Palm LifeDrive

This device has been released over a year ago, but still it can handle most of today’s requirements, just like the newer ones. It’s pretty big, it measures 4.7 by 2.8 by 0.8 inches and pretty heavy, weighs 6.8 ounces.

It has a 3.7-inch-diagonal screen with a 320×480-pixel resolution that displays 65,000 hues. The screen is colorful and the colours are well defined, but the sunlight affects the image quality. Below the screen there are some shortcuts (Home, Files, Media, and one unassigned application) that can be customized, according to what you need. They surround a five-way navigation toggle that is also a select button. Left side is home for a voice recorder button and also one that lets you change modes (Portrait and Landscape), while on the right and the top you can find the SDIO/MMC expansion slot, the power/hold switch, and the infrared port.

It has a 416MHz Intel XScale processor. It takes a while to switch between applications and the videos don’t have such a good quality. There is no problem with the photographs, and when playing MP3 the sound is very smooth. It also has an integrated 4GB Hitachi hard drive (3.85GB is user accessible). Wi-Fi is also integrated.

The  PalmOne LifeDrive runs Palm OS 5.4 and features Documents To Go 7.0 for viewing, creating, and editing Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files and for opening Adobe Acrobat files. The battery is not user-replaceable, but the device doubles as USB drive. Price is $229.95.