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Portable Mini-CD MP3 Player / Burner
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Here is a neat new toy. It is an MP3/CD portable that not only plays music files, it burns them. Called the RipGO, it was just released by Imation and runs about $400. The article includes a photo of the player."
Will be bitching because they can get a portable, more functional CDRW for a few hundred bucks cheaper.
----
Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
I haven't seen any mini CD-R media laying around but I would imagine that it costs more than regular sized CD-R media. At this point, you'd be better off buying a portable CD burner and getting a separate MP3 player. Neat concept though.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
No doubt the morons at the RIAA will complain that this device violates the DMCA, but in reality it will encourage people to buy CDs, because they will listen to the music in very low quality MP3 format, and later on they will buy the genuine CD, to get the extra sound quality.
I just hope these guys stay under the RIAA's radar.
But 185mb doesn't sound like it's enough to really hold that much. Also a CD-RW version would be a little nicer. They're probably saving that for v2.
Unlike the Sony MD player, this one is truly digital. Can you say bye-bye RIAA. I want one that also does DVDs. Maybe X-mas 2002?
As far as I can tell, this device sells for $400 (same price as the iPod) and holds 185 MB per cd versus the iPod's 5 GB. I am not saying that the iPod is worth it's price but it can also be used as a portable FW hard drive. I think that this device is much less useful than an iPod. I personally use a 16x FW CD burner and my Rio Volt and am fine with that, this device like the iPod is a little overpriced.
If Apple(TM)(R) had made this, it would be either translucent indigo or arctic white, and cost a mere $19.95 a month for 20 months, or, if you act now, $9.95 a month for 39 months. ;-)
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
Although it's still too expensive as well. My portable MP3 player right now consists of a 10 year old walkman with a tape deck.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Posts slamming Apple for releasing a $399US 5GB Firewire hard drive-based MP3 player that weighs 6 ounces...
Posts lauding a mini-CD-burning 160MB player that does... Oh, wait, that's all it does. For $400US...
I'll gladly take an iPod, thanks... And thanks to the Firewire Disk mode, I can write it off as capital equipment that I can use while consulting... Tax writeoff = free... Wait, I guess I could do that with this teeny CD burner, too... Or is it MP3 only?
It is pitch dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
This seems like yet another device where more things are rolled into one. Given the fact that market is already saturated, and that the number of people without burners is on the decline, and the fact that they use a special Mini-CD format (which means that it probably won't be compatible 100% or the time or it won't have a very large capacity - this is just speculation, of course) means that this might not be the best product right now...
Is anyone else reminded of the Kodak Digital Camera/MP3 Player? Granted, this thing has more features for the same purpose now, but...
Nothing stays under their radar for long. I'd like to see this gadget for sale at Coconuts or Musicland.
Vinyl is the way to go anyway....
And their's is only $250.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
sweet jesus in a birchbark canoe!!! why on earth would I pay $400 for 185MB of storage, when i can get 6GB for $250?! Even with a cd burner for my home unit, I still come out ahead!
and grind down regular cdr discs into mini cdr discs
How long will the writer last if it is constantly being dropped, banged against your thigh when you walk/jog, or piled under a stack of books on a desk or a schoolbag? I mean, the mechanism to write cd's must be fairly delicate....
- If This Peace Is Fictious, I Shall Destroy It
seeing the issues all the current portable mp3 tech seems to have (some combination of: not enough space, not fast enough to reload, 2-sec gap between songs, bitrate restrictions, etc), i would certainly recommend waiting for a few reviews to come out.
i hate thinking, "this would have been so cool had they taken another four days to design it!"
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Sounds just like a minidisc player to me. What is the advantage of this over 10-year-old minidisc technology?
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
The best audio format would be some kind of analog laser disc, which would combine the indestructability of the CD with the analog 'warmth and humanity' of vinyl.
Mind you, looks like the dumb consumer has spoken. I cannot remember the last time I saw a mainstream release (apart from dance music) come out on vinyl. I think vinyl is all but dead.
SACD seems to be the latest pretender to the vinyl throne, but with players costing over $1000 I think they make take time to catch on.
Called the RipGO mini CD-R burner and digital audio player, the unit works on both Macintosh and Windows (except 95 and NT), machines.
