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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.
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...
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
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.
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
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.
Uh, read the specs, if you can grok Japanese. You can light a reflective TFT, just not from the back, like a lot of people seem to say. The iPaq most certainly has an optionally lit screen, and apparently, so does this thing.
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As long as Microsoft's Passport is built into it, I'll buy one!
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Microsoft's Transcriber will do real handwriting recognition. Of course, it can only handle as much as you can write on that at once....if you can squeeze a whole sentence on it, your's lucky...but it works. You can use cursive or printing. It's not loaded by default, but it's on the CD that comes with Pocket PC's. It's not bad. I prefer character recognition because I seem to move faster, and my handwiriting fills the screen too quickly. I move faster with Character Recognition, and Microsoft's character recognition is a ton more natural then Graffiti.
Gorkman
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
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
The Apple Newton MessagePad 2000 and 2100. I have one, and it works wonderfully. Huge screen, real HWR (not character) recognition, flawless net access. And no hardware buttons.
You can find them here.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
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.
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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
The scroll up/down rocker switch is incredibly useful as well, just like wheel mice. I would definitely NOT want the buttons taken away, and I suspect most others would like to keep them too.
*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
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
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.
Reliable, Great Value Hosting: $7.95/mo 2.4G/120G
As for the MPEG1 vs. MPEG4 issue: MPEG1 can look really good provided you do some tricks during encoding. If you don't encode in real time you can achieve acceptable quality within the 400kbits/sec video rate.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
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
But I'm more of a Hemos then you are.