RebKell's Junkie Boards

[sambista]

remember, wired road warriors, may 18th is the date (or thereabouts). folks were saying it'd be called tungsten x. others originally said it would be called lifedrive. then there was speculation that lifedrive was just the name of the part of the device that would be the 4-gig hard drive inside, not the name of the device. now it's believed to be "mobile manager," or just the beginning of a series of "mobile managers." in any event, it's already being prepped for promotion on amazon.

http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/pdas/palm/index.php

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0009JMT38/ref=dp_images_0/104-0395232-8267108?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=electronics&img=0&childASIN=B0009JMT38

from the register (uk):
As we suggested last week, PalmOne is thinking of a cross between pocket hard drives, USB Flash disks, PDAs and media players, and has come up with a unit that is, in essence, removable storage with the ability to view and interact with data.
But is this jack-of-all-trades the right device for the job or will people prefer separate smart phones, iPods and the like? Either way, PalmOne has little choice but to drive the evolution of the PDA this way if the device is to ever have a future as something more than the front-end of a GPS navigation system.
According to the Amazon.com LifeDrive page, the device will ship in just over a week's time, for around $500.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/09/palmone_admits_mobile_manager/


apple's gonna have to hurry up and make the ipod do everything, which is speculated with the arrival of itunes 4.8, or i'm gonna have to get a bigger purse.

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no justice, no peace.

[jersey_stupka]

figures...just replaced an old palm and 2 lost i705s with a
Tungsten E2...and dayum if the palmone site didn't advertise that their WiFi card worked with the E2 only to have it come and find out it don't....dayum...

oh well, will prolly lose this one too and by then the prices for the X would have dropped a la walmart...

love my pda, love my pda...i'm lost without it...loved the i705 web access...so i could aim or email from anywheres palm.net had a signal...even MSG!!

[sambista]

i've got an old visor prism, jersey, which has held me in good stead. but even with an memory module, i've run outta room with new software and now i have to make some space for "scoreboard," software that includes a wnba component for keeping on top of the skeds, scores, etc. i couldn't decide between the t5, the e and then the e2. a colleague who writes about this stuff suggested i wait till may 18, otherwise i'd have already bought the e. my problem is that i think this lifedrive may be more than i want/need, and it may be the case for you, too. for starters, i already have an ipod, and i want it (or another device) to be solely dedicated to music, which is the most important thing in my life. i would never sully my music with appointments, contacts, etc. this new lifedrive thing appears to want to be a pda plus the "media player" that has already come out in various forms but not yet taken hold - something to display photos and play music and video clips. the big plus of the upcoming device is that it will have 4 gigs of "non-volatile" memory, a flash drive that will preserve your data even if the device runs out of juice. it raises the bar against the pod, but my problem is how big it'll be. the first rumors were that it'd be longer than a t5 and as thick as two palm pdas. now that assessment has been altered to reflect something smaller. but i gotta tell you - that t5 is pretty heavy, relatively speaking. basically, i'm conflicted at this point. i don't want a phone that's also a pda, and i don't want my music mixed with anything else. that means i need three devices, and i'm not happy about it! i have a feeling i'm gonna wish i'd gone with the tungsten e a long time ago . . .

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no justice, no peace.

[jersey_stupka]

hey visor is great!! i've always gone palm tho... the tungsten x sounds great...but don't like price tag on it or the tungsten 5 but do like the wifi aspect....eventually the prices will come down...the e2 has a color screen unlike my i705 or Vx...and its great...quite a nice view on things...and LONG battery life...

btw, i have a 3G ipod...don't like the battery situation...but got the shuffle and whoa am i lovin' that...plenty of songs to listen to...usually listen to my favs over and over again...and LONG battery life...its great...the limitations that are listed as negatives are fine with me...no display...sometimes i get too preoccupied with finding my song...now just will have to use playlists more and organize music to what i want to hear and synch...so light and stylin'.. i've been using the shuffle exclusively...

[sambista]

yeah, i marvel at how spoiled we've become. i have a 3g pod too and, like some of my buds, we're trying to justify getting a shuffle because we don't wanna have to schlep "that big old ipod" around everywhere. hahahahahaha! but one friend convinced me that the minute i got a shuffle, apple would come out with one with a display. i got a protection plan on my 3g, not only to protect it but so i could send it in for a new battery (yeah, that sucks). it's about due. but there are battery kits out there now, not that you should have to buy one! if you're really into your pod, you shud check out ipodlounge.com and playlistmag.com.

