LifeDrive No Longer Shipping to EU Market

Posted By: Kris Keilhack on Monday, July 17, 2006 12:55:31 PM

According to a report on Brighthand, Palm has ended shipments of the the LifeDrive Mobile Manager to Europe. Due to the EU's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) law, Palm's ceased exports of their LifeDrive, alongside the Treo 650, to Europe as of July 1st.

The European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) law prohibits the use of lead and five other toxic substances in electronics equipment took effect on July 1st. The Treo 650 smartphone was also affected by the EU requirement.

A new LifeDrive has been rumored since the launch of the current model in May 2005. Early rumors had pegged the new LifeDrive as simpply having an 6gb MicroDrive vs. the current model's 4gb drive. It is currently unclear if Palm plans to continue the product line or simply dissolve it after a single model. Given the discontinuation of the Treo 650 and the repackaging of the Tungsten E2, Palm likely has some stragegy in the works for the LifeDrive as it is the company's final product still bearing the old PalmOne logo and packaging.

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11 total comments

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Surer's post should be moved here

SeldomVisitor @ 7/17/2006 4:31:09 PM #

http://www.palminfocenter.com/comments/8750/#123463

Lifedrive II?

mbgrayson @ 7/17/2006 4:33:47 PM #

Why bother? With a 4 GB Sd card already out, why have a hard drive, with its extra cost, weight, and power consumption?

Sd cards will continue to increase in capacity and drop in price. I would rather see Palm work to develop a true high end successor to the T3...the TX is too slow.

Mike

RE: Lifedrive II?

sremick @ 7/17/2006 5:10:00 PM #

The TX isn't inferior to the T3 simply because of speed, either. There are numerous features (many standard up until after the T3) that are present in the T3 and missing from the TX (and every other Palm since the T3).

I agree: we need a REAL successor to the T3. And I'm willing to pay the premium in order to get it, the day it's available.

http://vtbsd.net/winhelp/

RE: Lifedrive II?

t3h @ 7/17/2006 8:39:27 PM #

The T3 is missing WiFi, which IMO is probably the most significant feature of the unit. At least, it is for me. And it isn't that slow. Get WarpSpeed on it if you think it is - it can be clocked up to at least 416MHZ (if not to 500 or for the first revision 600).

And the voice memo can be added. Granted, that should really have been included, but you can get an athena-connector microphone.

Soon to be getting a T|X ( or maybe T5, Lifedrive or Treo - I can't decide!)

RE: Lifedrive II?

DarthRepublican @ 7/19/2006 1:44:58 AM #

A LifeDrive with a 4GB SD card becomes an 8GB device which would be pretty sweet. I like my LifeDrive and would definitely upgrade to an LDII if it had the TX's innards married to a 30GB microdrive. The slow hard-drive based memory is the LD's biggest Achilles Heel, replacing it with 100MB of NVFS flash memory and greatly upping the hard drive capacity would make it a near perfect device for me.

RE: Lifedrive II?

hkklife @ 7/19/2006 4:16:02 PM #

Probably a cheaper route for Palm would be a refreshed TX with 128mb NVFS RAM (like it has now) coupled with a 2gb internal storage drive (like the T5). Add SDHC certifiction to the unit and then the user can add at his/her own leisure a 4gb cards now.
With up to a maximum of 32gb (the limit of the SDHC spec)
card sizes coming down the pipeline there's no reason to fiddle with a Microdrive with all of its inherent limitations when used in a PDA/Smartphone.

Pilot 1000-->Pilot 5000-->PalmPilot Pro-->IIIe-->Vx-->m505-->T|T-->T|T2-->T|C-->T|T3-->T|T5-->TX-->Treo 700P

Is the TX compliant?

Surur @ 7/17/2006 4:42:49 PM #

Well, is it?

Surur

They said I only argued for the sake of arguing, but after an hour I convinced them they were wrong...
Hey!! I made associate writer at PDA247. Come see my nattering over there!!
http;//www.clieuk.co.uk/wm.shtml

RE: Is the TX compliant?

cervezas @ 7/17/2006 6:12:33 PM #

They're not sure yet. A few of the European rats have suffered reset loops, from what I understand, but they need more data to know whether the incidence is statistically significant compared to the placebo. I understand they're feeding the control group Nokia 9500 communicators. Interesting stuff.

David Beers
Pikesoft Mobile Computing
Software Everywhere blog
www.pikesoft.com/blog

RE: Is the TX compliant?

Surur @ 7/17/2006 6:25:56 PM #

RE: Is the TX compliant?

AdamaDBrown @ 7/17/2006 7:05:00 PM #

A few of the European rats have suffered reset loops

Boy, that's NOT a phrase I expected to see.

RE: Is the TX compliant?

freakout @ 7/17/2006 7:42:18 PM #

I don't know what you're on David, but where can I get some?

Palm Software on sale