Portable Mp3 player for $99

Andrew Konkol sent us another portable MP3 Player, except that this one has 64 megs of memory and costs only $99. And of course, its not available until mid '99 (which by my math is only a few weeks away...

Comments

sounds fishy (no pun intended)

[Anonymous Coward]

Look guys, I'm sorry, but this mp3
player looks and sounds fishy.

While it may in fact be a garage start-up
akin to what Apple was in their dawn, this
smells like a scam.

Clues:
1) Cheezy graphics on website

2) The website is a *user* account on
a foreign(Singapore) isp.

3) Their price is half of diamond's and
CL's with more features

4) Few technical specs available

If I'm wrong and they are legit, more power to
them, but beware.

The DO have a domain

[linuxci]

For those who are saying this mustn't be real becasue they don't have their own domain - they have:
http://www.zipaudio.com/

Details of their product are at: http://www.zipaudio.com/hardware.htm

Of course that's not a definite indication they are genuine but you can draw your own conclusions.
--

Don't Know about this.........

[Accipiter]

Operates up to 12 hours continuously.
Powered by 2 x AAA Alkaline batteries

12 hours of continuous mp3 decoding on 2 AAA batteries? I don't think so....

-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?

Cripes! no wonder we have monopolies!

[Cid Highwind]

Look at the responses here. Every post seems to say (I paraphrase) "Their page looks like crap, and it's on a user account, therefore they must be scam artists"

Have we all been brainwashed by the mass-marketeers to the point where we are no longer capable of believing good things can come out of a small startup company? It's no wonder the computer industry is becoming monopolized if we are afraid to buy from the upstarts. What the dominant OEMs seem to have done is ingrained in our minds that a slick public image and a top-of-the-line web site = a reputable dealer. They have succeeded in making a huge barrier to entry into the harware market. Web design costs money, something these guys probably don't have a lot of. I for one would rather see them put all their money and time into developing a better product.

Re:Cripes! no wonder we have monopolies!

[_Sprocket_]

What the dominant OEMs seem to have done is ingrained in our minds that a slick public image and a top-of-the-line web site = a reputable dealer.

It's a catch-22. I'm sure most of us here would like to believe in the next garage wizard. We'd be glad to support them. But how do you tell if they ARE just that?

Let's take Apple for example. Their Apple I was hawked at a local homebrew computer club where enthusiasts got to see working prototypes. Later, the duo managed to take their garage-production to a local computer store. It grew from there. The point is, though, that there was physical proof of what they were selling. Interested parties knew with a reasonable amount of certainty that what they purchased would be pretty much what they expected.

But The Steves were also less-known for another computer. My memory on the details is a bit fuzzy - so please bare with me. At a computer convention, Wonziac and Jobs (I believe it was both) put togeather a flyer that outlined, basically, the uber hacker's computer for the time. It had everything people wanted - and it was inexpensive. The conspirators managed to flood the convention floor with their bogus flyers. Pretty soon, there were hordes of people looking for this godsend hardware. But it was a hoax - it never existed.

In this day and age, it doesn't take a convention and flyers to do the same. The 'web is just as effective. In fact, I would go as far as saying it is even more dangerous - it offers the unscrupulous a chance to pull off a hoax AND collect on it annonymously. We SHOULD be skeptical.

So what proof do we need? Well I'm sure everyone would be happy with seeing one personally. But, like others have pointed out, clear pictures of the product and stats goes a long way towards proving the device actually exists. I've seen some pretty messy 'web pages talking about personal (as well as professional) MP3 players that offer that much information. And although they're obviously "garage" quality - they're able to offer more proof than these guys have.

I understand

[Lupus Rufus]

You're pissed that while some people complain that the "glory days" of computing have "ended" (I tend to disagree; the grassroots manner in which free software is taking over the world can only be described as a glorious revolution), people will write off a new face in the computing world because they seem to be marketing their product quite badly. Thus, the computing world of the 70's and 80's has been twisted into the corporate mess of the 90's.

While I too lament the dominant force which media, marketing and corporations wield in our consumer society, I think in this particular case the naysayers have it right. Why do I think this? Basically one word: capital. Mass-producing a piece of hardware requires vast resources, and even constructing a prototype (which looks as nice as this one does) requires a decent amount of cash. Now, I'll accept that this could be a labor of love, the prototype painstakingly constructed, squeezing every penny available for what it was worth. But in this case, I would expect that the inventor would be proud enough of his invention to post information on his site. For an example of how I would expect such a project as this to happen, look at the Empeg. The site is not as squeaky-clean as, say, Diamond, but it is full of pictures and tech specs. The love is clear. With the fellow linked to above, I'm not so sure the love is there.

Hardware (especially consumer-grade hardware) has traditionally been made by companies with many resources to speak of. Think IBM, Intel, Sun, Apple, DEC, AT&T, Microsoft (in recent years), and so on. Occasionally people break onto the scene, but their products are almost never as polished as those produced by the big companies. Not that that is a bad thing necessarily, just that the polish of this product in particular is incongruous with the lack of polish on his web page. Also, why go to the trouble of drawing the thing when purportedly the real thing is sitting next to the computer ready to be photographed?

Now of course, software is a totally different issue. Writing a piece of software requires no tools other than a computer, persistence, ingenuity and programming experience, altogether not requiring much capital at all. In fact, it is precisely this low cost of entry that got all of our favorite geeks on their way to fame and (for some) fortune: Richard Stallman, Bill Gates, Marc Andreesen, Linus Torvalds, and all the rest. And in fact, you can expect shitty marketing from a programmer (in fact, shitty marketing probably means the product is better). All I'm saying is that you can't look at hardware the same way.

-josh

Ok, ok. I'm off topic. But I think it's important.

[mountain]

I'm going off on a tangent here so, bear with me.

I've read a few articles along the lines of, 'where have all the {can't think of the right word (but if I could the guys who founded Apple, Microsoft(pre-'90) and GNU/Linux would be described by it)} gone'. And I've wondered myself, why can't someone come along with something wonderful and great and new; that will change the world (as we see it).

With responses like these it's not hard to see why no one's able to make revolutionary products in their garage. Everything's marketing. There's no such thing as a better mouse-trap, just a better marketed one.

Ahh, hell I had a brilliant point to make. Some of you who read this will get the gist of what I'm trying to say. And others won't. I've completely lost my train of thought trying to hash out my point into words. Bugger it.