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Toshiba's Handheld Enters the Fray
Chanc_Gorkon writes "Check this new handheld being released by Toshiba: The Toshiba Genio e550 series will be powered by a 206MHz StrongARM processor, 32MB ROM, 32MB RAM, and a 3.5?? reflection TFT running at 240 x 320 x 16-bit color. The e550 will also support industry standard Compact Flash Type II cards as well as the newest expansion technology, a Secure Digital cards for SD Memory and SDIO cards. The e550 will be 77.5 x 125 x 17.5mm in size, weigh 180grams and run 8 hours on its Lithium-ion battery. And now to the major news about Toshiba's new Pocket PC ... one version of the Genio (the e550/MD) will have an integrated 1GB IBM Microdrive! " Presumably handhelds.org will have a port fairly soon since this is fairly similiar to the iPaq. Especially exciting news about the gigabyte microdrive capable version. Suddenly a handheld usable for more then just a PDA and terminal.
We all know that is the only question of relevance around here.
Is the date string for "by USER on Monday July 16 @03:27PM EST" really just the output of
date +"%A %B %d, @%H:%m%p %Z"
?
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"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Huh? The power adapter is about the same size as one for a cell phone. Actually it uses a batter similar to that found in a cellphone. Yes, Li-Ion, blah blah...
it is a limitation of the technology, hence "reflective"
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What we really need is a PDA with the flexibility, openness and convenience of a Palm, the connectivity of a RIM Blackberry, and the ability to act as a cell phone to boot. Until I can stop carrying around 5 different electronic communication appliances, I'm not going to be happy
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I see your sarcasm, and I raise you more sarcasm:
I'm very interested in watching ripped DVD movies on my handheld. I still can't really do that with only a 1GB drive.
Seriously, how much power does a handheld have to have? I've made the same argument before about the games on Nokia phones...If you can't last the time you're between computers without playing some kind of game, perhaps a more powerful handheld isn't your biggest problem right now.
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I have the casio qv3000EX which uses IBM's 340MB drive. Batteries are a big issue, I needed to change them every 3 hrs. I imagine the batteries will be sucked even faster for a PDA accessing the drive. I don't know bout you guys, but I don't recharge my PDA every 3 hrs. Wonder what they'll do.
Using the Windows Media Encoder, I took a DivX movie and encoded into the windows media video format and it came in at right about 20MB for the 95 minute movie. Granted, its 15fps at 160x120 (or something like that, cant remember exactly) and not incredible sound, but it is all very watchable. During a car ride, I was able to watch the whole movie on less than a whole battery charge and it wasn't as painful as I expected at that low quality. And particularly since I can fit 4 or 5 of these on my compactflash card, it works out really well. Considering the limitations of the Pocket PC devices (small display and not-so-speedy CPU), I'm fairly happy with the quality and size of the video they play.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
I want to get one of these handhelds, like this, or an ipaq, but I dont want to buy one if some of my money is going to an OS I won't use.
Tough stand though...
"better ways of doing things eventually just replace the inferior things" - Linus Torvalds 09-08-07
If SD gets your panties in a bunch then buy a multimedia card. Same form factor, same price, no SD shit. I have one for my handera, they're wonderful.
--InfinityEdge
One gigabyte would allow for around 200 average-size(128K - 5 MB/file) MP3 files. I bet that can be a huge selling point for the 15-30 demography.
MPEG4 movies are playable on the iPaq, and several people use this on a regular basis with Microdrives. It's all about optimized code, and not just the speed of the machine. (Now if MS would listen to that :-)
PacketVideo is a commercial product for streaming to handhelds, and it's MPEG 4 based.
According to my impressions from Brighthand, the Microdrive is included in the box, and not specificially the PDA, so it will take up the CF slot...
The article says its very brightly backlit, with four brightness settings.
^X^S ^X^C
I also have a Gameboy advance, and have no problems with my screen - the trick is to play in an area with lights, or, god forbid, natural daylight. Are you people all playing in darkened rooms, or something? The orginal gameboy sucked just as bad (or worse) if you played it with the light off...
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Nice try, but you've just described the PalmOS based HandEra 330. http://www.handera.com
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You also see a software-addressable UI area, and a programmable jog-dial. Pick nits if you want, but it's still a stupendously flexible device.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
You need a good smack. Next thing you'll be saying that you don't need more horsepower for your car.
;)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Yeah! And then we could run the original Berkeley Softworks GEOS to get a real non-MS office suite on the thing, with plenty of storage and all. :-)
For those that don't know, GEOS (yep, ancestor to the GEOS still showing up occasionally in cellphones and the like) started life as a GUI office suite for the C-64. That's 64 *kilobytes* total RAM, folks (and you didn't even get to use it all.) Truly, one of the most impressive hacks of the 20th century.