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no justice, no peace.

[sambista]

well, here it is. apparently laptop magazine accidently broke the press embargo set for may 18. looks sweet, but 6.8 ounces? ouch!

http://brighthand.com/article/LifeDrive_Appears_in_Laptop_Magazine

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no justice, no peace.

[jersey_stupka]

oh man, i salvating....
a 4 gig drive...
wifi and bluetooth...
dayum...

consider the 6.8 oz (?) weight as compare to a notebook...even an ultralight...

lovin' the next gen...

just connected my E2 via bluetooth to my phone bluetooth internet and am able to chk some of the wireless wap sites and chk email...to me that is amazing...

thanks for the heads up...

[herrade]

[sambista]

[herrade]

[sambista]

that's exactly the impression apple wants to leave for the moment, that nothing much has happened. it's quietly positioning itself for the big bomb that steve jobs so enjoys dropping at the apple confabs. there are two big changes that have occurred with the new itunes, and it's really coming from a confluence of recent introductions: the ipod photo, itunes 4.8 and os 10.4 (tiger). now you can manage contacts and calendar info right inside itunes, if you also have tiger, instead of using isync. (i think isync may go away.) that's a bigger change than it appears on the surface. but the key new thing about itunes 4.8 is that, if you have tiger, you can download video via the itunes music store and play it inside the itunes window; and it registers in your library, just as your music tracks do. right now they have movie trailers and other exclusive music clips, and the buzz is that this is apple's proof of concept that full-length movies can be purchased, downloaded and hosted within itunes. in fact, i've read (haven't tried it) that you can drag any video clip into the itunes window and make a choice of viewing it small inside itunes or full screen. i can't even guess to what extent itunes will become the single-app media manager (whether iphoto and/or imovies will go away - doubt it), but what is happening is a marriage of itunes and quicktime. the obvious path is that itunes (which will probably get a more apt name) will become the conduit for a full-feature ipod, which will become the "mobile manager" that palm already has with lifedrive. "ipod photo" will go away (my guess) and be just "ipod" again, managing music, photos, video and other data. the nut that likely won't be cracked is the office suite, but that may be okay for many people. that's why i said apple better hurry and get its own product out there, before palm is already at its second iteration of the mobile manager. if people can buy a palm device that has an office suite and manages digital media, they likely won't bat an eyelash at an apple device that is a digital media device with a marginal office suite. unless apple's plan is to stick with having the best digital hub, and office suite be damned, which could be the case. jobs has always been adamant about what he thinks people do and do not want in a computer; and now, by extension, the handheld device.

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no justice, no peace.

[herrade]

playing quicktime movies inside itunes isn't new to 4.8; it goes back at least to 4.7.

this conjecture about ipod reminds me a lot of the theories around the resurection of newton. the beautiful thing about the ipod is that it does what it does well and simply. it's clear that ipod photo could lead to something else, but there is a whole school of portable device gurus that say there's a limit to the combination trick (at least for now), and that some of us -- surprise! -- don't want cameras in our phones and video players in our palm organizers.

i haven't been keeping up on the apple rumour mill for a while, but i won't hold my breath for the pod to moph into a palm.

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A single act of carelessness leads to the eternal loss of beauty.

[sambista]

[stever]

http://www.palmone.com/us/products/mobilemanagers/lifedrive/

looks pretty cool

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[sambista]

stever, i read a handful of reviews, cited at engadget.com, plus david pogue, who can do almost no wrong in my book, and the thing sounds both awesome and buggy. and since it's not all that mac friendly with some of the nicest features, i plunked down for a tungsten t5 - after all that. until june 3, the palmone store is throwing in a wi-fi card, so i jguess i'll be sufficiently cool accessing the web at the airport (and maybe the garden?) with my t5 instead of having to pull out my ibook.

oh, and if you're on new prods watch, i understand a verizon-compatible treo is coming out on the 23rd.

the lifedrive will have to get better, but i'm still holding out hope for a big mac surprise.

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no justice, no peace.

[sambista]

i was misinformed . . . the treo 650 for verizon's showing on palmone.com now.

_________________
no justice, no peace.