Slashdot Mirror
The Docking Station Meets The MP3 Player
crazyj writes: "SSI America announced that they are shipping the new Neo 35 MP3 Player which can hold up to 81GB of MP3s. The device, which comes with multiple docking stations (for car, home and PC), can use any 3.5" IDE hard drive, and can even be purchased without a drive if you wish to add your own. The PC dock connects to the IDE bus, so hopefully (but the FAQ deosn't say for sure) it will work with Windows, Linux and Macs. A USB dock is available as well. Finally, I can get my whole MP3 collection into my car!" About $300 gets you player, sans disk -- not cheap, but perhaps the flexibility is worth it.
Specifically for the empeg, though, the manual states operating temperatures as "5 C to 55 C" and non-operating temperatures as "-20 C to 60 C".
And in general, the empeg is just damned cool. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
-=-=-=-=-
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
I bought one of these units as well. Some of my observations:
/. readers it should not be THAT hard to decipher.
1) The rocker/control button sucks! It is hard to control with the front panel rocker.
2) The remote interface button is no better. (it is a steel nub instead of the fat plastic rocker on the main unit, but it is still mounted to a VERY skinny plastic piece that WILL break.
3) The remote control is decent and is really the ONLY way to control the unit with any type of sanity.
4) There seems to be a bit of whine when the unit is first powered on (from the hard drive spinning up) and you will most likely want an engine noise power line filter. (got mine from crutchfield)
5) The documentation DOES suck, but for most
6) Power is a bit of a problem. it requires 12volts at 3amps to spin up a standard desktop hard drive so keep that in mind.
7) The firmware updates have proven buggy. Some of the updates give REALLY cool features, but most introduce bugs. Example: If you are playing a playlist in random mode and turn the unit off, it will not remember the random mode once power is applied.
8) Hardware can be a bit touchy. I had to send my unit back to compgeeks once because it simply would not power up. this was apparently a defect in the early units that has since been addressed.
9) Although they say Maxtor hard drives are flaky, mine has a 40 gig Maxtor and seems to be just fine. YMMV.
10) The start up time has been GREATLY reduced with the later firmware upgrades. about 7 seconds from on to playing!
11) The remote display (tethered) plugs into the top of the slide out part of the unit, so you have to pull the cable each time you want to bring the unit in the house. and the plug is a small IDE like cable with a pretty tight receptor.
All in all i am VERY happy with the sound quality of the unit and the overall value is wonderful! Would i recommend it for the novice? probably not. But for anyone with a bit of tolerance and creativity? absolutely!
(stolen from DaBum) I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
Vibration (random [RMS]) 0.67 G for horizontal
0.56 G for vertical
From:
http://www.storage.ibm.com/hardsoft/diskdrdl/prod/ ds75gxp40gv.htm
It doesn't seem to mention anything on the site, but I wonder if there's anything in the design to cushion the hard drive from the bumps and vibration you get in a car.
I've lost a hard drive before from bumps in the road when transporting my PC around. Since then I've been a lot more careful, making sure the case is cushioned with something to cut out the worst of the bumps.
It seems that the unit is mounted in the dashboard, and could get some nasty jolts when going over speed bumps etc. I know hard drive shock resistance has improved over the years, but this could still be a problem?
Bought one three months ago from Computer Geeks -- http://www.compgeeks.com/ ; now they just have the Neo-25, a smaller one (laptop HD vs 3.5).
The Neo-35 is neat. Comes with a cheapy case, a cute credit-card-sized IR remote, a computer bracket, a standalone bracket, everything the site says.
What it doesnt say:
- Documentation is PATHETIC. Choppy English isnt the worst part, it's just brief to the point of nonexistent. Imagine a a pointy-haired boss asking you the innards of a RPC like CORBA in two minutes or less -- you'd give him a total whirlwind speech, then run away, right? That's the documentation. (Maybe it's improved -- it's on the website.)
If you read SlashDot, you'll probably get it okay, but this is not a give-it-to-mom type gift!
- To install/remove tracks, the device must be plugged into your computer. IDE device, which means a total shutdown and restart each time. Yes, bulk copies are *much* quicker than serial or whatever, but just adding a single song at a time would be tedious.
- You can upgrade the BIOS of the device by copying a magic file to the top-level directory, there's already an update or two which provide lots of good features.
- I really like installing my own drive. They're cheap enough just buy a spare every four months and swap them. They're IDE/Win95: you can dup your entire CD collection in minutes. Drop one? Who cares! I've played with the Compaq jukebox, and it totally rocks, but I was cheap...
- Overall, if you know this is a budget device, it's a good deal. Hardware quality is good, I just havent really had time to mess with the it so maybe I'm just fulla hooey. Your mileage will vary.
He loves his. The only problem is that they are longer than a normal car stereo, so not all cars will work. You may have to do some rearranging.
He's using his with a normal desktop drive, and so far it's been fine. I think he's had it a few months.
.ogg files are Ogg Vorbis audio files. Ogg Vorbis is conceptually similar to mp3, in that it compresses audio data by discarding "inaudible" material, but is a different algorithm, and thus not covered by the mp3 patents. It is open-source, also. OV's designers claim that it should scale to low bitrates better than mp3, and should provide at least equal, possibly better, sound quality at similar bit rates. I listen to both mp3 and OV using WinAmp (there is a decoder plug-in for WinAmp at the OV site, and one for XMMS also for Linux users), and I don't really hear a significant difference, but I like the patent-free, open-source nature of OV, so I think I will be using it instead of mp3 for my own CD ripping.
Very strange... I've been researching the Neo for three days, and I finally broke down and ordered one from SSI today. I check Slashdot a while later ... and there it is!
