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LAPTOPS WORK GREAT for games and the Internet, but they don't exactly fit in your shirt pocket. With a powerful PDA, you can grab and go, then connect to the Internet later with the library or coffee shop Wi-Fi to check email and download photos from Flickr.com. Yes, a handheld device fits perfectly into a digital lifestyle. The age-old dilemma, however, is that most of them are intended for the suit-and-tie crowd. What about those who care more about Moby than Microsoft Word?
Well, palmOne has felt our pain. The LifeDrive Mobile Manager leaves the tedious contact management and scheduling stigma to the other guys, although if you dig deep enough, you can find those programs as well. The LifeDrive is designed for those who love listening to MP3 music, downloading movie trailers from the Internet and snapping digital photos, and who want to take that media with them anywhere, with no restrictions.
Once you power up the 6.8-ounce device, you'll see icons for photos, videos, music and the web. The LifeDrive has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built-in, so you can connect to the Internet over a hotspot and sync with your Bluetooth-enabled Mac. The 4GB internal drive is bigger than any other pocket organizer and will hold at least a few hundred music tracks and a few home video files. The 320x480 display looks just as bright as the palmOne Tungsten T5, the current reigning champion in the business handheld market. Unlike the processor-crippled Tungsten E2, the LifeDrive runs on the Intel 416MHz Xscale processor.
Added all together, the LifeDrive is perhaps one of the best handheld organizers ever. If it weren't for the fact that devices targeted for games and multimedia make better choices for those uses, the LifeDrive would be the handheld lifesaver that palmOne really needs.
The fact is, if you are really craving multimedia entertainment, Archos (www.archos.com), iRiver (www.iriver.com) and Apple (www.apple.com) all make better players with more storage for less money. The LifeDrive screen is bright and clear, but smaller than the nice widescreen display on the video-playing, photo-viewing Sony Playstation Portable (PSP; $300; www. us.playstation.com). Both the PSP and wireless chat-ready Nintendo DS ($150; www.nintendods.com) are much cheaper than the LifeDrive, and yet they will let you play much better games than anything you can find in the organizer market. (Palm handhelds are not exactly gaming machines, unless you are really into Mahjong and Scrabble.)
Of course, game and video handhelds are not quite as flexible as the LifeDrive. While the game and multimedia features fall short of the competition, you can use the LifeDrive for email, Internet browsing, instant messaging and as an organizer. You can create Microsoft Word docs, edit Excel files or view native PowerPoint presentations. With the Drive Mode feature, the LifeDrive turns into an external hard disk for quick back-ups and file transports between computers. You can also add new applications to the LifeDrive, so you can load it with recipe programs, currency converters, journaling applets or whatever else you can find.
Whether the LifeDrive makes sense for you really depends on your needs. If you already own an Apple iPod, the LifeDrive is a great organizer and video player. If you already own a laptop and need to check email on the road, the LifeDrive fits in nicely as a connected organizer. The real issue is that, if your main goal is on-the-road entertainment, the LifeDrive is a bit pricey and lacks power compared to the other multimedia marvels we mentioned. Sure, it fits the digital lifestyle, as long as you also want to spend extra for the computer-oriented flexibility.
-JOHN BRANDON
LifeDrive Mobile Manager: 
palmOne | www.palmone.com | 408-503-7000 | $500
Pros: 4GB storage, bright screen, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi built-in.
Cons: Underpowered for games, storage is less than multimediaspecific devices.
Requires: OS 9.1 (OS 9.2.2 recommended) or OS 10.1.5 or higher
macHOME recommends: OS 10.2 or higher
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