So let's get this straight... It doesn't work with Windows 95. Nor does it work with NT. Win2k is based on NT. So I guess you need Win98, or ME. Ick.
the unit works on both Macintosh and Windows (except 95 and NT)
So, it only works on XP and WFW 3.11?
The article/ad says the target audience is people who haven't yet bought a CD Burner or don't have space in their computers. I can't imagine anyone with 200+ megs of MP3s to trade not already having a better way to shuffle bits around.
I wonder how the RIAA feels about a company marketing to those damned illegal Traders.
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
Do you guys think USB is too slow for stuff like this? I know USB 2.0 is quicker but I assume this is using USB 1.0.
It seems like devices like this would benefit a ton from firewire. USB 1.0 works great for mice and printers and other low bandwidth devices but in my experiences, it seems too slow for transferring large amounts of data.
That being said, I have noticed that my Sony PIII 650 MHz laptop running WinME is quicker than my Athlon at 550 MHz running Win2k, so maybe chipset or OS has more to do with it than anything.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
First thing, its a CDR drive. In my experience, CDR drives are fragile and flaky and prone to sudden death even while standing still (I'm on my 8th in 5 years). MP3 players are also fragile and flaky and prone to sudden death (scratch two PMP300s and two NJBs - my RioVolt shows up next week along with the replacement HD for my NJB).
:)
Second thing, related to the first. Who makes it? Assuming IMation has OEM'd the thing out, who did the fab? I would suspect the thing is far from durable.
Third thing, I have seen mini CDR media but no mini CDRW. Who wants to backup their stuff onto a 180MB mini CDR? I mean once in a while its cool, but if you can't use your CDR to back up CDs, whats the point? The mini media is nice, but a mini burner that wont take fullsize media at all is useless IMHO.
Fourth thing, its $400. That's enough for an NJB($220), a RioVolt 90 ($89, for when the NJB breaks) and an internal CDR for your computer ($89).
Based on point four - what advantage does this thing really have over the NJB+Riovolt+CDR-in-your-computer? And if you don't have room in your computer for a CDR, and you're gonna buy this contraption, could you not just buy a USB CDRW and a Riovolt for less? Of course you could. And that way you're not banging your CDR drive around.
Seems like a silly idea to me. Now if only it had restrictive rights management!
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
It's about the size of a regular portable CD player. You'd think that a solid-state device would be a much better tack for these companies to take.
It's already in stock at CompUSA. It was in their ad this weekend.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
You might as well go the MiniDisc route. Cheaper/Available media, etc. Yeah yeah yeah, I know its a closed format and such, but the damn thing works, and it works well. They're (finally) making a bit of a dent here thanks to some Mp3->ATRAC software.
I love the MD!
Does it play *real* mp3s, or crippled mp3s? It's my opinion that the players that force proprietary encryption on mp3 files in order to work shouldn't get to advertise as "mp3 players," because, in reality, they aren't.
But then, what am I going to do about it besides rant on /.?
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
iPOD sounds like a better deal if somoene would get it to work on PC. I mean, who needs a burner when you have a 5gb drive on to go? HD's price has gone down so much now CD just are just not that attractive no more but then again, I have 5PCs at home, none of them has a firewire port.
kawai
Imagine, you take this thing round to your friends house, and he/she lets you loose on his/her CD collection. In the space of a couple of hours, the damn machine has paid for itself in the savings you could make by ripping CDs instead of buying them.
And if it happened in Canada, would be completely legal
For the past year (6 mos?), long play encoding for minidiscs has been available. 4 hours on a 60 minute minidisc. Not too shabby! Check out http://minidisc.org/ for more info. as for minidisc being proprietary, what about MP3? ;)
Sony is not the only source for minidisc recorders. sharp is another big supplier.
I wonder how well that would work, though.
The interface to the PC is USB. How long would it really take to rip and encode a CD, transfer it to your RipGo via USB and burn a miniCDR? I'm guessing it would take quite a bit longer than a couple hours to rip/encode/transfer/burn $400 worth of CDs.
I just picked up this <A HREF='http://www.archos.com/us/products/product_50 0201.html'>puppy</A> that has 6 Gigs of storage and can rip directly from any audio source. And it's $350. Seems to me to be the best of the IPod and this thing, for 50 bucks less. You can take that cash and buy 2 Rocco DVD's
...if you'd just read the article.
