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Now make the battery user accessible

The iPod battery is user accessible. Sure, it is not as easy as opening a battery cover and popping the battery out but it still is a trivial process. I think the current placement of the battery helps to keep the iPod size smaller too. I recently replaced my iPod's battery and it only took about ten minutes, about five of which were spent trying to get the damn case open but it still wasn't that bad. Once the case was open all that was needed was to unplug the old batter, pop the new battery in and seal the case back up.

Here is a decent tutorial that explains the process:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10165_7-5643378-1.htm l

Besides, you have to pay the top rate, and be running 64-bit, to get most of the security improvements in Vista anyway. Price gouging - if Windows customers need these security improvements then they *all* need them, not just those who have $400 to spare. All Leopard customers will be getting all that's to be had from their vendor for their $120.

And some of these are of dubious benefit, anyway. What user with any sense would care about running ActiveX in a sandbox? Just don't run it AT ALL. As Robert Vamosi says Address Space Layout Randomization is nice, but that's about all that's worth having. His article is entitled: "That $200 Windows XP service pack called Vista":

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-6689143.html

In practice there's 2 colour varieties of iPod, 7 of Creative labs Zen Move and 2 of Zune. There's also a device by Cowon and finally the Zune twin brother by Toshiba.

And Municipal Broadband seems unpopular with states.

There is faint hope for an opportunity in the Senate Communications Act of 2006 on page 184 of which I find:

''(c) LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISION OF ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS CAPABILITY AND SERVICES.--No State statute, regulation, or other State legal requirement may prohibit or have the effect of prohibiting any public provider from providing, to any person or any public or private entity, advanced telecommunications capability or any service that utilizes the advanced telecommunications capability provided by such public provider.

There is no way the communications giants would let that pass.

http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/awards/innovations /rd_2007honorees.asp?category=110

This should hopefully give people a better idea to folks that there were a whole bunch of interesting gaming technology being shown there and that although Sony won best of category (http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/awards/innovation s/rd_2007honorees.asp?boi=1), they were just one of 11 honorees.

Hardly a roundup, if you just pick the fattest bull out of the herd and let the rest of the valuable cattle get away (the article did pay attention to the Headplay viewer, something I'm not sure made any honoree list.. basic searches don't come up with anything so far).

Also, CNet (http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-12760_7-6676861-1.ht ml?tag=bubbl_1) has their own awards too. I only mention them because they are at least the most officially attached media outlet to the event it seems.

I'm a little down on the 'hydrogen economy' for all the obvious reasons that have been presented here, and in the past. However, if Ford is actually serious about hydrogen over electric, my opinion is that there best bet would be a package where car and solar hydrogen generator sold as a together from the dealership. This would be much like the tiny toy hydrogen car that a Chinese company sold
http://www.gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/hracer-toy- hydrogen-car-174962.php

hopefully, you don't need to travel more than the 25 miles between time you can charge your car from the grid more than once or twice a week. Meanwhile, your little solar station can sit there, perfectly aligned with the sun for max efficiency, generating hydrogen all week long, might take a few days to generate a tankfull, but hopefully you don't need to make the long trips more than once or twice a week. This should help with the 'no infrastructure problem' as well as a potential source for all those other fuel cell powered gizmos http://www.cnet.com/4831-11405_1-6412811.html that are just itching to get onto the market.

S.

You need to get out more often! When you walk into a store today, the $500-$700 price range is filled with 30-inch HDTV LCDs. Accounting for inflation, that's less then what my family paid for our 27-inch CRT in 1990.

You need at least a 33" wide screen (16/9) TV to match the size of a 27" standard definition (4/3). By size I mean how big something like a person would appear on the TV. The wider screen gives you more stuff to see at the sides (assuming wide-screen content), but it doesn't make the objects bigger. (Except if you are viewing widescreen content on a 4/3 television with horizontal bars.)

TV aspect-ratio converter

The real answer to why this may be is the following. HD-DVDs are cheaper to produce, and aside from a select few companies and organizations, most pornographers work out of very little liquidated flow, can't afford to muster up for blu ray when they're still unstable. But this is besides the point: the fact remains, the first combination reading player has been introduced by LG. It's only a matter of time before single-format players become obseleted, and deleted from society's memory. There's no real Betamax Vs. VHS war going on here, though it looks like it from afar. Warner brothers is already working on a disc that's going to be able to have either data type written to it, and this, in combination with combo players will make HD vs. Blu ray like VCDs vs DVDs. they'll both have different purposes, slight differences, but in todays date, most players will play both of them

I agree. I do think the PlayStation Porn-able fiasco might actually be factoring into this too. But what a totally arbitrary decision for them to make .. porn = bad, but fucking over a user's computer = good? If Sony is willing to trade off the success of its Blu-ray format for a barely-perceived nod toward family values, they're even dumber than I took them.