One thing I did learn--the Neo's pretty persnickety about the hard drive you put in it. Maxtor and Western Digital drives (apparently) draw too much power to spin up. SSI recommends Seagate, Quantum, and IBM drives. I just ordered the Neo with the drive built in. It was actually a decent price on the drive ($150 for a 30 gigger) and I figured they'd know what would be most reliable.
If anyone's thinking of buying one, the best resources I've found are:
http://www.barncow.com/neo/
The Unofficial Neo Web Site
Has instructions, links to the new firmware, and a very active messageboard. A great site--well maintained and very informative.
http://bboard1.mp3.com/hardware/liststory/?topic_i d=38&month=200008
The Neo "User Reviews" at MP3.com
A pretty good forum with real-world performance reports.
I've been tempted by devices like this since the empeg player that came out over a year ago. The problem is that I live in MN, where in the winter it gets damn cold, and I beleive HD's have to operate at above 32 degrees(?). Also I'm not sure at what temp HD's can be damaged when they're not on. When it can get down to -30 in MN once or twice a winter season, I'm not if I like that risk. Does anyone have operating temperature info for HD's?
Although with the price at 300 bucks, even without a HD, it starts to get tempting to use it in the home theatre...
I can see it now!
"This is a great compilation disc! What's it called?"
[Showing the hard drive] "'The Eighties'..."
Jay (=
(this is not exact), but
Say the typically mp3 is 5 megs and is 3 minutes of sound.
(((80000 megs / 5 megs) * 3 minutes) / 60 minutes) = 800 hours of none stop music.
Say you have a decent track to work, say 2 hours round trip and work 5 days a week (I know this isn't exact!!
(2 * 5) / 800 = 80 days without hearing the same song twice.
Or roughly 2-3 months without ever hearing the same song twice. If you listen to each song say 2 times, you can go roughly a half a year without "reloading"
On disk, you can roughly fit 16000 songs, say each cd has an average of 10 songs per disk, that is 1600 CDs!
Say you "reload" ever six months with new cds, that is 3200 CD per year. Roughly each CD costs $15 a peice, that is $48,000 per year to keep this thing "fresh"
$48,000 + $300 (for unit) + $300 for 80 gig hard drive = $48,600 or (rounding up) $50,000 per year just on MUSIC!! This does not firgure in the cost of the car stero system, spearks, wiring, etc... (this also assumes one doesn't have access to company or college T1 line and napster)
Roughly this thing costs $137 dollars per day to maintain, or $6 per hour! This does not even account for the price need to maintain the car it is installed in (gas, battery, oil, etc..)
Say the average worker makes $12 per hour working at a factory, this would require 12 hour work days 7 days a week, just to pay for this! Not to menation food, rent or other funcation required to just live.
In closing, I would like to state that this device is nothing more then progranda being pushed on the masses to converted them into factory slavery. The elites vaule the "golden age" of the industrial revoulation and are willing to use this device to manuplate the general public into work camps. Mind control at it's finest gentlemen.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Um yea, the story is gone.
Maybe Rob got a call from the network admin with a polite message saying "stop slashdoting me and we will give you a free unit"
I think Rob could use the "slash dot effect" as a form of legal blackmale
"Ok listen Sony; PS2; I know you got em, hand one over by sundown or I am linking to your 24 slot memory card at dusk. On a friday morning. And the only other stories that will be posted will be from Katz"
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
that would rule. Pull up in your drive and it pulls down 50 new mp3. Drive to work the next day and it uploads the 50 new mp3 to your workstation.
:)
What you could do, if you find a way to prefect the wireless ethernet is this, it won't be hard
The drive in your car is an NFS/SMB share. Every 60 seconds it tries to ping a "known" client.
If the ping comes back postive, it runs an ssh connection to the client where it executes a "sync" script (basically find and compare).
Then the client gets the info from the "sync" script and upload/download the new mp3's on/off the NFS/SMB server in your car.
After the server gets a good ping, it drops it pinging-rate down to every 25 minutes. Once it gets a non-ping, it goes back into active mode; pinging every 60 seconds till it finds something.
Everything could be done it perl, since it be easy to write and be able to run on both unix and win32 systems. The only problem would be 1. getting the wireless ethernet working correctly. 2. finding a way to securly and remotely execute the script on a win32 client (this probably can be done easily, but not famlair with it).
How far is the range of wireless ethernet? Also one's company might not like unknown devices in the truck of people's cars "jumping on" their ethernet segerment and send/receiving a bunch of unfamlair data.
Also the other thing I just thought of, is don't test things shut down when you shut your car off?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
it looks like this is being licensed from some manufacturer.
the exact same unit is for sale as the "napdeck" at www.napdeck.com.
Don't worry about it. I use a notebook all the time in my car, and I'm in New Brunswick, Canada - bitchin cold in winter. The main thing is that the CPU and drive kick up enough heat to keep themselves in operating range. Just watch for condensation when you move it between temperature extremes. The LCD gets slow though when it gets really cold.. Although, I'm assuming that one of the advantages of this device is that you take it with you, preventing a lengthy cold spell.
The really big thing is that hopefully this will put some downward pressure on the stratospheric empeg prices, because those look really sweet, they're just stupid expensive right now (on par with a notebook pc just for mp3s in the car, sans nice interface). Nevermind getting one to work with your existing head unit is a bitch, as they don't play CDs.
Personally, ymmv, but I just use my notebook to fill up my rio, and then use the rio most of the time for short trips - I live in front of a computer, so putting new stuff on the rio is easy, and I have automated scripts to fill it with talk radio & news in the morning before I wake up. If I'm booking for a long trip, I can just connect a notebook directly. The rio has the advantage of not risking damage under, uh, "spirited" driving conditions :). Nor do I have to worry about leaving it in the dash and attracting attention from the criminal element.
Kudos
..don't panic