Chasing the Wind

News. Faith. Nonsense.

Palm LifeDrive

I have been remiss, not talking about my new toy. Must have been distracted these last 24 days. 😛

The pocket toy I really want doesn’t yet exist. My old Palm M515 was excellent for what it did, but I wanted to add the ability to play mp3’s. A camera would be a bonus; so would a phone so I could remove a device from my pocket. The Treo 650 has a phone and a camera and plays mp3’s, but it has only 23 meg of memory. Not enough to store any music, and with less memory than my Palm M515, I’d be deleting applications.

I bought a Palm LifeDrive instead. It doesn’t have the phone or the camera, but it does have a 4 gig hard drive to store plenty of mp3’s. It also has wi-fi capabilities, and I’ve enjoyed sending email from a coffee shop. Haven’t had a reason to use the Bluetooth capability yet.
Palm Lifedrive
Last night I got ready to load the LifeDrive with music. It took hours to figure it out – first off, I couldn’t figure out how to get Pocket Tunes to recognize that I was copying music over. Using the LifeDrive manager, I’d drag WMA files over, which happily copied to the Lifedrive. They wouldn’t show up under Pocket-Tunes, though. Just took up space, I guess.

Turns out Pocket Tunes that comes with the Lifedrive doesn’t play WMA files unless you spring for the Deluxe version.

Ok, I’ll convert to mp3, and use Windows Media Player to copy the files. That took a while – you have to get the Lifedrive in the mood to receive music by loading Pocket-Tunes on the Lifedrive and then telling it separately that you want to connect to the PC. And then, Windows Media Player told me it couldn’t convert to a format the Lifedrive supports.

That’s when I found out the lowest sample mp3 resolution is supported. I don’t know if that’s a Lifedrive limitation or a Pocket-Tunes limitation. While that’s probably not a problem when I rip a CD, I have to re-rip all the CDs in low mp3 resolution. I only had time to copy 1 CD over last night.

So tonight I’ll have mp3 music at the gym. Finally. 🙂

,
Michael's avatar

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Michael

Follower of Jesus, conservative, freedom-loving patriot.

13 responses to “Palm LifeDrive”

  1. Jo Avatar
    Jo

    Huh?

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  2. Sean Avatar
    Sean

    Go ahead and spring for the Deluxe Pocket Tunes. It will play WMV in the latest version. The MP3 compression resolution is probably a LifeDrive problem, or your disk/memory chip is slow. The latter is evidenced by popping or skipping as the processor outstrips the audio stream. I never ran into problems with this on MP3’s at highest resolution. (it just ate up 128M chips as fast as you can say uncle). (I now have seven).

    Have you tried the Live MP3 on Shoutcast yet?

    Sean.

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  3. Sean Avatar
    Sean

    Uh, sorry, that would be WMA. (I can also play WMV on my Clie, with conversion, of course). Movies fit on a 1G chip, I am told, but I have not yet sprung the $400.00 + for that cute puppy.

    M3 is interested in MP3 players. Do you have a recommendation, after your troubles?

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  4. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Now we know for certain Jo isn’t one of us. 😛

    I talked to Pocket-Tunes tech support; they think it’s a Windows Media Problem trying to optimize the mp3, and they sent me some instructions on tweaking Windows Media Player. I’ll see if that fixes it tonight. I haven’t even gotten to the “play” part, so this isn’t a skipping or slow chip problem. This is just a conversion problem.

    I still like the iPod designs best for standalone mp3 player; perhaps if I had a firewire card I could have gotten it to work. I also like the iRiver H10s. Also look at the Creative Zen Sleek when it’s available.

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  5. Jo Avatar
    Jo

    Now you’re just making stuff up.

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  6. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Perhaps. Technobabble rulez!

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  7. JJ Avatar
    JJ

    I got a LifeDrive this past weekend and I just wanted to let you know in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, but there is a very easy way to transfer music to your LifeDrive.

    Plug in the pda via usb to your computer and turn on DriveMode. Now your pda is a usb drive. Open two windows explorer windows – one opened to your music folder and the other opened to the x:\LifeDrive\Music folder (x = whatever drive letter windows assigns your LifeDrive). Now just drag mp3 files your computer in to the Music folder on the LifeDrive.

    The next time you open Pocket Tunes and select to view all media, all the new songs will be there. You can then break the songs down to their appropriate playlists.

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  8. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    Does that pick up all the song information like artist and album, too?

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  9. JJ Avatar
    JJ

    It did on mine. Of course, if the id3 tags are incomplete, it won’t. But you can edit those in either Windows Media Player or iTunes

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  10. Godric Avatar
    Godric

    Try out the core pocket media player. TCPMP is AWESOME! I had the same problems with my lifedrive and so I downloaded this free app and it plays everything I throw at it. Good luck!

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  11. Apple Sues Samsung Over Galaxy Phones and Tablets – Slashdot

    […] (Score:2) by ubergamer1337 (912210) writes: Oh like a palm Lifedrive? […]

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  12. DRichter Avatar
    DRichter

    Just get an iPod Touch. Or an IPhone 4. Whatever dude.

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  13. Michael Avatar
    Michael

    That post was nearly 6 years ago. You’re late. 🙂

    I have a Windows Phone 7 Samsung Focus today.

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About Me

Michael, a sinner saved by grace, sharing what the good Lord has shared with me.

Solomon, in the book of Ecclesiastes, said, “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

If you’re not living for the glory of God, then what you’re doing is meaningless, no matter what it is. Living for God gives life meaning, and enjoying a “chasing after the wind” is a gift from God. I’m doing what I can to enjoy this gift daily.

Got questions? I’m not surprised. If you have any questions about Chasing the Wind, you can email me at chasingthewind@outlook.com.

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