I predict that the majority of movies to be sold in the future will be DVD and HD-DVD, but Sony's movie studios will publish in DVD and Blu-Ray, and in two or three years, every new player sold will be able to play them both.

The RAZR isn't the competition; the $500 iPAQ is. When you compare the iPhone to other devices with similar feature sets, the price seems much more reasonable. It's just unfortunate that Apple decided to name it as a phone, when it is much more.

As for whether the entire smartphone industry is dying, that's another question.

Phones home frequently
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6636289.html? subj=blog&part=rss&tag=6636289
http://slashdot.org/articles/06/09/09/1844200.shtm l

and the EULA is even worse
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=196163&cid=160 72472

fsku em all

Okay.

This is all legal under current copyright law.

I will grant that only Sony is explictly enforcing there licenses. However in my prior post above, the unnamed music executive said it was true for all music.

http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-6376177.html

And in a deep-dive into the Sony end-user license agreement, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found some astonishing fine print. For example, if you lose the original CD or it's stolen, you lose the right to any digital copies you've made. You can't keep your music on computers at work. You must delete your songs if you move out of the country or if you file for bankruptcy. The list goes on and on.

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/Opinion/Columnists/Mil lar_John/2005/12/02/1333437-sun.html
According to an analysis conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization that describes itself as "working to protect your digital rights," the Sony fine print contains astonishing wording. An example is the requirement that if you lose the original CD or if the CD is stolen, you lose the right to any digital copies you may have made.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004145.php

      1. If your house gets burgled, you have to delete all your music from your laptop when you get home. That's because the EULA says that your rights to any copies terminate as soon as you no longer possess the original CD.

      2. You can't keep your music on any computers at work. The EULA only gives you the right to put copies on a "personal home computer system owned by you."

      3. If you move out of the country, you have to delete all your music. The EULA specifically forbids "export" outside the country where you reside.

      4. You must install any and all updates, or else lose the music on your computer. The EULA immediately terminates if you fail to install any update. No more holding out on those hobble-ware downgrades masquerading as updates.

      5. Sony-BMG can install and use backdoors in the copy protection software or media player to "enforce their rights" against you, at any time, without notice. And Sony-BMG disclaims any liability if this "self help" crashes your computer, exposes you to security risks, or any other harm.

      6. The EULA says Sony-BMG will never be liable to you for more than $5.00. That's right, no matter what happens, you can't even get back what you paid for the CD.

      7. If you file for bankruptcy, you have to delete all the music on your computer. Seriously.

      8. You have no right to transfer the music on your computer, even along with the original CD.

      9. Forget about using the music as a soundtrack for your latest family photo slideshow, or mash-ups, or sampling. The EULA forbids changing, altering, or make derivative works from the music on your computer.

CNET Reviews don't agree that Ferrari laptops are top of the line. What's Microsoft up to? Anyone missing any underpants?

Also, every VCR ever sold can record.

Of course every VCR ever sold can record. Otherwise it'd be false advertising. You may not be old enough to remember seeing a VCP on the shelves, as it was cheaper to market for the low end consumer. I saw them in the early 90s as a kid browsing in KMart with not so much cash in hand, skipped it because tape is lame. That was well before Walmart invaded the area and spewed even cheaper garbage onto the market.

On second thought, by your UID, you probably are old enough to have been walking the electronics aisles back then.

Here's one of the top google hits for a relatively new model.

See you got lucky. I bought the Diamond Rio, which was falsely advertised as the world's first MP3 player (the Eiger MPMan came out first in the US by a few months). My Rio broke within a year, and it was a joke compared to cd players (32MB of storage FTW).

Re the Eiger / Hango: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-5622055-1.html

>> That would be an insightful comment, except that it's completely wrong. You can buy the Samsung BDP1000 Blu-Ray player for LESS than a playstation 3 (if you can even get your hands on a playstation 3), and the Samsung outputs at proper 1080p resolution. The playstation 3 does not.

