Slashdot Mirror
PDA+MP3 Player
cheeze wrote in to
send us a link to another mp3 player
that is actually a PDA that uses those Iomega Clik! disks for
storage. Came from the-gadgeteer.com..
Is anyone besides me thinking that devices like the Rio's are
dead ends, and that the real future is something like a Pilot,
but with good sound output and memory? Palm VII's can stream,
if it was cheap and had sound, shoutcast or the like would allow
us to create personal radio stations really easily. Ok, not for
a few years, but its beginning to seem inevitable.
Seems to me, even the technology nowadays allow us to have a real PDA instead of those toys we have now. Why don't we have it now?
How about a PDA that can
1. Organising informational documents
2. Internet communications (email + www of course, and more... audio/video stream... a portable Radio and TV...)
3. Phone service (voice over IP, please, not the other way)
4. MP3 Music on tiny storage device (how about those micro-hard-drive from IBM?) Don't have to bring that bunch CDs with me on the road.
5. Infra-red communication (that control your garage doors, your cars, your VCR, etc.)
Of course, as small as the mobile phone nowadays. No stupid keyboard like those CE-based thing, but a little bit more buttons for easier programmed controls over things that I would like if Palm had it.
A sig is redundant.
But I don't want a Palm Pilot, I don't want a Rio, I don't want any of the one-trick gadgets on the market today.
What I want is a portable gadget with wireless 'net access, a built in cell phone (preferably embedded in the PPP stream so I don't have to log out to call someone), sound quality good enough to play MP3s, image quality good enough to run snes9x (even if only in black & white), CPU speed to do both, hardware open enough to run Linux on, a 10baseT port instead of some stupid serial-based "cradle" for uplinks, a set of long-life, built in rechargeable batteries, a fold-out keyboard, a stylus, and a couple PCMCIA slots. (an optional PCMCIA-sized GPS receiver or 4 GB drive would be nice too) Oh, and *lots* of RAM. At a dollar a meg, putting 32 or 64MB RAM into a handheld device isn't ridiculous. I don't know what default software should be included, but at the very least I should be able to look at the bundled math program and throw away my TI-85 (or install Linux/matlab and throw away my TI-85).
This would probably cost over a thousand dollars and require daily recharging with moderate use today, but it is possible, and those numbers are only getting rapidly better. I guarantee the first company to replace the PDA, pager, cell phone, game boy, walkman, calculator, GPS receiver, etc. with one single unit, and make it affordable, will be rich overnight.
Well, considering Iomega's financial shape these days, using Clik! disks as their primary media may be an even larger mistake than picking up a Rio. :) At least with a Rio, you're guaranteed of at least having something to store your MP3's on..The whole idea of putting your data on something mechanical also introduces a nasty number of problems in a design..heads go bad, disks go bad, and you go through batteries like crazy. The best MP3 player will be one with ample storage, no moving parts and a geek port for future expansion. Not a glorified cassette player. :)
Bowie J. Poag
The Casio E-100 has 32M, a color 320x200 display, and plays MP3/MPG (yes MPG!) files:
http://www.casio.com/hpc/
From what I can tell, the Lyra, a new MP3 player from RCA seems like a much better idea than the varoman plus. It can accept CompactFlash memory cards (type I or II) but the real benefit is that the upcoming IBM microdrive fits into a CompactFlash socket. That's right: 340 mb of MP3's that can fit in your pocket. And the drive will only cost a few hundred dollars, much less than the equivalent amount in solid state cards. The only problem may be skipping. It depends on how well IBM makes their microdrive.
For more information, see:
http://www.mp3.com/news/239.html
AFAIK, this thing won't be available until the end of the year, and the microdirve later than that, so it's a long time to wait, but it looks like the Lyra has the best technology.
The Lyra also can be upgraded to play other audio formats which could be useful 10 years later when MP3 is not in use anymore.
Am I the only person who feels that anything that manufacturers try to squish between PDA and Notebook size is just DUMB?
:P).
A PDA is the perfect size for what it does, and thats ALL it does. I have a Palm IIIx, I LOVE it. It is great for taking memos, keeping track of my calendar, even keeping email on if I need to reference it. Not only that there are a few good games on it for when I'm bored. But in general, I don't use it for long periods of time or for huge amounts of text input.