I sometimes wonder how Commodore might have fared if they had abandoned their attachmnent to those glacially slow 1542 serial disk drives in favor of something capable of file i/o at a more usable speed... Hmm, does anyone make an ethernet adapter for a c-64?
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Actually, the battery life on the newer iPaqs is much better, but in exchange for this they take away the backup battery, which is stupid, stupid, stupid.
I've had customers using GPS survey software which had to be installed with a special, date sensitive unlock key. If they accidentally left the iPaq out of its cradle over the weekend they have to call the software developer and convince them they aren't trying to copy the software to a new device.
Naturally, all the other data is wiped out too, so better not get far from your cradle for too long.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Does anyone know where I can find a PDA that's just touch-screen only? i.e. NO BUTTONS. I don't understand why the manufacturers of PDA's build all these great devices, and then blow a few inches of space on some buttons that seldom get used.
Look at the Palm series: every one of them has the four "hot link" buttons and an up-down button. I know they're used some of the time, but most people just turn on their PDA and go straight to the touch-screen.
ATTENTION PDA MAKERS! Shrink the device a little more by cutting those buttons off the bottom and give me a device that's all touch screen. Let the developers worry about ease-of-use. Give me the most screen real-estate in the smallest package possible! THIS GOES FOR ALL YOU POCKET PC, PALM, AND OTHER DEVELOPERS AS WELL!
I can't wait for a Handspring Edge with a CF slot for ethernet, modem, or memory that's all screen. QVGA res would be nice, and don't burn my batteries up with color. Just gray or B&W thanks.
Insanity is my friend.
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LOADING...
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From the Toshiba Spec Page (http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2001_07/e160 1/doc02.htm)
SD card slot supporting single SD Memory card or SDIO card
<rant>But of course, they're not made in the USA so none of you are prepared to buy them...</rant>
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Ugh... A. Windows Media player for pocket pc plays-- ISO MPEG4, Windows Media 7 and windows media 8 B. With an ethernet card you can stream movies from the free (Microsoft made) windows media encoder C. With 206 strongarm processor you can watch full screen movies at 15+ fps (at least with an ipaq) it works very well D. There is a divx player but Im not sure how good it is... and why not use wm instead it is higher quality for smaller size E. becuase the screen is so small there is no reason to encode a 400MB-800MB file... you would be wasting space... and slowing the movie frame rate tremedously... Thats all for now...
There is no way in hell this isn't backlit... All the other pocketpcs are... And if they are charging almost the same amount for almost the same thing I'm sure they included backlighting...
Way to watch the trends... 8 hours is about twice what the last generation of pocketpcs got out of there batterys... so... The batterys are lasting longer now... (this isn't a palm and therefore the battery life isn't rated in how many days you can use it for with out replacing the batterys as long as you use it for 20min a day and no more) pocketpc batterys are getting better not worse, and I would argure that laptops are too... So the question is what are you trying to say...
Games? The battery life on the IPaq is bad enough normally, why would you think you'd want to play games on this? Plus how much of your precious memory do you want to store your game on? You wouldn't have much left for work!
Go out and buy a GameBoy Advance or something. At least there'd be games you can get for it.
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CNet also lists those same prices.
As long as Microsoft's Passport is built into it, I'll buy one!
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I checked out the m505 and the only thing I can say about it is that the screen SUCKS! Worst of all, they have no multimedia! I don't want to plugin a MP3 player....the processor should be able to handle playing them not acting as a mere display for a player like the Handspring ones.
I am saving up for one of these uber cool Toshiba ones so I can relegate my EM-500 to the wife ;). 1GB of storage plus GPS, Modem, Wireless Ethernet, Bluetooth and what ever else CF or SD/IO devices can do. BTW, I have a SD card for my EM-500 and I love it! I run most everything on it because there's only 16 MB onboard the EM-500 until Times2Tech can pefect the 32 MB upgrade (they are backlogged upgrading iPaq's to 64 MB!...check em out here. Also check out the review of this upgrade here. Anyway, I DROOL when I think about this machine and what else is to come! Pocket computers won't replace computers, but they will end up being FAR more common then the PC ever was. Now, when is someone going to design one that looks like a PADD on Star Trek! :)
Gorkman
But yeah, having a gig to play with would be real sweet. Five foot shelf of ebooks, and a nice chunk of space for Audible books, if they ever get with the program and add a cellphone earbud jack compatible with a Jabra.
Then we can all start lusting for heads-up displays.
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Before anyone points it out, yes, obviously this can be recharged by being plugged in too, if it uses Li-ion batteries. I must not have been reading very carefully. Still, carrying around a two pound power adaptor would seem to defeat the point of a palm top.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Hell, I may as well just use a laptop, at least that can recharge by plugging in. It looks like the same thing is happening to PDAs that happened to laptops, more and more power is being crammed in at the expense of useful battery life.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
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full length high quality 640x480 movies just aren't going to turn out well, and re-encoding is a bitch. divx doesn't even make it on my celeron 300 laptop. the lowest system i've watched divx movies on is a athlon 500. it's heavy on the cpu.
