May 18th, 2005
2 Products I’ll Never Buy (and why): Palm LifeDrive and Motion LE1600 Tablet PC
Alice’s Atomic Rant of the Week: I used to feel sorry for products that showed serious improvement but wound up on the scrap heap anyway. But then I realized how much hard-earned money they probably cost some poor buyer and I toughened up. Which is why I am here today to explain why both of these overly-hyped products are not worth your own hard earned cash. (Not to mention mine.)
Let’s start with the PalmOne LifeDrive. So much is being written about the newest PDA from PalmOne and for what reason I ask- because after years of beyond-unacceptable storage, the unit finally sports a 4GB hard drive. 4 gigs is nothing these days, unless you like the iPod Mini which at least is a music-only device, but this LifeDrive is being touted as the ultimate photo, organizing, movie watching and so on tool, with a measly 4GBs under the hood. And the price is expected to be through the roof (estimated at $500). Need to hear more? Try a miserable battery life and no wireless capability (meaning always-on email and cell phone.) If Palm decided to offer an 80GB (or even 40GBs) hard drive and really rock the OS so that it became the platform for syncing up movies and photos and so on, then maybe we’d be singing a different tune. Archos is trying that with a nearly $800 product that is turning heads but not ringing cash registers - $800 is too close to laptop pricing to be viable. Either get the price way down, or come up with a better Treo/Blackberry, but for now, I pronounce the LifeDrive D.O.A..
Next up is the half-dead tablet PC category. Not long ago I kicked up a huge fury when I proclaimed the tablet PC dead or actually begged manufacturers to kill off the tablet PCs. To be fair, I even spent the last year in search of anyone in any airport or airplane or meeting all over the world who actually used a tablet. I found exactly two people, and in both cases, they were using them like regular notebooks.
Not be undaunted Motion Computing has released another tablet that is indeed better than earlier generations. The Motion LE1600 Tablet PC is lighter and brighter and cheaper and I presume faster, but at nearly $2,200 without a keyboard and no real tablet use I can think of beyond taking notes in a meeting by hand, this category is just not making it. So send me the hate mail if you want, but here’s what will make the tablet really rock - an 11 hour batter life and a super lightweight form factor that’s not fragile and terrifying to handle - something that won’t burn a hole in your lap or tabletop would be nice. Picture a LifeDrive blown up into a super thin, super colorful, media device and then we might be getting somewhere.
Meanwhile, nice try to both, but no thank you.
PS - If you like tell it like it is rants mixed with real product advice like this, please sign up for my free newsletter. You already missed last week’s rant on Blog Overload and there are more great rants coming. Sign up today. It takes less than a minute!
Alice says:
And yes, the Motion tablet got the PC Mag editor’s choice, so to be clear, I am not saying it is a bad tablet compared to other tablets - it is improved. But it’s a unicycle in car and bicycle world.
May 18th, 2005 at 6:55 pm
James says:
I keep wondering. NCR was going to make a killing on tablets in 1991 or so. Did anything change?
May 18th, 2005 at 6:58 pm
Alice says:
I remember the Momenta tablet. Weighed a ton. About as useful.
May 18th, 2005 at 7:09 pm
Mike says:
4Gb huh - well they have a 4GB CF card out taht is around $250 after rebates..:) I think I would rather go for that.
Tablet PCs still hangin around huh..lol…if they can make the price WAYYYYYYYYYY lower, it would be a perfect device for in the kitchen. I agree though, it will die rather than making it affordable
Mike
Did ya miss me, huh huh huh. Sugar, I need sugar….wooohooooo
May 19th, 2005 at 4:14 am
Ron says:
Tablet pc’s aren’t dead because they are still looking for the design, performance, price point that will crack the barrier of large health care facilities. They’re getting very close now. In the last batch I looked at if the battery had lasted 8 hours rather than the current 6 we would have been ordering them by the thousands.
May 19th, 2005 at 5:23 am
Alice says:
I should have added in this piece that tablets are often incredibly useful in vertical industries - all sorts of devices work in retail, medical, postal delivery and so on environments. However, my comments are about tablets being targeted to basic business and home users as a laptop alternative. That is where the category is failing because there just isn’t that big compelling reason to pay extra to write your notes by hand on screen.
May 19th, 2005 at 8:37 am
John says:
I am a happy Palm VX owner — it does most of what I need. A few enhancements, such as color screen, WIFI access to my home network, user replaceable batteries, and a CF slot would make me really happy.
What’s wrong with having a phone for phone calls, a camera for pictures, and other devices that are optimized for a single function, rather than a jack-of-all trades that does nothing well?
May 19th, 2005 at 8:38 am
ClapekDodki says:
eros-amatoriali teens
July 16th, 2007 at 8:20 am
ClapekDodki says:
eros-amatoriali sesso duro
July 17th, 2007 at 4:51 am