/.
It's USB. Win95 or WinNT can't deal with USB in any reasonable fashion. Win2K supports USB just fine.
Y'know, WinME was based on Win98 was based on Win95, so, by process of elimination, it looks like it'll only work on Macs.
PhilMills
-Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, will be taken out of context and posted on
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, will be quoted out of context on
Hmmm...MP3 is pretty much a standard, as is the CD format. Mini-CDs are just a smaller capacity version of a CD, and they play on >90% of the CD players out there. I can't put a minidisc in my standard CD-ROM drive, so that makes a difference. :)
Thank you for correcting me on the Sony thing though. I do appreciate a level-headed correction.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
I imagine that they disqualify 98 and NT because neither of those have USB support. Any Windows released after '98 should have the requisite USB support (that includes Windows 98 and Win2K).
Of course USB is dog slow for this kind of product. For the same amount of scratch you can get an iPod with a five gig capacity and FireWire connectivity. Just my $0.02.
This
What about minidisks??? They're smaller, you can burn on the go, and re-burn whenever you want. You don't have to worry about gettin the disk scratched or anything either. The capacity of an MD is pretty much the same too. So why is everybody getting all hyped up about this when MD's do it better?
Typically, with any Apple product, you can go elsewhere and find something for half the price that is fast and has a lot more extras. Might not look as good, though!
I don't know if you consider them mainstream or not, but they do get radio play, and they recorded a theme song for a recent James Bond film. Garbage's latest release "beautifulgarbage" is available on vinyl from cdnow.com. Of course, this is not a common practice. And sadly, they are on an RIAA affiliated label, so I can't recommend buying the album, no matter what format it comes on.
I do not have a signature
My guess is that it would take a couple of days, non stop. And $400 worth of CDs hardly qualifies as a collection.
Helium balloons want to be free.
...because you can easily carry 5 or 10 of these things with you in a pocket, or far more if you're packing a bag. small media is good.
and considering the cost of CD-Rs these days, CD-RWs seem more and more needless.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Oh goody. Another over-priced MP3 player with too many bells and whistles. And a price that's way higher than it should be.
All I want is a decent MP3 player. I want one that supports some sort of smart media card, supports at least 128MB, and has USB. And most importantly, doesn't cost $400! Is that too much to ask? The Diamond Rio 500 came closest to that, but of course it's not made anymore (and cost too much anyway). Instead, SonicBlue produces the vastly inferior Rio 600 or the way over-priced 800. If I can buy a camcorder for $300, a freaking MP3 player oughta be under $100.
I don't need a built-in CD player (that's why I have MP3's fer crissakes!) I don't need a built-in hard drive. I don't need a goddamn built-in toaster oven. I just want a little MP3 player that holds more than 5 songs that I can stick in my pocket when I go for a walk. I certainly don't need to put my entire MP3 collection on it all at once.
Let's see a cheap MP3 player that does one thing exceptionally well, instead of an overpriced MP3 player that does half a dozen things poorly.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
As far as I can tell, the format is still Sony's to control. They're just letting others use it. Technically, they could do the whole proprietary thing (as you joked), but it's really not in their best interests. One really can learn a lesson from Microsoft in how NOT to do business in the longterm :)
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
Win98 and WinME were just bug fixes and added "features" onto 95. WinXP is actually coming off of the NT Kernel, and isn't a successor (code-base-wise) to 95.
Yes! That guy!
I know, minidisc does it already, but minidisc players don't have digital output for PC post-production work and actually doesn't sound as good as plain old WAV files.
If this had a mic input, you could burn directly to MP3 and have 6 hours of digital recording - 6 times that of a minidisc.
If the iPod had a mic input, you could burn 10 hours of uncompressed audio or 100 hours of MP3s. Portable 2 track recording studio!
Armpit hair, armpit hair.
This is bull. Why would this be ANY better than MD [which is cheaper and more functional].
Get the small player and a regular CD-R drive that writes both large and small CDs and you save $100 and get a faster burner to boot.
Who buys a $400 walkman? They're too small and fragile and easily stolen, not to mention outdated fairly quickly by the next "big thing."
Besides, I'd rather have a burner where I can use it most efficiently - at home, attached to my RAID, where my 4,000+ MP3s are!