You cannot buy Samsung BDP1000 Blu-Ray for less then a PS3, especially compared to the $500 PS3, which is just as good as the 60GB as far as a Blu-ray is concerned.

http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=Samsung+BDP100 0&hl=en&lr=&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US :official&hs=qNs&sa=X&oi=froogle&ct=title
http://shopper.cnet.com/Samsung_BD_P1000/4014-6463 _9-31799185.html?tag=srch_1_1

Also, the PS3 DOES output at proper 1080p, stop spreading FUD; In fact, the PS3 Blu-ray playback is considered superior to the BDP1000 vs the PS3 due to the BDP1000 cropping and soft image problem.

http://dvd.themanroom.com/dvd-newsview.php?id=0039 3

but with the new Macs booting Windows ... after laying out almost as much as a PC system for a copy of Parallels and Windows XP ($269.98, $10 less than you can pick up a Dimension B110 from Dell).

1. Windows can run just fine by itself in boot camp. You don't need Parallels at all unless you want to run Windows in virtualization inside of OS X.
   
   And if you already have a non-OEM copy of XP(not everyone, but many people do), you can transfer the license over and pay not a single red cent to run Windows on your Mac.
   
   
2. The new Macs are Core-2-Duo-based machines. The Dell Dimension B110 is a Celeron-D-based machine. Isn't it a bit dishonest to imply that running XP on a Celeron-D-based Dell would be comparable to running XP on a Core-2-Duo-based machine?
   
   And Dell's site says "Desktops starting at $359".
   
   
3. There are big benefits from only needing the space for one computer. You pay less for upgrades, you need less physical space, and since the Mac can read the Windows partitions, you can move files between OS X and Windows much more easily when the partitions are on the same computer.
   
   Having one machine that can run Windows and one that can run Mac OS X is not nearly the same as having one machine that can do both.

...but not the way you were thinking. In fact what the WiFi gets you besides the ability to music in a very limited manner, is the "WiFi Sizzle" - a delightful crackle overlaid on your music while WiFi is enabled.

I felt bad about not actually posting a link before, here's the blog I was referring to, he talked about it as the "WiFi Sizzle". It's from CNet so it has a little more credibility than "random blog"...

Not quite. I still have to interact with it sometimes, like adjusting the volume, and sometimes want to change playlists. The form factor is very important, so it is comfortable in my pocket. I used a shuffle for a long time, and wasn't bothered by the lack of a scroll wheel. However, when I did move to a Nano with scroll wheel, I did like it better, the very light touch it takes, and the ease of scanning through tracks.

I thought that iPods were easier to use because of their superior, patented scroll wheels?

That's one of their benefits. I'm not sure why you have such a one-dimensional view of iPods. Some people like to jump around songs and constantly interfact with their iPod. I happen to listen to many very long recordings, so the scroll wheel is a boon when I want to scan to a particular part of the track. But the iPod is more than just the hardware or the software. It is the way all the parts work together.

Not everyone uses iTunes/iPods in the same way and I'm certain it took you some work to get iTunes to manage your player in the manner you prefer.

Not really, it was extremely easy. I had been using iTunes since it first came out, and even before that, my MP3 files were all meticulously tagged. So, when the "smart playlists" feature was added, it was amazingly simple to set up. Just "create new smart playlist" and then set some rules. Done.

You are free to redefine what constitutes your portable music player in order to meet your "ease of use" perspective. For the rest of us, the player itself is what we use to listen to the music while we aren't at our computer.

I'm not "redefining the player" - just saying that the players are heavy reliant on software support. You need some sort of software to be able to use these players. The quality of that software affecte ease-of-use. I don't think you speak for "the rest of us" - because many disagree with you that software does not affect the portable music experience.

I don't agree with that at all. I hated iTunes when it came to Windows. ... iTunes is successful on Windows only because people own iPods.

Your opinion has no bearing on market-share. Just because you don't like iTunes, doesn't mean it isn't the most popular software out there. The fact is that it did take over from previously popular applications, notably WinAmp. Your argument is like me saying "I disagree that Windows has a large market-share. I hate Windows."

As for the success depending on the iPod, that's a chicken-and-egg argument. The iPod would not be successful without iTunes. They go hand-in-hand. iTunes gave rise to the iPod. The iPod fueled iTunes popularity.

So much for iPods being marketed as "iPod + iTunes".

