The Choice For Me Is Not Lead-Free

Not sure how many of you out there will find this information useful, but in the past few weeks at work we have been getting briefings about a brewing problem in the electronics industry, which may or may not affect the general consumer population.

I won't bore you all with the details, because it's kind of a long story about the kinds of stupid stuff that happens when environmentalists and politicians get together. But basically what happened is that the European Union decided a few years ago that we need to eliminate the use of lead in electronic components.

The problem is that there is a reason people used lead in electronics to begin with, and that is the fact that there's not really many other solutions out there that work as well as lead. Again, won't bore you all with the details, but to make a long story short, lead-free electronic components tend to develop weird phenomena and don't last as long as their traditional leaded counterparts.

While research is still being done to see what can be done about the problems that come with lead-free parts, the world is already moving ahead and starting to follow suit with the European initiatives. Actually, many products have already made the transition to lead-free in the past few years - for example, if you bought a Motorola cell phone in the past 3 years, chances are good that it was built with lead-free solder. But as far as the electronics industry as a whole, 2006 is when this lead-free thing is really supposed to take hold.

Before you run out in a panic and file a class-action suit against some company for selling you a defective part, let me repeat that research is still inconclusive. Also, the problems seem to mostly affect long-term reliability. If you get a new phone every year or two anyways, which most of us do, then it probably won't matter that much. These problems do tend to affect engineers more than anybody else, and especially in the defense industry, where equipment is expected to last for many years without maintenance.

Still, certain "expert opinions" presented in our briefings have recommended the following tips:

1. If you ever have a choice of buying a "RoHS-compliant" vs. "non-RoHS-compliant" version of a product, go with the non-compliant one. (If you ask the employee at Best Buy about RoHS compliance, he probably won't have a clue what you're talking about, but just keep an eye out)

2. If possible, wait until 2007 or beyond before buying new electronics. The hope is that by then, some or most of the issues that are popping up with the lead-free transition will be worked out.

3. If you do buy an electronic gadget or appliance in the next year or so, it might not be a terrible idea to get one of those "extended warranties" that stores sometimes offer.

So take that for what it's worth. It could be a whole lot of industry uproar over nothing, like the Y2K mess. Or it might actually end up being the cause of Earth's final apocalypse. You just never know.

I'm not sure what I'm planning to do myself. I don't normally get those warranties, but maybe if I buy a new cell phone or X-box or something, I'll consider it next time. Especially cause I like keeping stuff for more than a couple years if I can. Anyways, we'll have to wait see what happens.