Multiple use: A Japanese tourist displays his palmtop which works as a tourist guide

For several years, technology pundits have predicted the death of the palmtop computer. “This is the cellphone age,” they say. “Who’s going to carry around a separate gadget just to look up names and numbers?” But for the same several years, PalmOne (formerly Palm Computing) has had the same answer: “We’re not dead yet!”

And sure enough, PalmOne has so far managed to keep one or two steps ahead of the cellphone. Its latest palmtops offer bigger, better screens, smooth music and video playback, wireless networking, Microsoft Office document editing and memory-card expansion slots. Furthermore, the Palm operating system can run a vast library of add-on programs ? everything from databases to games and tip calculators.

But last week, PalmOne took the wraps off a new model with the cleverest enhancement yet: a hard drive. This device, called the LifeDrive, is the first hard-drive palmtop ever released outside of Japan; in retrospect, the idea seems obvious. After all, hard drives are already small enough to spin away inside iPods and camcorders. And Palm organisers can already open and edit Microsoft Office documents, show pictures and videos, and play music. Palmtops could be the new laptops, if it weren’t for their limited storage capacity.

Spinning away inside the LifeDrive is a silent, 1-inch, 4-gigabyte hard drive. You can hook it up to a Mac or PC and fill it with files that you want to take on the road. (You’re not limited to files that the LifeDrive can actually open, like Office and multimedia files; you can also use the LifeDrive as a data bucket that simply shuttles big files around from computer to computer.) So the idea is unassailable. How’s the product?

First, the good news. The LifeDrive ($500) is a looker. It’s a handsome metal slab ? edges softly bevelled beneath, crisply folded on top ? that looks great on a boardroom table or a tray table in first class. At the touch of a button on the left side, the picture on the bright 480-by-320-pixel touch screen rotates 90 degrees, the better to display spreadsheets, Word documents and landscape-orientation photos.

At 4.8 by 2.9 by 0.7 inches, the LifeDrive fits comfortably in your hand, but it’s much thicker and taller than other palmtops. PalmOne had to make room for a beefier battery (it lasts a couple of days) to power the hard drive, which is the first moving part ever to appear in a Palm organiser.

As palmtops go, this one is loaded. It has a built-in microphone for spoken Notes to Self, and a surprisingly loud speaker on the back (plus a headphone jack). Like many Palms, this one has an SD memory-card slot. If you insert the card from a digital camera, the photos appear immediately on the screen; a new utility program offers to copy them onto the hard drive, freeing up the memory card for more shooting. Photographers have a new best friend.

The LifeDrive offers two wireless technologies: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The first lets you hop onto Internet hot spots in airports, coffee shops and offices. At that point, you can use the LifeDrive’s slow but attractive mini-browser, send instant messages, check your e-mail, and even open attachments like photos and Office documents. PalmOne’s e-mail program comes with presets for 100 e-mail systems (AOL, Gmail, .Mac, AT&T, Yahoo, Cablevision and more).

The Bluetooth transmitter communicates with other Bluetooth gizmos within about 30 feet. The biggest benefits are that you can synchronise (HotSync) your organiser’s data with a computer without a cable, shoot files through the air to other palmtops or laptops, and get onto the Internet through a Bluetooth cellphone that remains nestled in your pocket. Most of this works beautifully, although the LifeDrive didn’t recognise one Bluetooth phone at all: the Treo 650 from, of all companies, PalmOne. (Right hand, meet left hand.)

NYTNS