Re: Wha to use to email while on the road?
- From: B Vaughan<me@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 25 Jun 2006 15:37:09 +0200
On Sun, 25 Jun 2006 12:22:11 +0800, "adrian"
<absolutesound@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
What would be a good device (eg laptop) to use while traveling and emailing
back home? Something small and with a keyboard and with the ability to
connect to a phone line or download to a PC in an internet cafe with be
ideal.
I have recently purchased a Palm Life Drive, and I'm very happy with
it. It's much smaller than any laptop, and although it doesn't have a
keyboard you can buy a very small folding keyboard to go with it. The
keyboard connects to the Life Drive via Bluetooth. It also has
built-in wifi for connecting to the internet if you find a hot spot.
The Life Drive costs between $300-$400, which is also a lot less than
a laptop. I find that the battery lasts me a week of light daily use,
or about 6 hours if I'm listening to music constantly. (You can also
watch videos, but I've never done that.)
I was originally intending to buy the keyboard, but after I had tried
the handwriting recognition program on the Life Drive (Graffiti 2), I
decided it wasn't necessary. It would be necessary if I had to enter a
long document, but my emails are usually pretty short when I'm on the
road. I've gotten so that I can write very fast and my writing gets
converted to printed text. It's even easy to enter accented characters
(which is handy since I live in Italy.) I bought a word completion
program to go with it, but actually I can usually finish writing the
word quicker than selecting it from the word completion list.
The Life Drive has a 4 gigabyte hard drive, and you can use it as a
USB drive to attach to any computer. I believe you can install one of
those memory stick operating systems on the hard drive, in which case,
if you can't find a hot spot, you could check your email at an
internet cafe without leaving any traces of your presence on the host
computer. At the very least, you could install a browser on the hard
drive which has your address book and bookmarks, so you could check
your email from the browser without leaving personal information
cached on the computer at the internet cafe.
The Life Drive synchronizes nicely with Outlook, so I have my Outlook
address book and calendar entries always up-to- date on my Life Drive.
(It doesn't get 100% of the information about each contact; I've
noticed, for instance, that it only gets one email address per
contact.) You can also record voice messages on the Life Drive and
then attach alarms to them. (Or you can record lectures.)
I also keep some photos on it and use it as an mp3 player. It is very
useful for downloading photos when your camera memory card is full. It
accepts three different kids of memory card and has a program called
Camera Companion that opens up automatically if you insert a card that
has photos on it. I haven't used this feature, because my camera has
an older type of card that doesn't work with the Life Drive. I keep my
music on SD expansion cards, though. You can also download ebooks.
There is an Adobe pdf reader that comes free with the device, and
there are other types of reader available on the internet.
Another possibility, for those who travel abroad, is that you can get
numerous multilingual dictionaries that easily install on the device.
I found one, called Lingo, that was free and allowed me to download
about 6 free databases for different languages.
Whenever I find a really nice restaurant, I enter its name, address
and phone number on my Life Drive, using the memo program, which gets
automatically uploaded to my desktop as an Outlook memo the next time
I synchronize with my desktop.
I was very uncertain that a palm computer would really be useful, but
I quickly became a convert. My husband laughed at the thing initially,
but on our recent trips, I've found it hard to get my Life Drive away
from him. It holds a whole lot more music than his mp3 player, and
I've downloaded some nice games on to it, including Othello. I'm
thinking of buying him one in self-defence.
I have a recipe collection on my computer that's I've downloaded on to
the Life Drive. (That hard disk holds a lot of stuff!) Sometimes when
I'm in the supermarket, I can't remember exactly what I need for a
certain recipe. Now I just pull out my Life Drive and look up the
recipe. I modified the original file (which was one very large Word
document) so that each recipe is in a separate file and the files are
organized in a hierarchical folder structure that makes it much easier
to find a particular recipe on such a small device. The Life Drive
comes with Pocket Office and recognizes most features of any Office
Document, and allows you to modify them on the device.
I had expected to use the Life Drive mainly when travelling, as it's
so much smaller than a laptop (12.5 cm x 7.5 cm x 2.5 cm or 3 x 5 x
0.75 inches.) However, it's so small and light that I keep it in my
purse and use it every day. I also was in the market for a new laptop,
as my present one is showing its age. Now I'm not sure I really need a
laptop. At most a portable keyboard and a cradle to hold the Life
Drive propped up like a screen.
I know this sounds like an advertisement, but I can't see any reason
to carry around a laptop when devices like this exist. The Treo phone
and the HP IPaq have similar features but without the 4gig hard drive.
The IPaq is somewhat cheaper but the Treo phone is consideably more
expensive. In any case, the 4 gig hard drive is worth an extra $100 to
me. I've heard that the next version of the Life Drive will have a 6
gig hard drive.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my last name at libero dot it.
.
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