The box packaging is hardly the most significant part of marketing. Haven't you ever seen the TV ads for the iPod? At the end they have "iPod + iTunes" in huge letters on the screen. Same with many of their billboards. I suspect you might be trolling, or otherwise live in a remote part of society with no advertising if you don't know of this.

If I am, you aren't doing anything to enlighten me. As far as I'm concerned, I'm unaware of them because they don't exist

Now this just takes the cake for spurious logic. "If I haven't seen it, it doesn't exist." Bravo! Clearly you are an intellectual giant. I don't suppose you tried actually looking, or opening your eyes, did you? From a 10-second web search:

iPod Nano review - Another Nano review

Quote from the CNET editor's review:

As far as the 2G Nano is concerned, iTunes continues to

Reviewing the grandparent post..



The parent post is regarding the Sandisk, not the Zune.

http://reviews.cnet.com/SanDisk_Sansa_e270_6GB/450 7-6490_7-31684140.html?tag=sub

This does play MP3 and WMA files.

Check out the CNet comparison. Look at the rankings from the editors vs. from the readers. Whoops, just noticed the article actually links to Wired when it says it links to CNet. No matter, here's the CNet side by side comparison: http://reviews.cnet.com/4321-6464_7-6551960.html?t ag=cnetfd.mt

Here's how the editors ranked the systems:

1. PS3 (8.8) 2. Xbox 360 (8.4) 3. Wii (8.2)

Here's how the readers ranked the systems:

1. Wii (8.0) 2. Xbox 360 (7.5) 3. PS3 (7.1)

Aside from the full one-point "grade inflation" the readers ranked the systems in exactly the opposite order that the editors did. Is this because the editors are playing on machines they didn't pay for? And with HDTV equipment most users don't have? Is it perhaps related to the relative advertising might these companies are flexing at CNet? Are CNet gamers more casual and fun-oriented compared to more hardcore CNet editors?

Whatever's going on, it looks interesting to me.

-stormin (shameless self-promotion, I covered this discrepancy in my blog yesterday: http://kiriath-arba.blogspot.com/2006/11/editors-v s-gamers.html)

Yeah! And all those people who would want to, perhaps, carry a spare, or charge one while using the other are just plain crazy. Crazy, I tell you!

Hell, I have 3 (proprietary) batteries for my camera, and I barely use it. But when I do, I don't want to have to worry about the batteries going dead. Sure, I could probably find an outlet somewhere to recharge it, but it's about convenience, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but I sort of thought convenience was the whole point of a portable product.

Replace solder with contacts, and add a latch. It's really not that difficult -- every wireless remote control in the history of mankind has had one, including the one that fits in the ExpressCard slot of my laptop. On the other hand, the battery eventually goes out, and people are then forced to make a decision -- pay to replace it, or buy a shiny new iPod.

The honest truth is -- and it's not wrong, it's just the way it is -- Apple wants to sell more products. If they made the battery replacable, third party batteries would saturate the market, and Apple's marketshare for them would be next to nothing -- but they'd still have to sell the batteries to support the product.

It's a business decision, plain and simple.

Yeah, this is what turned me off:

You can download songs only through the included USB cable. There's no way to transfer iTunes music wirelessly, you can't listen to music through a Bluetooth headset, and you can't use iTunes tracks as ring tones. The strict 100-song storage limit hasn't changed either, and all songs must be saved on the TransFlash card, assuming you haven't filled it up with a lot of other data. And forget the idea of storing more music on the phone's skimpy 5MB of integrated memory--it just isn't possible. So in other words, don't get too excited about circumventing the inadequate 100-song cap. Like the Rokr, the Slvr L7 also connects with only one computer at a time. When we tried connecting to a second computer, the Slvr L7, like the Rokr E1, erased all our previously loaded songs. http://reviews.cnet.com/Motorola_Slvr_L7/4505-6454 _7-31313329.html

So it would seem you couldn't just pop in a (micro) SD card with mp3s on it and go. Even worse, it's only USB 1.1.

I was told that you need a separate provider (I have NiftyServe, which I use to get a login account on my home fiber connection from Tokyo Gas, which I can use apparently). There are 64K, 384K and 3.6M (2 models) but I am still trying to figure out just what it will cost and the flat rate for unlimited donwloading looks expensive.

http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/blog/littleredblog/0, 39056119,61962490,00.htm

Could it be the 40 GB, or 60 GB version?

