Treó 10: Another Portable Mass Storage Device

mblase writes: ""The Treó 10 is a lightweight, pocket-sized, digital music jukebox with the capacity to store over 3,000 songs - that's 150 hours of music." It's got twice the hard-drive space of Apple's iPod, but also half the RAM, half the battery life, and uses a much slower USB connection instead of FireWire. However, it's PC-compatible using MusicMatch Jukebox right out of the box, and costs only $250 instead of $400 for the iPod. CNet's article compares the two further."

Comments

Why is capacity measured in songs?

[Angron]

Why is it that nearly every press release or announcement about a digital music playing device describes the storage capacity in terms of the number of songs it can hold? Since when is a 'song' a standard unit of measure? I personally use high bitrate (VBR, 128kbps floor, 320kbps ceiling, LAME) mp3's for most of my music, leaving me at about 1.5MB per minute of music. This usually results in their estimates being completely different from what I'd actually be able to put on the device.

Another problem is that the bitrate can be dramatically different among the songs in someone's collection, ranging from 128kbps for some songs to a maximum 320kbps for others; yet these announcements completely ignore this! Are they afraid to tell us exactly how many MB or GB the device actually has? Or do they just seek to try and do simple math for us based on some predetermined 'common' bitrate?

I want real measurements, not arbitrary ones. I don't buy cars that get "three full drives per every tank of gas", and I don't buy music players that hold "xxx minutes of music".

-Angron

Re:Why is capacity measured in songs?

[nehril]

because "songs" is actually a good way to describe approximate capacity to the average person. Try explaining "VBR, 128kbps floor, 320kbps ceiling, LAME" to your mother, along with a statistical analysis of how many femtoseconds of creative sonic intellectual property (or music) that gets you. And remind her of the difference between KBps and Kbps while you're at it.

Or you get your head out of your pci slot, and say "about a thousand songs."

why would you want this when you have the terapin?

[metalhed77]

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/57a3.shtmlT he Terapin Mine Handheld
Uses ETHERNET and USB, runs linux and has 10 gigs of storage plus audio out and MP3 playing abilities. Now, why would you want a stinkin' ipod?

Re:Yeah???

[znu]

I'm betting that whatever method it uses to transfer files from the computer isn't nearly as slick as the iPod's iTunes syncing.

Re:Yeah???

[zmooc]

Most people don't have firewire yet. Most PC-users, that is (and thus most people...). So there probably are a lot more customers for an USB-device than for a FireWire-device.

iPod User's Opinion

[MBCook]

Well, I'll tell you all what I think. First of all I want to mention that my brother owns an iPod and i've used it a little. I use PCs almost exclusivly (the only Mac I have runs Linux 24/7) for about 10 years.

First I'll tell you guys the positives as I see them. The cost is a major factor. Like many people I can't drop more than maybe $50 at the drop of a hat, so the lower the price the better. The fact that for the lower price, you get 2x the storage is great also. The Treo is 2.5 cents per meg, while the iPod is 8 cents. That plus the fact that it works with Windows out of the box will probably give it very good sales. This is also good because USB is quite ubiqutous, unlike FireWire. The last good point that I'd like to touch on is the fact that it only has enough memory for 8 minutes of continuous playback. I have to say that I can't think of any way to use a MP3 player that would be so abusive that it would not be able to read a few megs off of a hard drive every few minutes. Are people planning on settings their MP3 players on those paint mixer things at hardware stores that shake paint cans like mad? Also, it's a serious bonus not to have to buy a Mac or some piece of software to be able to use my new MP3 player; of course if you already have a Mac, that's not a problem.

Now the cons, once again as I see them. Firs the iPod is tiny and has a great UI. The jog dial works extreemly well, and with the exception that it took me a few seconds to figure out how to force it to turn off (hold pause, didn't take long ;), the controlls are perfect and obvious. I think that while USB is good, they should have included USB 2.0 for a number of reasons:

• USB 2.0 is backwards compatible, so as more computers get USB 2, more people will get faster transfer rates. Let's face it, transfering 10 gigs at USB 1.x speeds would be mind-numbingly slow
• FireWire is just too rare (in the wintel arena anyway) to be able to ship and expect good sales without bundeling a FireWire card with the product, IMHO
• USB 2.0 is supposed to be faster than FireWire (or at least the current implementation of FireWire as seen on a Mac I could go out and buy today, correct?), so if USB 2 was availible you could transfer files to the Treo faster than the iPod

The computer interface isn't the only problem that I see. First of all the Treo looks physically bigger than an iPod. I understand that it would have to be a tad bigger to hold twice as much storage, but it looks quite a bit wider, which is my complaint. The interface doesn't look nearly as good as the iPod. I don't think that the buttons could beat that slick jog dial. Now if they were to include (at least as an option) a little LCD/remote on a headphone cable like many CD players have these days, something that I think should have been offered on the iPod, that could make up for it easy. The battery life is another problem. If all your songs were encoded at 128kbps, then the Treo should only be able to play about 3.5% of it's capacity without having to recharge. While the iPod holds less, it will let you play 12% of it's capacity without having to recharge. This seems quite significant to me. The last major issue that I can say without haveing used a Treo is that it just doesn't look as cool as the iPod. If there is anything that the iMac taught us (other than how much the industry loves playing "Me too!" with ideas that become annoying fast and last TOO long), it's that sex sells. Let's face it, the average joe prefers something that looks stylish (the iMac) to something that looks like a box (average no-name PC of years ago).