A notebook is larger, and therefore not as useful while you are walking around unless you have time to sit down, but is much different than a PDA. I wouldn't use a PDA as a notebook, and by the same token I wouldn't use a notebook as a PDA. The notebook (mine is a whopping 486/66 w/8mb of ram running Slackware) is for large amounts of text entry, messing around, even working on programming (compiling is a bit slow!
These two devices serve completely DIFFERENT functions. When you try for the "subnotebook" class, where you're aiming for something similar in size to a PDA but with the power of a Notebook, you get a MONSTROSITY. They have TINY KEYBOARDS, and really not enough HD space to do what a notebook can. They basically turn into hard to use PDAs without text recognition and a really really bad keyboard.
I like expensive toys as much as the next guy, but really, subnotebooks are just plain useless and expensive. I really don't see a need for streaming mp3 audio on a Palm Pilot, nor do I see a need for an all-in-one wonder gadget that does everything but your taxes. People need to acknowledge that having a piece of hardware designed for ONE thing can be a Good Thing (tm). Trying to make it do everything will do nothing but give it the ability to mimic the abilities of about 10 other devices BADLY.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
Yes, CE-based palm-top computer with a mobile phone can pretty much do the "advanced" idea many slashdotters have, but this device is a total failure in my opinion.
I once saw a guy next to me on a flight typing on a Toshiba libretto, it's really funny to find that his fingertips are much larger than the keys.
Indeed, if you want those powerful function, get a slim notebook computer will do. What's special is if there's a device with a remote-control size, or mobile phone size, that can do the job of providing instant informations (by email/www/internet radio or video/voice over IP) and simple communication with other devices thru Infra-red and provide simple entertainments when it's idle. CE-based device could do this kind of thing, but it's simply too complex (trying to put a PC on that size is stupid). Just like I don't why we need to put a Pentium processor in a rice cooker, I don't see why we need a condensed computer functions in such a device? Of course, if in the future, when the user-interface can be integrated seamlessly with us, I may want this small device that can dictate a business presentation documents just like I talk to my sec. Now, I just need a mobile phone with some practical function.
the idea of CE is just as bloat as all other M$ products.
A sig is redundant.
Well, there's basically a tradeoff between the price of the storage medium and the quality/durability of it. Memory sticks and other solid-state storage devices are nearly invincible (except to various form of ESD/etc), but they become incredibly expensive in the range of sizes needed to store MP3 files (64-128MB). Mechanical magneto and optical storage devices are vulterable to such things as magnetic fields, physical wear, dust, scratching and contact with the user, but obtaining a 100-150MB of storage on one is trivial and relatively cheap (compared to memory).
I'm willing to risk the integrity of my data for a cheaper storage solution, as I will probably have it backed up somewhere. The question of whether Iomega will exist in the future, however, is one we will have to wait and see about.
BTW, the IBM compact-flash-sized drives might also be a good solution, but I have no idea of the cost.
æeee!
Personally, I quite like the idea of an mp3 player
which I can carry a reasonable amount of media about for.
The Rio and similar have far too little RAM to be
really useful, and I don't much relish spending 10 minutes
filling them up every time I change what I want to listen to.
The minidiscs are better that way since you can
easily carry a pocketful of them, but the drawback
is that they take over an hour to fill up. We really
need a decent compromise, and Iomega's Clik! disks
might well be the cure.
Shhh Cmdr, don't give it all away. Let the music industry spend their billions of dollars developing SDMI and making it the only format available in portable audio devices, only to have us to playing audio in whatever format we want (probably streaming) on our next-generation Linux based PDAs...
Of course your portal media player of any kind will merge with your portable/wearable computer/PDA. This is why the whole format control issue is bound to fail : the future is not in embedded cips capable of only one simple task. Sooner or later, all electronics in ones house and outside it will be part of computer systems.
How to install Linux on your Toshiba Libretto.
cpeterso
um.. yuck.
don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with linux. but THINK about this first: using ANY command-line operating system on a handheld computer would be hell. linux is still primarily text-based-- even with X you're largely running xTerms-- and i can imagine that inputting Linux commands (or even worse using VIM) using Graffiti would _not_ be fun.
The reason that the palmpilot is so popular is that it knows its limitations. The OS is designed to fit into that little tiny screen, and does it well. I doubt you'll get any PDA to work well unless the operating system is designed ground-up for the limited resources of a PDA. Linux would probably adapt much better to that kind of environment than Windows would, but even still i doubt you'll have anything you could really call Linux in a PDA.
unless of, course, by "linux" you mean just the kernel, which i imagine would work just fine as something to build on.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts