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MP3 Player Released For Handspring Visor
JeffMagnus writes: "EETimes is carrying this article about a new MP3 player extension for the Handspring Visor. The MP3 player fits into the Visor's Springboard expansion slot or can be used as a separate device. The MP3 player is built by Good Technology, Inc."
there is another, perhaps better known (at least in the Visor community) Springboard MP3 player. The MiniJam from InnoGear uses removable MMC cards for storage. There is a user's review of it (with plenty of pix) here. That same site, VisorCentral also lists an announced-but-not-shipping Rio Springboard module from Diamond.
That's not the price of the PDA, it's the price of the module. The highest end Visor (the Visor Deluxe) runs $250.
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Tim Wilde
Gimme 42 daemons!
The argument that if the Palm user wanted more power they'd buy a laptop doesn't sit well with me. I don't get it, why would you buy both a Palm and a laptop when you can just buy a PocketPC and have all your needs covered?
I am assuming this is an honest question, and not just bait.
The palm does the PDA functionality nearly flawlessly, and it has the size, cost, and battery life factors necessary to be able to strap it to my belt day in and day out, and completely forget about it. I can't count the number of times during a day I use it without even thinking about the fact it is a computer.
A PDA that is not at your fingertips and does not need to be tethered to a PC every evening is (IMHO) the only usefull PDA. You can get a fully functional Palm for $150 to $250 depending on RAM.
For about $700 or less, you can pick up a used laptop like my Sharp Actius A150. It has a pentium 266 cpu, an 8 gig hard drive, 64MB of ram, a built in modem, USB port, and a PCMCIA slot. I added a $40 10/t ethernet card, a $75 wireless ethernet card, and a $99 24x CDRom.
It dual boots both Linux and Windows (depending on my needs at the time). It holds plenty of MP3's, runs ALL native Linux and DOS apps perfectly, has a real live keyboard with fantastic touchpad. It includes a 800x600 24 bit LCD that is to die for. It is less then 1" thick (a cheaper VAIO knockoff), and weighs less then a pound.
The newest versions of these Sharp Actius's (Actium?) adds a 1023x768 resolution (XGA) screen, built in 10/100 ethernet, and second PCMCIA and USB slots, and sells new for less then $2k. The whole package fits nicely in a backpack or briefcase with lots of room to spare for books, etc.
A palmtop would be a toy... you can't do real work without a real keyboard and real screen (800x600 is already getting awfully tight for many of my activities as a web developer).
The palmtops are too heavy, too big, too expensive, and have insufficient autonomy (battery life primarily) to strap to my hip and forget about until I need it... I would have to tether them to an outlet every evening and carry them every day in a briefcase or backpack.
The palmtops have too small a screen, too weak a processor, not affordable enough memory, and too limited battery life to be used for any real productivity. (IMHO)
Bill
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
I don't think they misjudged the price point for the market, but I do think they misjudged the market. What makes PocketPC's good for playing MP3's is that they _already_ have a good processor, like a StrongARM blazing away at 200MHz. PalmOS devices don't. They've been optimized for the Dragonball (Motorola 68xxx family) at 16MHz and the Dragonball EZ at 20MHz.
Component costs for an add-on like this are going to be much higher than for a device where the processor also does other things. And any types of static RAM these days are outrageous. Shortages aren't predicted to let up till 2001. Everyone in the industry (including Palm) is feeling the crunch, and the only ones getting their chips are first-tier vendors that can place the 7- and 8-figure orders and get cozy with their suppliers. That list doesn't include any springboard module makes.
So when most companies sat down at the drawing board last year these components were cheap, and MP3 playing abilities were the rage. But now, no one wants to buy a $300 accessory for a $150 device; sprinboard modules are supposed to be in the $50 - $99 range. Hopefully these prices will come down.
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Okay, I realize this is probably massive flame-bait, but all the palmtop WinCE devices (CE 2.11 and PocketPC) have had this capability for a while. There were/are several MP3 players around that work on these, the newest and most noteworthy being Windows Media Player (which is free). It also plays WMA files, which, for all practical purposes, are much better suited to this application ("this application" being playing music on a storage-constrained device--WMA files tend to sound a bit better than MP3 files at lower bitrates and frequencies, allowing smaller file sizes). Right now on my Cassiopeia E-100 (still running CE 2.11), I've got 18 WMA files, all encoded at 40KBps and 32KHz, taking up a total of 24MB (stored on a 64MB CF card). These are all 3+ minute songs, and they average around 1.3MB each. They sound pretty good over headphones. They don't sound as good as the original 128K MP3's, but we're not talking about a high-quality audio playback device, either. That being said, I really don't understand the infatuation with PalmOS devices. I've really wanted to understand it, and I've done a lot of reading trying to figure out why these devices are so enormously popular (thinking that they must in some way be superior to the WinCE devices). I keep coming up with nothing. Can somebody out there explain why the /. crowd likes these things over the CE devices without falling back on the old "M$ sucks!" argument?
$269 for a 64Mb MP3 player? Better look at what thinkgeek has for us! a 6Gb personal jukebox ...
.iMMersE
codegolf.com - smaller *is* better.
It is a simple hack really....
1) Go to e-bay and sell your visor deluxe.
2) Go to www.trgpro.com and buy a trg pro ($329)
3) Go to buy.com and get the 64, 128, or 340 MB compact flash card and plug it into said TRG Pro.
Done. The perfect hack. Other Palm devices have some memory expandability. The AxePac will add smartmedia to a IIIx, the visors have memory and backup modules for the springboard, and the Sony Clie has a memory stick slot.
Only the TRG Pro however has a working and delivered OS tweak that allows many applications and databases to be stored on the compact flash and transparently swapped into memory on demand.
If you want to hack a palm, a much nicer hack is to get the M100 for $149 and add 8megs to it for another $39 (if you do your own soldering).
Bill
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
2 x 0.35-inch MP3 module around a 74-MHz ARM7 processor from Cirrus Logic Inc., 64 Mbytes of NAND flash memory and a 1-bit D/A converter from Cirrus' Crystal division, at 24-bit resolution and a 96-kHz sample rate.
There is also the one from InnoGear called the MiniJam that just came out as well. This one uses Multimedia Cards (MMC) that store the MP3s. Looks like they have cards in 32 and 64MB sizes and the player can hold 2 of those cards. While it is a little bigger than the SoundsGood, but it is only $249.00. You can read a review of the MiniJam here VisorCentral
Why waste your money?
Speaking of wasting your money. Why waste your money on a HandSpring or a Palm for that matter? Really! Like the macintosh in its 'glory years', the Palm was ahead of its time and was (is) very useful. But like the mac, the Palm didn't evolve. The Palm still uses a slow processor lacking a MMU and uses a dead-end OS. Yeah, I've had a couple palms. However, in less than a years time my Palm will sitting next to my old slide rules.
In the not too distant future you will soon be able to buy handhelds much more powerful than the HandSpring/Palm, that play mp3 files out of the box, and of course they will run linux.
Oh wait. The future is now (almost). Already you can put linux in the vtech Helio (~$150), Yopy, Ipaq, and soon the Agenda. Although still beta quality, these devices will be ready for everyday use in a matter of months.
The future is not in proprietary operating systems like WindowsCE and Palm OS. The future is now [or very soon]. The future is Linux.
THe battery holder will probably have to fit into the visor-compatible connector, and thus requires more than your average battery adapter. Not cheap, but not ridiculous.
That price is nuts. Especially for a PDA that's marketed as a low-cost alternative to Palm.
now I can sit in meetings "taking notes" on my visor and instead be re sorting my playlist.... cool I want one :-)
Another key is inexpensive memory sticks. It isn't really convenient to keep deleting / uploading mp3s to the same memory stick every time you want to listen to something different.
Do you mean "memory stick" (generic stick-shaped storage media) or Sony MemoryStick? Not only are MemoryStick products proprietary to Sony, but Sony is a member of both RIAA and MPAA (yes, both four-letter words) so you probably won't be able to put plain old MP3 files on them.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
I think that was the point, the module is more than the price of the original device (which was designed as a lower cost alternative to the palm).
This MP3 company completely misjudged the price point for their target market. I think people are mostly interested in the Visor b/c of its low price and promise of future expandability. However most modules are ~$50, this module costs more than the original cost of the PDA and offers functionality which can be gotten much cheaper elsewhere (Rio) without being significantly larger.
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There's still a big difference between announcing and shipping. The Mini-jam has been annonunced for almost a year, and I should know because I've been waiting all that time for them to ship it.
--
"A witty saying proves nothing" - Voltaire
The crowd who buys a Palm device usually wants a personal organizer that's a little tweakable and compact. The fact that it's expandable is just a plus. I've used both PalmOS and WinCE devices, and I personally don't see that much overlap.
Windows CE users often bash Palm devices, claiming their device is superior because they can use Pocket Excel and Word to create or view documents and, in some models, listen to mp3s. That's cool, and WinCE makes a nice palmtop for those functions. I myself would rather have a compact laptop like a Sony VAIO for those functions, but the price range and size is obviously different.
Basically, Palm devices are fairly cheap tweakable personal organizers, and WinCE devices are more expensive palmtop computers.
they'd make a PDA attachment for my hard drive MP3 player
Or just incorporate some PDA functions into the player itself.
But I guess I'll have to wait.
__No, that is not my real address__
If it's capable of running as a separate unit, then what the heck is the reason for designing it as a Handspring module at all? Editing playlists? Or is the Visor just a very expensive power source? Pretty weak functionality to be paying $100 more than a "conventional" MP3 player for.
They've just found a way to duct-tape a Nomad to a Visor. They've created an MP3 player that is at once more expensive, far larger (with the Visor, after all), and less convenient than a dedicated player.
What would have been impressive, would have been creating a "smart" DSP/NVRAM card that used the Visor's CPU and connectivity to cut costs on the MP3 player extension. Bingo, you get a big 64M chunk of memory to keep all kinds of data in, and a DSP that all sorts of applications could make use of. The MP3 player would be just be the included killer app.
What 96 probably means in this case is a 96 KHz 1-bit digital to analog converter. 1-bit DAC is 100% linear (high-bit-count DACs aren't) and do not need expensive precision resistors. It works by dithering the sound down to 1 bit per sample, but because it moves the quantization noise way out of the audible spectrum (a low pass filter at 20 to 22 KHz helps), it sounds nice.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Because it's one less thing to clip to your belt? I've already got my pager and my Visor there. Some people probably have those and a cell phone. Already looking tacky, and now you're gonna add a Rio to it? Might as well get out the pocket protector and calculator while you're at it, and put some tape on your glasses...
And of course, not only is this MP3 player module a gadget in and of itself, but it makes your Visor even more of a gadget. So if, like me (and many other geeks), you're addicted to gadgets...this thing is damn awesome.
Of course, I already have a Rio, so I probably won't be getting one of these...
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--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Visual Bloat++ probably won't fit on a PocketPC, but I could definitely see some porting group produce Pocket GCC like another group (a Cygnus splinter group) produced DJGPP, the DOS-based GCC we know and love.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
The MP3 player CPU is programmed to obey SDMI. SDMI is a buzzword that means, in effect, that portable digital audio media is write-only except through a DAC. Because a user program stored to the ARM's address space might send music data back to the Visor, any hacks that allow this might violate copyright law as amended by the Digital Millennium* Copyright Act.
*Yes, it has two L's and two N's. Learn to spell.<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Visor Central has a review of it. I couldn't even find the story on EETimes...it looks like they have a database problem...(SlashDotted?)
The transfer speeds for the MiniJam (that's its name) seem to be its major problem. If you wanted to fill only half of the 32MB module it wouls take somewhere around 7:30 to complete.
I'm not saying that this is a bad piece of hardware. As a matter of fact, I belive that the handheld market will be pushing technology further and further in the future. But, most ppl won't be willing to wait that long. Think of it this way...
* 1MB MP3 ~ 1 minute of CD quality music.
* So, that means that the 64MB unit comes to right about the same size as 1 CD.
* It takes ~ 15 minutes to burn a CD on my $130 4X4X24
* This thing costs $259 and at the reported transfer rate, it takes about the same time to fill it up with MP3s as it does to burn a CD.
Now, I got a pretty good deal on my CD-RW...I have seen similar units in the $179 range. Now, if we do a little math...that is a difference of $80. Now, if we buy our CDs in bulk, we get somewhere around $.50 a piece. That makes 160 CDs. Do we see where I'm going now. Now, many people talk about the anti-skip features of a solid-state player...ok, so go buy one of the cheaper stand-alone units out there. There's no reason I would buy this unit...however, a better solution might be to make a cable+software combo that would let you transfer MP3s on one of the 320MB (or even the 1GB) MicroDrives to one of the portable MP3 players.