Well, those are my thoughts. I'd love to do a better in-depth comparison, so you guys feel free to send me any MP3 player (or anything else ;) that you want. My e-mail address is above! All in all I must say that for me, there is no contest that I would have to go with the iPod.

Re:iPod User's Opinion

[gleam]

people keep talking about the transfer rate.

who cares?

You really have more than 10 gigs of music that you listen to regularly? I mean, at 74 minutes per album and 192kbit, that's 96 albums, and a mind-numbing 118 hours of music.

I have an archos jukebox 6000, which has a 6 gig hard drive and connects via USB, and can also function as a USB hard drive. So yes, it took about 80-90 minutes to fill up the hard drive initially. But, uh, I haven't transferred any files to or from it since then.

Why would I?

That's about 57 albums worth of music, and I guarantee you I don't listen to more than that regularly.

The only point at which the transfer rate really becomes an issue is if you're actually using it as a portable hard drive, and I think a relatively small number of customers use it for that purpose.

And do you want to know *why* the people who buy these rarely use it as a hard drive? Because people who buy $200-400 hard-drive based mp3 players usually have fairly new cd burners.

I have a 16x cd burner, which will burn an entire 700mb cd in maybe 4.5 minutes. Which doesn't require me to make space on my mp3 player, and doesn't require me to bring it to someone who has a usb or firewire enabled system, etc etc.

Seriously.

If you have one of these things, you know you don't use it as a portable hard drive. It's an mp3 player, first and foremost.

of course, if you have one of these kinds of things and you find you regularly *do* do file transfers, feel free to flame away.

-gleam

there is better, bigger, AND CHEAPER...and slower!

[Anonymous Coward]

15 hours to load up via USB is a joke. These things have been in development, and they are trying to sell as many as they can before the axe falls...which will be very soon. FireWire is the way.

Re:Lovin' the iPod

[SilentChris]

*scratches his head* Post Mac-friendly propaganda and you get +1 Insightful?

As for the USB vs. Firewall connection: I agree that faster is always better. Heck, let's go full-hog: I want an MP3 player that has a PCI interface. Slap it right into the tower when I'm ready to transfer.

But most computers, nowadays, only have USB (mostly because of restrictive, expensive licensing on the part of Sony and *ahem* Apple). The fact of the matter remains, with 5 gigs of storage, 10 gigs of storage, you're probably not going to be syncing to change *all* the music that often. In a best case scenario, you can probably even rip all your CDs, copy a majority of them to the device, then only need to add new songs when a new CD comes out.

Further, if you're using something more high-end in terms of compression (like WMA for instance) you're talking about 1-1.5 megs a 3-4 minute song. 3500-5000 songs per iPod? How often are you going to sync the whole thing?

Good Apple, bad copy

[Graymalkin]

While I don't have the extra cash to go out and pick up an iPod I've got to play with a couple of them. They are pretty fucking cool. The screen isn't some POS ordered out of a RadioShack catalog, the battery life is long because they don't use standard batteries, and they are really compact. They're geared toward Mac users and people pissed off that they only work with iTunes don't seem to grasp that most shit is ONLY Windows compatible and most of the time Mac users are SOL when it comes to new toys. As for a new iPod-ish device coming out with more space yet less actual capability that doesn't mean much. Storage space on portables isn't such a big deal since there's no way you could listen to the thousands of songs you can carry on the battery supply you've got available. However you might want to make your portable your main MP3 storage device in which case you're actually limited by space but also connection speed. USB is not going to cut it for this sort of task. Having 10GB would be a plus but the fact it would take you forever to fill up the drive is a definite minus. Now if this thing had the same capabilities as an iPod with a groovy screen for half as much money I'd be impressed. You get what you pay for though. Ask Nomad owners who bought their deck six months ago and are STILL waiting for their MP3 collection to upload to it.

Re: FireWire is not more expensive

[poiu]

But most computers, nowadays, only have USB (mostly because of restrictive, expensive licensing on the part of Sony and *ahem* Apple).

Beg Pardon??? Sure USB is more ubiquitous and that is a very good reason to choose to make a product based on it. But you should have stopped while you were ahead.

That "expensive" license was only there for the first six months after Apple introduced Macs' with FireWire. After that, they dropped the price, check it out do a google search.

Apple makes kick ass hardware, but also makes some stupid moves, but that wasn't one of them.

More Important Time Questions

[dreadpiratemark]

While it's interesting to think about how long it takes to fill 10 gig via USB (short answer: overnight) that really isn't a big deal to me. Fine, I transfer your music one evening & I have it from then on on the Treo. There are two bigger 'time' questions though, IMO.

1) How long does it take to start playing from the moment I boot the machine (for reference, Creative Nomad Jukebox's take up to 50 seconds for an initial boot, check out News.Creative.Com - Products.Nomad and the comments there by Nomad owners & you'll see this is a common issue)?

2) How long does it take for the Treo to shuffle from one track to another one? In other words, are there noticable delays between non-sequential tracks as the hard drive searches for the next song? This would also come into play if I searched for a song - how long will it take to find it?

Anyway, I can live with a long process of transfering my music to the machine as it will only have to be done once (with periodic smaller updates as I get new music), but the other issues would affect me every time I try to play music...and would just be annoying.

Just my .02 worth.

-Mark

sync speed

[rodolfo.borges]

So much people complaining about the sync speed.. "takes n hours to fill 10Gb", etc..
But that's just the first time you fill it.
Other syncs will be much faster, because just the new (and modified) songs have to be copied, just like on a incremental backup.
Of course, assuming that the software is not dumb..