What if it's a 16x burner...
I guess if they make it burn slow enough for USB to keep up. I don't think USB 1.0 can keep up with 16x burn speeds can it?
Call me impatient, but when I burn CDs I don't want to wait. 4x doesn't cut it. Granted, when I'm burning I'm usually not making audio cds that might be worth listening but instead I'm backing up data from a webserver. Maybe I'd be more patient if it were something fun like audio cds.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
here it is.
Check out MyDivaPlayer.com. They have a 128MB player that also supports CompactFlash for $135 shipped after discount. It is extremely small -- about 3"; fits in the palm of your hand. I haven't had any experience with it, but the few reviews I could find are raves. I plan to buy one for Christmas. The coolness factor of having a mini "Zip drive"/MP3 player/voice recorder for $135 is really what attracted me to this one. --Erica
The problem with iPod is that you need to buy an Apple PC to go with it. The bottom line is that Apple and Imation have subsidized their product for the sake of other interests! In the case of Imation, they are supporting an open standard so I will take their product over Apple's (technologically superior) product any day.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
lol.
Do I win somehting?
...Except their Mini CDrs, whichr a lot more expensive than normal ones, and only hold 150mb, so thats like 2 Albums.
Not that I'm bothered about RIAA, being in Euroland anyway
for one that supports CP/M.
.wav and midi files only, sorry.
I'm getting VERY tired of product announcements of music and video recording devices that simply do not disclose what, if any, copy protection and digital rights management (DRM) schemes they embody.
Reviewers and consumers need to start getting assertive if we don't want to buy a pig in a poke--or, worse yet, buy a device on the basis of what reviews say it will do, then discover that a required firmware "upgrade" has disabled those capabilities. "Oh, we didn't actually SAY it would record ANY music..."
Vendors have a perfect right to sell devices with any restrictions they like, but they need to DISCLOSE these restrictions.
The specifications for the iPod have ALREADY mutated--to more restricted capabilities--and it isn't even out yet!
The problem with iPod is that you need to buy an Apple PC to go with it.
True, and no doubt Apple knows this is a downer. This and the price makes it obvious they're currently selling the iPod as a Mac peripheral, rather than a general-purpose MP3 player.
However, I expect Apple will: (1) bring down the price on the device after a few months, (2) develop and/or partner for non-Apple compatability for the device. If people like it, no doubt third-party attachments for non-FireWire computers will become available. The FireWire is one of the best features about the iPod, though, so I don't expect that to ever go away.
Just my thoughts. Sony sells all their portables with Memory Stick compatability; Apple sells for Mac compatability; Microsoft sells for Windows compatability. It's normal for the industry to at least *start* with closed compatability and open it as time goes on. Smaller companies benefit from open technologies, like MP3 CDs, because they don't have to develop as much.
But as has been said, Apple is profitable *because* they target a niche audience, and the only reason to complain that they're focusing on that niche is if you aren't yet part of it. So I'd expect the iPod price drop and wider compatability to arrive at about the same time. Best thing you ("you" meaning "all Slashdot's readers") can do to hasten that process: WRITE APPLE AND TELL THEM YOU WANT LINUX COMPATABILITY. It's got to be easier than Microsoft compatability, right?
I meant "Any Windows released after '95..."
I knew that "preview" button was there for a reason!
This
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
I would imagine that the battery life would suck from burning cd's AND playing music!
Life is like pants... fit in or you don't fit in.
Well, at least not a legal one. If you use a computer for mixed personal/professional you can only write off the professional portion of the expense.
Disclaimer: I am not a CPA but I do have an accounting degree and I've spent several years as a professional tax preparer working in a CPA's office.
That which does not kill me only makes me whinier
Kid Koala kicks ass!
I've been trying to figure out where that sample comes from: "However, as a beginner, it's often best to just kill everyone as fast as you can with the pump action"
And now that we have halloween, the Charlie Brown sample "I got a rock!" is cool.
I am aware that Kid Koala is more Nija Tune than Bullfrog in general, but I thought perhaps you might know.
That is a major misconception.
actually depending on your tax bracket a tax writeoff translates into a 10% - 34% reduction in the price of the item.
For example. Your $400 iPod reduces your taxable income by $400. That decreases your tax bill by $400*Highest marginal tax rate = about $100 (in my case).
yes mp3 is a standard. so is minidisc.