OGG (Vorbis) support would be nice. 128kb OGG is pretty similar in quality to 160kbit MP3.
-- Ever notice that fast-burning fuse looks exactly the same as slow-burning fuse? I didn't... (Edgar Montrose)
The MiniJam looks a lot better in my view - according to the FAQ:
If you already have MMC cards, it will cost around $100
(Looks like it's $200 with one 32 meg card)
plays MP3s at any bit rate from 32K to 320K
should be software upgradable to support additional codecs in the future
lets you store programs/data on the MMC cards
it has a LED alarm
Looks like a much better deal to me - I'll probably get one.
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Just so you know...
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I'm already turned off by it. No wonder they have to charge $40 for $0.05 worth of plastic and a $0.10 connector. How much do you think they had to pay to get "good.com" for a domain name? If you buy one of these things you're subsidizing the fact that they paid too much for their URL.
Not to mention, it seems that the whole Springboard thing _still_ hasn't really caught on. It sucks (IMO) that you can only put one thing in the slot at a time. Hmmmm, what I do I want to do? Use this 8MB memory expansion module, listen to some MP3's, or plug in my GPS and figure out where the hell I am? So now you've got your small PDA and a card deck of springboard modules to carry around with you. Gack, screw it...
-This sig intentionally left blank
And you can load up MC (Stephen) Hawking's
latest rap tunes to play on it.
"D00d, like, you've got that new Chemical Brothers track I've been looking for!"
"Yah, I'll beam it to you"
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
I'd agree that the iPAQ is sufficiently "capacious" from a CPU, and possibly battery, perspective to cope well with MP3; it's still not got enough RAM to do the job well.
And that ignores any concerns of interoperability I might have; the PalmOS apps interoperate with PDA apps on Windows and Linux, whilst the same cannot be said of the iPAQ set of apps... Whether it matters to everyone, this does matter to me.
If I wanted to be a "conspiracy nut," I'd say that the folks that make stuff like CompactFlash RAM cards are striving hard to keep the prices high. (I don't want to start the rumor, but could believe it to be true...)
These units will be a whole lot more interesting, particularly for storage-hungry applications like MP3 playing, when you can get a 256MB "flash card" for $200, or they otherwise can have that kind of quantity of storage onboard.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Only the TRG Pro however has a working and delivered OS tweak that allows many applications and databases to be stored on the compact flash and transparently swapped into memory on demand.
Correct. The Visor doesn't need that tweak, because Springboard memory is mapped directly onto the Dragonball's memory bus.
I don't know why anyone would want this MP3 player, but the other one that's being made for the Visor is definitely very cool. It does natively allow you to use its MMC cards as Visor storage.
Of course, I won't buy it; I don't want an MP3 player. Nor do I need more storage; I've berely come close to filling up the 8M I have.
One think I DO envy about the TRGPro, though, is its killer speaker. That rocks.
What I think would be ideal would be if TRG licensed the Springboard from Handspring and made a TRGVisor with a good speaker, and THEN offered a Springboard CF reader. The best of all worlds.
-Billy
I bought a Palm because I wanted the coolest organizer. If I want word or Excel, I'll buy a laptop. They're only a few hundred dollars more than PocketPCs here in Toronto anyways...plus they suit the task or word processing much better since it has a keyboard a nice big screen.
PocketPC does a bunch of features OK.
Palm does very little features, very well.
That's how I see it.
Or for 500 dollars (450 ipaq+50 CF Sleeve) you can get a very powerful computer with a 206 Mhz cpu, very portable, which besides playing mp3's and wma's (which are smaller and sound quite well), you can browse html files, use excel, databases, or do more sysop stuff like terminals and other tools. Yes the OS is done by the company every one loves to hate, but I have found Win CE 3.0 to be absolutly stable and fast. Most stable (only stable) windoze I have used. The sound quality is very good, it has a loud little speaker, lasts 4 hours or more playing mp3's with a rechargable lithium ion battery, and uses an industry standard for memory expansion. Ah, you can get compact flash up to 1Gb of storage, using a microdrive, or almost 200 megs using silicon. Or a modem. Or a network card. Very cool toy. Check out the compaq iPaq guys! http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/ipaq-review.html http://www2.pdabuzz.com/Reviews/Detailed/Compaq_iP aq_H3600.html after a month with it I find my palm V utterly boring. Just the screen, juck, with a Pocket PC you get 4x the pixels @ 12 bit colors. Yes yes, palms are cheap, and there is a lot of software available. But now, win ce is amazingly stable, fast and beatiful. In a month, I have gotten absolutely no crashes, frozen, blue screen, whatever, nothing of the usual sh%t you get on windoze.