40GB is 6.2 oz.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Apple_iPod_40GB_4th_genera tion/4507-6490_7-30978812.html?tag=sub

Not to mention the fact that 4th gen iPod weighed 5.6 oz. and Zune weighs 5.6 oz. Miraculously, Zune is lighter.

I see a lot of posts in this discussion that say XPS is better than PDF, because it's XML and human readable and you can manipulate it with XSLT, it's going to be submitted as a standard, etc. That just makes me think: what about SVG? It's already a standard, it's XML, human readable, XSLT, etc.

Those are the same comments people have made regarding Windows Presentation Foundation (AKA "Avalon") and XAML. Guess what? The pages in an XPS document are XAML files represented in a strict subset of WPF. In fact, the XPS viewer provided as part of .NET 3.0 is powered by WPF.

As for what differentiates it from SVG, WPF provides a higher level of elements that do not exist in SVG, namely UI controls such as DockPanel, InkCanvas, TextBox, and even 3D content via Viewport3D. The New York Times Reader is built purely using WPF. You can't do that with SVG without writing the controls from scratch (but please enlighten me if I'm wrong). Therefore, while XPS itself isn't much different from SVG, the architecture in which XPS resides reaches far beyond SVG.

There's still another argument against XPS/XAML/WPF: Why didn't Microsoft simply extend SVG? IMO it would break one point of elegance regarding WPF, which is that the XML elements correspond directly to the .NET WPF objects and follow .NET naming conventions. For example, XPS has a Path element with a Fill attribute; the .NET analog is a Path class with a Fill property of type Brush. There are other arguments as well, but I'm not too familiar with them.

How dows this differ form the laser DLP that Mitsubishi announced back in April?
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6482184.html

What is clear is that Ballmer has no clue what's going on. Just like during the last bubble, when Microsoft was the last to "get" it.

You're not looking hard enough. CNet lets you search for TVs based on a wide variety of criteria. Here's the page that shows you all HDTVs broken down by screen size. There are over 250 models that are between 25" and 40".

Satellite solves the problem of no local HD programming. And are you really sure that your rural area receives no HDTV over the air? Unless you're in the mountains, chances are that you can receive over-the-air signals. HDTV signals travel farther & with much less opportunity for signal degradation. Where I live the standard channels come in poorly or not at all, yet the HD version of each one is crystal clear. Check out AntennaWeb to see if you are within range, and what sort of antenna you'd need to receive them.

-BbT

This one is little more stylish. It also says the battery lasts 7 days.

I lived with my parents while I went to school last semester and we had FIOS. The speeds ranged from 1.5 to 2.5 megs per second and the sytem still uses dsl for uploading data. Slashdot loaded a little quicker than regular DSl but most sites still only transfer data around 75-180k a second with no noticable difference. Bittorrent was still slow. I read last month that most ISP's mod down bittorrent and other p2p technology so I wonder if this was the case?

If you plan to use torrents avoid FIOS as its modded down heavily and most download speeds are about the same as stand alone DSL,

Last, the house I live at now has the highest speed of DSL offered by SBC at 768k a second. According to cnet's bandwith meter I get around 2 megs a second with plain old DSL. Its $15 cheaper per month than my parents FIOS and torrents download faster. Its just as fast.

My point is do not think FIOS is 100 megs per second of paradise because its not. The connection is only fiber to the central office where its routed with regular traffic under standard T3's.

I don't disagree, I think the 360 is dead in Japan, but... I recently saw these polls:

http://quizzes.yahoo.co.jp/quizresults.php?poll_id =3482&wv=1
http://japan.cnet.com/game/sp/story/0,2000079540,2 0243887,00.htm?tag=poll.votl

Basic translation on the Yahoo one:

"With PS3 and Wii, where better and better picture quality can be seen, which one will you buy by the end of the year?" (Cooperation with Famitsu Editorial Staff)

Buy both: 3% (1,227 votes)
Buy Wii: 15% (6,893 votes)
Buy PS3: 16% (7,608 votes)
Buy neither and buy Xbox 360: 55% (26,474 votes)
Still looking at the options (IE., unsure): 13% (6,201 votes)"

Doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to me.

An old post of Raymond Chen springs to mind: Why is there no programmatic access to the Start menu pin list?

In Windows 95, we gave programmatic access to the Start menu "Fast items" list - the items that appear at the top of the Start menu above the Programs list. This area was meant for the user to customize with their favorite links, but programs quickly saw the opportunity and spammed themselves into it every chance they got.