The similarity is that both are proprietary standards.
See:
http://www.mp3licensing.com/help/developer.html
I want to support mp3/mp3PRO in my products. Do I need a license? YES
I have my own/third party mp3 software. Do I need a license? YES
Do I need a license to stream mp3/mp3PRO encoded content over the Internet? YES
Do I need a license to distribute mp3/mp3PRO encoded content? YES
Time to read up on http://www.vorbis.org/ and support them instead.
--jeff
ipv6 is my vpn
why would anyone want to bring a portable burner? isnt this what it is essentially? this really implies that the person carrying this device is going to bring with him a few blank CDs. CDs itself arent small (except mini CDs - if this device is able to burn them that would be great). and does this thing take 30 mins to burn up each CD? talk about unusability!
my blog
How is this better than say a Minidisc? As far as I can tell it is not. A Minidisc is still more versatile. THe only advantage this might have over Minidisc is a slightly higher (very slight) recording capaicity, and that it may be able to record faster tha nreal time. Granted I took a fleeting look at the article, but it didn't seem to have much REAL info at all, besides a couple of really neato! pictures. The problem is that when any company comes out with a new watch-what-I-can-do product, they don't seem to realize that the consumer needs, and wants a lot of info about the technical aspects of thier product. The consumer is more aware than ever, and they want to know exactly how and so-and-so's product is better than any others. Some lame blurb about the coolness, of fashion factor does not suit the average consumer one iota! As far as I can tell, this is a predictable manifestation stemming from the x-Pandium form factor which does nothing to improve upon what is already available through the Minidisc. I already burn all my MP3's to regular sized CD-ROM's, and have been doing so for a while. If this player can double as a general data storage medium for a computer, then it might have something going for it. As of now, I have no idea whether it can or not, but I tend to think not.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
I'm not sure what the density of a 3" DVD-RAM, would be bu it would definately store enough music to be more interesting 185MB is only 3hrs at 96Kbit and many people use 128Kbit. Flash is cheap at the moment I think you can get 128MBs (memory stick, CF) for the $60-70 range if you shop arround. The battery life would be much better as well. If this is small enough people start to putv them in thier pockets, I'm not sure that I want a CD spinning up in my pocket, but it has been a while since she left me so it maynot be that bad either.
i want a portable device that you can put an audio cd into and, in addition to being able to to listen to the cd, rip the cd to mp3 using the on-board storage. this way, i can go to a party and say "hey, that's a kewl song, can i borrow the cd for four minutes?" then put the cd in the portable device, rip it and hand it back.
then when i go home, i can add it to my mp3 library, maybe even burn my own copy.
what do you think?
Seems like kind of a neat gimick, buut I don't know how useful it is in real life. I mean combining a burner with your cd player doesn't seem all that important. Now I do like the size of mini cds, but you can buy a minicd player that doesn't burn for under $200 . Check out the philips for example. http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/individual/3730.h tml
THen you have normal burners being more an more ubiquitous and going for around $100. Unless you really need to burn on the go I don't see much of a need for this. Even if you need something of comparable size and portability where you can record on the go I'd rather buy something like one of the 384 ibm microdrive players which hover around the same price. You get the same size and recordign ability although you would lose the removing ability of mini cd's I'll admit. On summation it sounds like a cool device, but of limited use.
The Archos 6GB recorder mentioned further up the page does exactly that. The Creative/Nomad Jukebox also has a mic input, but (AFAIK) only records to WAV.
Well there is a laser "pickup" turntable available
from these guys (http://www.elpj.com/). A tad expensive mind.....
miniDisc is 100% proprietary, down to not being able to make more than 1 copy of anything in miniDisc format and having to wait real-time to make those copies (Thanks Sony!)
MP3 is proprietary if you choose to use or buy the licenses to proprietary software and codecs. You do not have to do this with the LAME MP3 encoder.
That being said, use Ogg Vorbis.
Am I the only one who would rather have this made out of steel and weigh about 3 pounds? I miss steel made consumer appliances. Damnit those types of products rocked. Anything that could double as a anchor for a boat and be used to prop up a wobbly table is Ok by me.
Darn friggin plastic small sized pieces of crud, GIVE ME STEEL!
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