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5GB portable MP3 Player
DrunkGiz writes, "Remote Solution's PJB 100 stores over 80 playback hours (1200 songs), and incorporates an IBM 4.86 gigabyte, 2.5 inch hard drive selected for its rugged reliability. The PJB 100 equates to less than $10 per playback hour vs. $250 per playback hour for flash-media storage units. " Now we're getting somewhere: 5 gigs starts being reasonable, 15 would be better, but hey ;)
Here's a link to an MP3 player that is shaped like a cassette tape. It works in a tape deck, or you can plug headphones into it directly. It's only got 32MB, but I wouldn't mind having one.
cli ck here for picture
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Hmm, wasn't this posted like a year ago? Lets see...that story would be here
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
i dunno if any of you guys bothered to look at the webpage. the price isn't exactly on the front page. it's $749. i'd rather buy a laptop, personally.
$10 per playback hour sounds good but $10 per hour times 80 hours = $800. Ouch! That's still expensive. I would pay spend $200 for 5 hours of portable music. If I need 80 hours, I'll spend $200 on a hard drive for my desktop.
A friend of mine is off touring New Zealand with one of these units in his pack. Battery life is about 10 hours, or about half of the flight there. The unit fires up the hard drive to load a song in memory and then shuts the drive down. Shutting down the hard drive will also improve the drop survival, since the parked drive will withstand much more than a spinning drive. I still wouldn't want to drop test the unit too often!
Here is information on the release of the Mambo X MP3 portable cd player as to why it hasn't been released yet (I noticed this device mentioned in numerous messages in this thread...):
From: Jason Moh, Director of Product Marketing
To: All MAMBO-X P300 Enthusiasts
Date: December 31, 1999
As some of you may be aware, we have experienced a delay in the production of the Mambo-X. The date has been pushed to March. We understand that this has been cause for concern with getting the product to market, and that both resellers and users would like to know the current status. We would like to address the problem.
The player works, and performs well under normal conditions. Even with most stress testing, it works fine, and would not have any problems for the majority of users. However, during our extended stress testing, we found a problem that could potentially cause temporarily degraded performance for some users; It doesn't involve any physical defect that could break the unit, but rather is a technical one that could affect the playing in certain specific situations. We have found the source of the problem and are implementing an effective solution, which will allow production to go forward. Since this one issue is the only one that has come up with the player, we don't foresee any additional delays in production or shipping.
It is our belief that our users deserve the highest quality for an item like this, and we genuinely want to deliver a superior product to our customers. We greatly appreciate everyone's patience in this situation, and we are confident that everyone will find the result to be worthwhile.
Sincerely,
Jason Moh
Director of Product Marketing
Tagram System Corporation
The URL for this letter
Maybe Rob should consider consolidating and/or eliminating the now-you're-talking department and the now-we're-getting-somewhere department, because this is at least the third time that this exact same device has been a headline on /.:
CVS is teh suck. Use Vesta instead.
From their FAQ,
"Q: I want to copy the MP3s from my PJB-100 back to my PC. How do I do that?
A: You cannot. To ensure that the PJB-100 complies with the Audio Home Recording Act (AHRA), It is not possible to retrieve the MP3 files from the PJB-100. You should physically posess each CD that you transfer to the PJB-100, or have rights to the material you download from the Internet"
"Q: I want to write a Linux driver for the PJB. Can I get specifications for the programming interfaces for the PJB or the USB protocol?
A: Not at this time. We do recognize that Linux and Macintosh users would like support for the PJB, but our initial product launch has focused on the Windows implementation. "
Frankly, if they are going to treat their customers like children, they can take someone else's money. There is no way I am going to pay any amount of money for an audio device that is incapable of giving back the data that I put into it. This is the same despotic mentality that gave Intel the idea for encrypting the signal from your video card to your monitor. If I wanted that, I would pay for it. But I don't and no one else does either.
There is just no reason for it other than removing the right to use something you own. Actually, that you license because of course, you can't really own anything anymore.
I have one of these for about, 3 months now. I love it. Here are some answers to the questions I've seen.
Battery life: 10 Hours.
Danger of using a hard drive: Small. Basically the PJB-100 reads the next ten minutes of music into ram, (this takes about 10 seconds). So the odds of dropping it in a 10 second period out of a 10 minute period are roughly 1 in 60 (or even exactly). Now the dangerous part in my opinion is when you are transferring mp3s. I've dropped mine twice when doing this, with no ill effects. This reading ahead scheme also helps battery life. The funny this is, regardless of how you're listening, random, sequential, repeat, etc... the pjb reads ahead. So if you are listening in shuffle mode and you switch to sequential, there is about a 1 second pause, and you hear the hard drive chirp for about 10 seconds, then it's done.
Size : It is slightly bigger than one would want. It's about the volume of one the first sony sports walkmans. However, it's a little longer and wider, but less thick. It is by no means luggable. I have 3 pound sony laptop, I would never use it for mp3s now. For starters I can put the pjb-100 in my shirt pocket, basically keeping it out of the way while I'm working. Granted with it my pocket there is not much room for anything else. Also, it's very usable for skiing and snow boarding.
Data transfer: It takes about 18 minutes to rip the average CD. One intersting thing I noticed, was that you can listen to other CDs on the player while you're rippng new ones. That's kinda cool. One other nice feature is you can create different play lists using the same song, with only one copy of the song one the player.
Weaknesses: No graphic equalizer, you can only adjust the base from three settings. No backlighting on the LCD.
Bottom line: Great product, probably the best first generation thing I've bought (I buy a lot of first generation things, please don't ask me about replay tv).