In IE, we gave programmatic access to the Favorites menu, and once again, programs spammed themselves into it.

Besides, I'm not at all convinced that Symantec has a technical reason for wanting to replace the Security Center.

Frankly, we'd like to see the Protection Center recognize installed non-Symantec applications--and keep advertising clearly marked as such.

I guess I just not willing to put as much faith in Norton as you are. I'm siding with Raymond Chen on this one: Why is there no programmatic access to the Start menu pin list?

It's with a sly sardonic grin I listen to Symantec lamenting:

Having been pretty happy with their antivirus for the last few generations I updated to NAV2006 end September when my subscription ran out. Buying, downloading and installing went pretty smooth, but after a restart Norton had, much to my surprise and oddly relevant for this thread, disabled the Windows Security Center and replaced it with their own Protection Center. I wasn't aware having asked for it in the first place. Whereas the default security center is rather discreet, the Norton version behaves like a piece of malware: It doesn't just put a small notification icon in the taskbar but grabs a huge chunk of the main pane and tries to grab your attention with big colorful dialogs. You can't uninstall it nor disable it. Nortons support pages won't prove helpful. I uninstalled NAV and did a reinstall, this time making sure that no checkboxes we're ticked - that didn't seem to bother it at all. Figuring out how to get rid of it took the most of an evening. It all brought back sad memories of a Real Player infestation, but having payed for the experience this time really made me feel like an idiot...

I understand why Symantec does this. In order for them to stay in business they need Johnny Consumer to think "Norton" instead of "anti-virus". But, it also makes perfect sense that MS wants to put an end to it. No, Symantec brought this one upon themselves.

Besides, are you really sure that Symantec's desire to replace the SC is for technical reasons?

Frankly, we'd like to see the Protection Center recognize installed non-Symantec applications--and keep advertising clearly marked as such.

Just make sure that if you buy a 1080p TV, you get one that has a 1080p input! I bought a sony KDS-R50XBR1 SXRD 50" about 6 months ago which was marketed as a 1080p display. The specs show that it can display 1080p, but none of the inputs support it! Of course, now they have a new model with a shiny new name (Grand Wega SXRD 50") that has a HDMI 1080p input...
And yes, my living room was root-kit'd.

I'm typing this on a 37" Westy as well... great display. CNET says it'll do 1080p/60, and there's a "system info" menu that mentions the vertical frequency.

By the way, CNET just did a little video telling people about Ubuntu Linux and how to download and run it from a disk so that they can give it a no-risk try.

http://reviews.cnet.com/4660-10165_7-6639061.html? tag=cnetfd.mt

You cannot tell the difference between a DRMd file and a non DRMd file all else being equal.

Oh, but you can, though...

...Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them...
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-6462771-1.html

owning a big chunk of Gyration Inc

Ahh! that makes total sense, I always thought the Wiimote looked like a gyration mouse.
The old gyration mouse || the new one looks even more like a remote

it was pretty cool a few years ago when I had one for htpc, the tech is probably even better now. i feel better about the wiimote now.

Get a high quality analog-to-digital converter (a high-end VCR with svideo output should do the trick) and a video card with VIVO (video-in, video-out) so that it can take the input. This might be a good place to start:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11259_7-5705957-1.htm l?tag=bnav

I don't know much about bitrates, compression and whatnot, but I'm sure a little websearching will point you in the right direction. And don't forget the torrent! ;)

And apple used to innovate. Guess I'll save my money for a "real" video player:

http://reviews.cnet.com/Archos_AV500_Mobile_DVR_30 GB/4505-6499_7-31517717.html?tag=viddet

And this thing has been out for ages. Must be hella hard for Apple to knock one off when you're falling back to 2002 for your ipod designs (mini-nano? Yech.)

(I hate doing this, seriously)

Why do I care if it supports FLAC? Apple provides a compressor and decompressor for ALAC, and you can freely convert between lossless formats without fear.

Better audio output? Prove it.

I don't need a simple hard drive interface, it'd be tougher for it to be simpler than iTunes, and I already like Apple's menu organizational structure (the one they paid Creative $100M for), so I don't feel the need to rearrange my menus by rearranging my files.

What does the Cowon do with USB host? Hard-drive based iPods have USB host. But the only thing Apple uses it for is to suck pictures off your digital camera over USB. Does Cowon do something cooler with it? I have to imagine there are cooler things that Apple doesn't bother with.