See you guys! Play with an ipaq on compusa, best buy, but remember, it is plain and simple, it gets more exciting and useful as you get more software.
I think the selling point is that it is a Springboard module, and not a separate gadget you'd have to carry.
There will be some people who will jump on this thing because they are happy with PalmOS, and they want an MP3 player, and they don't want ANOTHER freaking gadget to fill up pockets and belts with.
Question is, are there enough of these people to make this product successful?
IMHO it costs too much... if it was 128MB for about that price, I *might* go for it... but not without listening first. Man, that Rio 300 I bought was a mistake. It sounds like AM radio.
Just a notion that crept in my mind: Considering that the CPU on board the MP3 player is probably significantly more powerful than the main CPU (70 Mhz ARM7 as opposed to 20 Mhz Dragonball), wouldn't it be great if you could use that processing power for other things?
I guess the springboard interface can't support this, but just think of this kind of CPU power as the Visor's main CPU. It could enable some things that were previously impossible due to the Visor's weak CPU, like software FAX emulation or running Liberty with sound on. But maybe it is possible to at least remote control the ARM to do useful background tasks like uhh rc5des or SETI or something like that.
Perhaps the question should be: Is the MP3 player an accessory for the Visor, or is the Visor an accessory for the MP3 player?
``
No Laughing Allowed!
I had naturally assumed that people would be using some custom logic instead of doing all this nonsense with CPUs and whatnot. Sure, you're going to need some sort of microcontroller to talk to the bus and memory, and shovel data at your mp3 decoder, but that's cheap.
There's a parallel port dongle for PCs called the LP3 which plays mp3s in hardware, including VBRE mp3s. It does everything, basically; The C source for a dos app to use it to play mp3s is here (Note that this is on the lp3music.com site in the downloads section. Does this disclaimer free me from future litigation over deep hyperlinking?)
Basically, though, you just shove data out the parallel port at it, and it buffers it, then decodes frames and does a D:A convert. There's also a linux "driver", a winamp output plugin, and a Windows DLL, and source for all of them is available. It has both line-level and amplified (headphone) output.
Why do I bring this device up? Because it's $99. I would guess that a device based on this with some simple-stupid microprocessor in it and some memory could easily be as cheap as $200. So what's the justification for making this other device cost $269? Just because they're lazy and wanted to use an ARM chip rather than develop something technically sweet? I don't buy it - In more than one sense of the word.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Looking at the two MP3 units that are for Handspring, here's my thinking:
The price of the abovementioned Good.com SoundsGood module is too high for what it is. I just walked through Best Buy, and there's a lot of 32Mb and 64Mb standalone MP3 players that are competitive on price.
You're paying for the features that may be presented through the Visor's screen interface. There's just not that much indexing you can do with an hour or two's worth of music.
The formfactor of the delayed competitor, InnoGear MiniJam module is way too blobby. It won't let you keep your Visor in a standard case, because it extends behind and above the basic Visor case.
The SoundsGood appears to have the formfactor right. It stays flush within the space allotted in the main case. Even the headphone jack doesn't appear to interfere with the Visor's clip-lid (either open or closed), it is a bit to the left side. My standard case actually uses one of the clip lids to grasp the Visor, so this is good news for the SoundsGood. I could leave my zippered case open a little on the top edge, and jam.
I'm interested to know whether either of these units will draw many CPU cycles, or block the use of the Visor for its main task, which is to keep me organized.
Both the deluxe and cheap versions of the Handspring Visor come with a microphone built into the case. I still have yet to see ONE application that can use it, whether through software or Springboard hardware. Not even a bundled app makes trivial use of it.
[
Why was the link made to EETimes, and not to the actual product page on good.com?
I smell an advertising hit ploy.
[
So, they basically took a STAND ALONE mp3 player, and added a connector to it so you could plug it into your Visor.
Gee. Wow.
What's next, and mp3 player add-on for my toaster that fits into the 'single-slice' slot?
