PDA with a Hard drive?

[binar]

Fellow Forum Members,
I own an IPOD mp3 player and it has a 60 Gigabyte hard disk. Currently, I don't own a PDA, but in my shopping around for one, I have noticed that PDAs with hard disks are few and far between. The only one I could find is one from Palm called the Life Saver and it has a 4 GB hard disk. Can anyone out there suggest any other options? I have a lot of files to carry around and the thought of carrying a bunch of flash cards doesn't really appeal to me. Moreover, can anyone clarify for me why Apple can manage integrating a 60 GB hard disk into their IPOD device, yet the best the PDA industry can mangage is a 4 GB hard drive? Why does the PDA industry shy away from micro hard drives? Any info will be appreciated.

[AnswerDude]

One reason is battery life. The pda has large color touch screen and many models have both wifi and bluetooth, adding movable parts hard drive will cut down the battery life substantially. This is probably why Apple hasn't come up with full color touch screen ipod yet.
And there is not really a demand for higher cost and heavier pda. Remember that the main function of these pda is for PIM (contacts, calendar, appointments). Playing music and video are secondary for many users and manufacturers are not willing to add cost and weight to the unit. So for most people 4gb sd card is plenty to store files.

[torp]

so far as i know the lifedrive is the only device with a mechanical disk. you might be able to use an ibm microdrive in a cf slot if your handheld has one, but i'm not sure about that due to the power constraints mentioned by the answerdude.

torp