The Cowon X5 is rated at 14 hours. The 30G Apple 5G ipod is rated at 14 hours. The 60G Apple 5G iPod is rated at 20 hours. There's an X5L which has much longer battery life, but it's a lot thicker, being 50% thicker than the 60G 5g iPod, and that doesn't even include the screen which appears to protrude another 2mm.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Cowon_iAudio_X5_20GB/4505- 6490_7-31383684.html

Now to some more subjective comments.

Is the better screen quality you are referring to the 262,144 colors? With a good dither scheme in place, you'll never see the difference between 65,536 colors and 262,144. And without a good dither scheme, both will look poor on color and greyscale ramps. I just don't see this as an issue personally. What will be easy to notice is that the screen on the 5G iPod is 320x240 and the screen on the Cowon X5 is 160x128. The iPod has almost 4x the pixels. I thought watching video was annoying staring at a 320x240 screen, 160x128 would really be annoying.

It doesn't appear the X5 charges off of USB like the 5G iPod does it? I guess that's what the dock is for. This would annoy me highly on the go, as I use my laptop as a charger and AC adapter for my iPod when I go on vacation. It wouldn't be as bothersome in regular use as once you go through the slight extra trouble of hooking up the dock, it works fine from then on as long as you can get home to it each night.

The X5 looks pretty stylish. However, I think I'd be a tad embarassed when people saw my device said "color sound" on it. That can be solved by keeping it in my pocket though. One thing that can't be solved is that I am left handed and the Cowon is inherently right handed with the placement of that tiny joystick.

The display remote is simultaneously pretty fancy and also large enough that I'd probaly never use it. It's about 1/4 the size of the main unit. That means I'd never clip it to my shirt, and if I'm going to bring it in and out of my pocket, I might as well bring the whole thing in and out. A college student who keeps his player in his backpack would probably feel differently though. Oh, I see it costs extra. That's fine, since I wouldn't use it, I wouldn't buy it. No harm, no foul.

It does not appear to be an inherently tougher build. It might be more scratch resistant on the front though, I can't tell from the pics.

It's nice Cowon sells things like a port breakout at very reasonable prices. A lot cheaper than iPod accessories.

http://onlinestore.cowonamerica.com/index.asp?Page Action=VIEWPROD&ProdID=48

I think your advantage list falls short of what it promises. This doesn't look like a bad player though.

i would tend to agree with the GPU theory, because Aero requires graphical acceleration to be constantly on. I read that on sevral reviews, and all agreed that Vista was not a good laptop solution as the ALWAYS ACCELERATING aero feature sucks the juice out of the battery: http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6534816.html (Vista Eats Laptop Batteries for Lunch).

this shows how bad MS is actually going about this: Apple's Aqua interface or The XGL for Linux are way beoynd that kind of problem, and their products are already out... see http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/2915/linux_xglco mpiz_graphics for comparative video of all 3 interfaces.

ant

See here. Of the 737 models listed there, only 100 are capable of displaying 1024 lines or more, and 79 are capable of 1080 lines. That site doesn't have a way to quickly show which ones can only input 1080i and not 1080p, but there's quite a few sets that can display 1080 lines but still can't input 1080p.

Also, sets with a display less than 1000 lines are obviously noticably less expensive, so consumers are more likely to buy them as well.

In short, at most 10.7% of the market is capable of 1080i.

Just look at Ogg Vorbis, none of the big manufacturers support it

A far more concerning problem with the proliferation of gargantuan TV sets is their ridiculous power consumption, which is greater than that for LCDs by 50% (comparing constant area).

The cost of ownership of a Plasma should therefore be a significant factor in any decision to purchase one. And need I say anything about climate change?

OLEDs anyone? At least you don't lose half the transmitted intensity to the polarizers.

for people who link to their own poorly written blog without stating such in the summary??

Anyway, FWIW, CNET wrote a real review of the Writely Beta a couple of months ago. Writely seems to be missing something very important, unless I didn't notice it in my perusal of the article. It's all very well and good that access to the documents is password protected. But what they also need is for the documents to be optionally autosaved in a strongly encrypted format, so that even if someone gets access to your online folder, they can't (easily) read what's there.

Google seems to think they are miraculously immune to privacy snafus. I know the company is run by some very smart guys, but everybody makes mistakes. This is not an area to which they should be giving short shrift.