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"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
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Someone mod this up, and the other schlepp down. It's too mad /. works like this- the inflammatory goon with misinformation gets up to 4, and the guy with the real info is stuck at 1.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Also coming next year flying jetsons cars and robotic children. Seriously, right now WCDMA is still not standardized enough, I work for one of those major mobile phone companies you mention as an engineer and I can assure you that the best your going to get out of the next 2 years or so is around 144kbit. Right now most of the gameplans for 2mbit per second (G3's max speed) are more than 3-4 years down the road. So feel safe buying your PDA it will be obsolete by then anyway. NOTE: I am talking about the US market which is a bit behind on wireless deployment. I can speak for other parts of the world.
What, me worry?
OK, hackers, get to work!
__
Let's hope, nay pray the Toshiba doesn't also have the design flaw then this seems like my perfect pocket PC.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
The official Toshiba press release for the device.
Also the new Toshiba site for the genio-e unfortunatly in Japanesse only for now.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
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hmm.. grammar.... grammar... We owe him...
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*WHEW*, with the 1GB drive, now i can store 1,000,000 names/addresses, and appointments for the next 937,468 years!
Kiss my shiny metal ass
Unless I'm mistaken, it supports Secure Digital media. Which is basically a Flash technology that supports all the CPRM stuff Slashdotters are griping about. So, if you go buy it, you're just as bad as the "average Joe user" who you keep complaining will just ignore the fact that his rights are getting trampled and buy products that support CPRM. So, put your money where your mouth is and DON'T BUY IT. Get one of the (many) other PDAs. I believe, for example, that the iPAQ doesn't have SD support. correct me if I'm wrong, I don't have one and am not currently interested in buying a PDA / handheld.
Is there a way to get a PDA without win CE ? But with the secs of an ipaq or a toshiba (I don't want an underpowered palm)
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Because the expansion slot is CF and their own hard drive design is PCMCIA. The microdrive will fit but theirs wont.
I just wonder, do I really need a PDA that has this much horsepower?
I mean my god, if I have to have a gig of harddrive space to maintain my appointments I think that I have much larger problems...
Wait a minute. What was I thinking?! I just realized that I would be able to run another setiathome client on it. And we all know how important this is on establishing your niche on the geek food chain.
Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
And here's the pre-press release story on it.
"I am a man, and men are
animals who tell stories."
"The meek shall inherit the earth, the rest of us shall go to the stars." Isaac Asimov
The Register has an article (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/20402.htm l) that says the e550 will cost $560 and the e550/MD (as in Microdrive) will cost $800.
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Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
Check this new handheld being released by Toshiba: The Toshiba Genio e550 series will be powered by a 206MHz StrongARM processor, 32MB ROM, 32MB RAM, and a 3.5?? reflection TFT running at 240 x 320 x 16-bit color. The e550 will also support industry standard Compact Flash Type II cards as well as the newest expansion technology, a Secure Digital cards for SD Memory and SDIO cards. The e550 will be 77.5 x 125 x 17.5mm in size, weigh 180grams and run 8 hours on its Lithium-ion battery.
Check this new handheld being released by Toshiba: The Toshiba Genio e550 series will be powered by a 206MHz StrongARM processor, 32MB ROM, 32MB RAM, and a 3.5?? reflection TFT running at 240 x 320 x 16-bit color. The e550 will also support industry standard Compact Flash Type II cards as well as the newest expansion technology, a Secure Digital cards for SD Memory and SDIO cards. The e550 will be 77.5 x 125 x 17.5mm in size, weigh 180grams and run 8 minutes on its poor overtaxed Lithium-ion battery after the first impressario tries to play doom, watch an mpeg, and surf the web all at the same time .
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This time next year, when we all have 3G connections, running at megabits a second (according to the mobile phone companies), all these current PDAs will be obsolete, as the PDA can just be a screen, so you can have beast of a machine at home, and just stream the screen output to the PDA over the air, and send input back. So if I were you people, I'd hold out ;-)
I have a Game Boy advanced and if you've followed the issues with their TFT reflective screen, or you own one yourself you know how much it sux.
Is this one supposed to be better??
edge
You guys forget. I'm CmdrTaco; I can get 1st post anytime I want! Suckers!
saru mo ki kara ochiru
His name ends in "on".... which adds functionality to the collapsed view of posts (they don't have the ON, just the name and date)...
What's so special about a number? Look at my number, and I know who I am.
That's a nice one.... I'll have to get one like that for hemos and AC...
But I'm more of a Hemos then you are.
I'm higher moderated!
I'm dirtier than all of you!