I took the plunge. My choice came down to the TX and the Life Drive. I chose the Life Drive for it's integrated 4GB (3.85 usable) hard drive. That translates into little less then 40x the usable storage space of the TX. It's been widely reported that the Life Drive is much slower, bulkier, and prone to inconvenient crashes and unreliability. However, as with any new product there are bugs and then there are fixes. Palm as released significant fixes to address these problems. All I have to say is, I am glad I waited. I got mine online for less then $240 plus shipping. For that price it was a terrific deal. I don't think I would feel that way had I paid the full $499 or even the new price of $399. For what its worth, the Life Drive is slower then the previous Palms but that's to be expected with a 4 Gig hard drive that has to spin up. I've owned the Handsprings Visor in the past so I am familiar with Palm Handhelds.I've experienced application launch lags from a fraction of a second to up to 2 seconds at most. It's still much faster then any PC. This thing is my do everything on the go device. I LOVE IT! Both it's WiFi and Bluetooth are incredibly fast on my wireless network. I have to say that the Life Drive not only does everything, it does it very well. I note that some third party applications occasionally cause soft resets. Data has never been lost, and none of the applications that came with Palm have ever rest the unit, only the apps I've added. The touch screen is colorful, bright and beautiful to behold. The batteries last about 5-6 hours with the screen set to its dimmest (Still ample backlighting).I give it 4 stars only because every new concept has room for improvement, the Life Drive is a very good start. I'd like to see a 8GB or more, Compact Flash in place of the Micro Hard Disk for speed and integrated TOMTOM GPS! Lets upgrade the battery to 2300mAh instead of 1600mAh and make it user replacable. Then we would have perfection! Then it would be worth paying $499 or more.

I have owned this item for a month now and have only wonderful things to say about it. I am an nurse practitioner and it makes my practice easier to have the needed resources in the palm of my hand.

Excellent device,went beyond what I expected,easy to use,not too complicated,more features than I expected

I have used my LifeDrive since purchase and it is an excellent PDA. Ease of built in WiFi and arrangement of items is perfect for my use. Drive is new addition and exceeds my expectations of what a PDA can do. This is a good unit for busy folks who need Internet access, maintain work files (I bought the external keyboard and now use this instead of my laptop) and even find time to play games. Really nice for gadget lovers.

Purchased for my husband- a Registered Nurse. Meets all of his needs- both professional and personal. Easy to use. Highly recommend it for anyone in the health care field.

Well, after owning 4 Palm devices, My palm days might be behind me.
I bought this device on a Friday, and charged it. On Monday I setup the hotsync, enababled all of my Entourage data, set up the Blue Tooth, and used it for one day. Wireless working perfectly everthing great!! Got home on Monday evening turned it on and it got stuck at the Palm Screen. Followed all tech support advice. Called in and went through a erase device procedure and its still erasing, 2 hours later.

I'm returning it tommorrow. Nice unit, but so far very unreliable.

Unstable, terrible battery life, slow between apps, protective sleeve is clumsy to use.

I traded it for the TX.

I'm had palm products for over 8 years and was excited to try this one. it sucks! it was horrible; I couldn't downloan my usual programs that I use every day, I couldn't get the preloaded stuff to work, it skipped around, it froze; I had to do mutiple hard resets a day -it was all around awful!
choose something else!!
pathetically, palm failed big on this one!!!

I got my new LifeDrive last november and it's great. Some of the problems I read are because people don't read the manual. The battery realy lasts a lot, it doesn't die suddenly. I love it, and almost all of my old applications worked perfectly. Some of them needed an actualization but that was all. I recomend to read the manual carefuly, it solves a lot of the things that some reviews complain about. And remember that it is a PDA not a computer. Enjoy it.

I've owned the lifedrive for about 1 year. During this time it worked well and I enjoyed owning it. Prior to owning it I've owned other PDA's. I use my PDA everyday, and can not get by without it. The PDA recently stopped being able to hold a charge. Changing the battery did not resolve the problem. The cost to have Palm take a look at the PDA is about $185 (including the cost of shipping). According to the Palm website this is a generic fee that they charge for any problem.

Palm had a discussion board on their website for Lifedrive owners. I never posted to it, but I read the posts in hopes of finding a solution to the problem I was having with my PDA Lifedrive. There were posts from many users that had purchased the lifedrive in mid to late 2005 and 12 +/- months later were all having the same problem with the unit ceasing to work. Many people paid the $185 and received a refurbished PDA. Many people weren't pleased that they weren't told in advance that they would not receive there original machine back. Many were displeased with the cost of repairing the PDA. The biggest overall complaint from people that had their PDA repaired, replaced, refurbished was that it broke again within 3 months +/-. Other people found that if they took the unit apart and unplugged the battery, the unit would then work for a few days, weeks or a month.

Unfortunately Palm took down their discussion board with all their customer complaints (approximately the middle of December 2006) and has replaced it with a message that they will have a new and improved website in January 2007.

Some tech gurus have told me that it is possible that there is some kind of timer on the motherboard that after 12 +/- months has gone off and is purposely draining the battery making the unit useless. I can't believe that this is true. At the same time I can't understand why Palm isn't standing behind their product and risking all the Goodwill that the Palm brand has built over many years. Currently my unit is being evaluated at a PDA repair company I found on the internet. If they can get the unit working I will enjoy using it again. If it is not feasible to fix my lifedrive I will definitely buy another PDA; just not from Palm.