Could Khertan Know About the Lifedrive Replacement?

Palm Developer, Khertan republished an interesting article from his website, khertan.net on PalmAddicts, bringing one to question what exactly is in store for us from Palm this year.

He harkens back to a prior interview that Jeff Hawkins gave, stating that Palm had essentially three divisions that catered to new products. Essentially, there is a division that does not even get mentioned (Secret Stuff :)). It is this - and not the other two - that is stirring the pot of speculation.

Like Apple Computers, Palm is as secretive as it can be and Khertan is suggesting that with the advent of new processors, namely the Marvell PXA320, the Mother of all Palm products could be announced in June of this year.

If this were to be the case, we would be looking at a device that would make the Lifedrive look like a Nano! It would have to be larger than usual and that could pose a problem for those of us looking for a small solution. Additionally, with the advent of Microsoft's Ultra Mobile PC, would Palm just be following the leader? Or would this be a continuation of the link with Microsoft, producing a Palm UMPC and a Microsoft UMPC?

In effect, if Palm - as Khertan suggests - continues to use a modified version of Garnet to run this device, instead of going with Linux or the long awaited OS, would this be another example of what the Palm CEO stated in an off the cuff moment during an analyst interview - The Lifedrive was an experiment!

Perfection of this experiment - a disk based Palm device - would be seen as what Khertan describes as "A compromise between an UMPC and a PDA." Obviously we all hope that this device will be much smaller than a UMPC.

It's a great read and appears to be a legitimate contender for first rumor of the year on the device front.


LDD.