Size Matters

There's an old Chinese parable. This rat and an ox get into a debate over which of them is more impressive. The rat bets that he's far more impressive than the ox. They end up going to a wizard to settle the bet. The wizard decides they should let the people decide.

"That sounds great," says the rat. "But can I ask a favor? Since the ox is so much bigger than me anyway, can we double my size?"

The ox says, "Fine by me. You're puny either way."

So the two animals walk into the city square, the ox and the rat, now twice his normal size.

The reaction is dramatic and immediate. Everyone's already seen an ox, there's nothing new there. No big deal. But the rat! A three-foot freaking rat! "Look at the size of that rat!" people shout. "That rat is enormous!" The rat won the bet.

It's all about perception, people.

I've seen a lot of wingnuts complaining recently about the size of the PalmOne LifeDrive. Assuming this thing materializes as the pictures have shown, it's thicker than a modern PDA should be. But you know what? That's okay.

It's not a PDA.

The LifeDrive is a media player. It competes with the iPod, Archos players, etc. It's far, far smaller than Creative's brick of a personal video player, and smaller than most of the devices that compete with it. It also has double the screen density of the QVGA players (and more pixels than the Sony PSP, too). In short, as a media player, it's very well positioned to attack the market, doing things no other single device can do.

But while it has PDA functionality (the same PIM apps as the Tungsten series, and Documents To Go), it's not really a PDA. All the crap that the wingnuts complain about is completely irrelevant if you look at this as a media player that can double as a PDA rather than a PDA that can double as a media player.