Its part of the MultiConnector. PalmOne have moved towards using a special connector (rather like phones) ensuring you will need to buy yet another cable if you want to sync via a cable or you could sync over Wireless and reduce your battery life even more...
At least with a standard USB connector you could be fairly sure of being able to connect to a machine if you were away from base, it was also handy to trickle charge your PDA. ( without having to carry a suitcase full of adapters/chargers etc...just in case you needed them)
I wonder if this USB will be useful so that you can plug in to other USB devices such as printers, scanners, input devices, etc?
I am not sure if the multiconnector is the same as the one they have used on the Treo 650...Probably not, as that would imply Palm had actually put some thought into it......
I bet the power connector is a non-standard size as well :-)
Jon are you having a bad Palm day?
But the device does raise some questions, not least
How much RAM?, Whats the battery life?
So its a PDA with lots of storage, but how are we going to manage that storage, whats the file structure going to be like, how we will navigate it? Have Palm actually thought about any of this, does the solution scale when you have * LOTS* of files?
and with that much storage and the increased likleyhood of you carrying some really important things on it, what security measure are there?
Wouldn't it be reasonable to imagine that battery life and security would be in the same range as an iPod?
I wonder if it has a detachable battery like the Treo 650? But if not there will no doubt be a 3rd party external power jacket to make the LifeDrive a bit porky.
Given that it's being pitched as "Mobile Media Manager" presumably it's just that, a tool that allows you to take some of your media away from your desktop in the same way you use iTunes on your desktop to sync with your iPod (I have around 3,000 files on my iPod to navigate). I would imagine that this is a more likely mode of use of the LifeDrive than using it as a replacement laptop, although with a bluetooth keyboard and landscape orientation that's not beyond reason and clearly students will want to use the device as a capture device to bring stuff back and upload it to a PC or network server.
I expect that Mark/Space (of missing sync fame) is already working on the iTunes/iPhoto/iMovie syncing suite.
LifeDrive is a bit of a rubbish name though
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