Give me a fucking break.
I have a SoundsGood right now that I'm reviewing, and is more than capable of playing all of those Mettalica songs of yours. And I'll have a review of it up next week.
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James Hromadka
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Yeah, its MSFT, but they're much better than previous WinCE versions. Compaq's iPAQ is a lot cheaper than a Visor+MP3 module, and does a lot more.
$269??? Man, they should have just designed a plugin for an external HD! 10gig external HD with USB, $164!!! Sheesh, do they THINK we are fools?
Sig it.
Yet Another Stupid Windows-Only Product....although it does use USB, so it shouldn't be too hard to support it under Mac OS or Linux (not sure what level of USB support is in the BSDs off the top of my head).
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
The company that makes these things is here.
Not exactly a cheap battery holder... an example of insanse marketing and pricing, but I guess the springboard market is somewhat a niche...
However, this is quite an amazing total for an MP3 player: $309... How's come you can spot this kind of stuff like the $40 battery pack a mile a way? I thought this was the *new* economy... but they're doing the old "lets find something otherwise cheap, make it special, and charge out the ass..."
I think I'll get the CD mp3 players, and to hell with the visor integration... I'm not an organized person anyway so a PDA won't do me any good.
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Not to be a complete schill for handspring, but isn't your visor's display a little bit bigger than the rio?
Read my post above... since you already own a visor, the choice isn't $500+ or a Rio, it's $269 or a Rio, and it's possible that the springboard beats it on convenience and useability (does the Rio have a touch screen?).
Think about it. For the springboard mp3 player to meet your approval, it would have to be priced at $0! The springboard is a marginal cost, the visor's price is already sunk and you already (hopefully) acknowledge that the price you paid for the visor was for its PDA functions and upgradeability.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
You don't need to hack anything: here are some features of MiniJam from http://store.innogear.com/promo/index.cfm?CFID=371 66&CFTOKEN=80828898&source=firstweb
Utilities include: Megabyte Flash memory expansion, Mass storage of Palm OS Applications and Database files, and Programmable flashing LED Silent Alarm.
Hey, it's all in the phones for a PMP-300.
Take it and try with higher end phones and you'll use it again. The Koss Porta-Pro phones sound fantastic with it, though they look hideous.
MP3 players work so well 'cause they get a LOT of life out of a AAAA batery, thanks to no moving parts. The harddrive module is a good idea, except that you would have to change bateries once an hour. Harddrives and LCD panles are the chief reason laptops still can't go more than ten hours, max, without recharging their 2 1\2 pound batteries!
Dirty Pirate Hooker
. ._ _ .__. ___ ___ ._ _. _.. _. .. .
The streets shall flow with the blood of the Guberminky.
I've got a Visor, and have been anxiously awaiting the release of this for months now, but at $269 there's no way I'm touching it with a 10' pole :(
I seriously doubt they'll sell many units at all - most people (like myself) opted for the Visor over the Palm because it was cheaper with roughly the same functionality. If I'd wanted to spend $500+ I'd buy a separate Rio and have a proper, fully functional mp3 player with LCD panel etc.
It's a very nice idea but they've sadly misjudged their market...
That's a review of Innogear's MiniJam, which is not yet released (though close). This article is about Good Technologies' SoundsGood player.
There are actually several companies working on MP3 players for the Springboard slot.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
The point is that it's tiny. If you look at a Visor module, you'll notice that's it's about the same size as a GameBoy cartridge.
The other point is that if you normally carry your Visor around with you, and want an MP3 player, this thing doesn't make your Visor any bigger and you don't have to lug around another unit.
I think it's a great piece of technology, albeit a $40 dollar battery holder? Should be $10.
Just think of how many years of appointments you could store, then!
In all seriousness, though... Why the heck would you buy one of these? I was discussing this with one of my friends yesterday, actually, but visualization and the other visual goodies you get with Winamp on your PC don't justify spending at least a hundred bucks more than I have to on an MP3 player.
Having a card with an ARM processor and 64meg of memory would be much more useful if you could use it for other purposes as well. Imagine buying an MP3 player add-on and then downloading software that turns it into a Psion5mx emulator!!! Or maybe use the card as a seperate linux machine and the Handspring as just a terminal. Bizzare but possible if you have what are basically two self-contained machines connected together.
Bob.