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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.
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
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.
1. Nice color display screen. That 131 Mhz processor doesn't run on air, especially when doing something that requires a lot of CPU power, say mp3 decodnig. Unless your last name is Duracell or Energizer, the battery cost'll kill you alone.
2. 32 meg? No, I'm gonna have to call you on this one. 16 meg RAM, 16 Meg ROM. Good to know that they can shoehorn Windows into 16 meg. 15 minutes, of mp3 audio, if you didn't have anything else on it. If I want to listen to 5-10 songs over and over again, I can listen to the radio station.
3. $499.00. Get a Palm V with REAL internet access for that much.
More fun features from casio.com:
"Movie Playback!" Because, hey, at 320x240, you can store a LOT of video in 16 meg!
"Digital Stereo Playback!" *Requires a multimedia kit, because if we can sucker someone into buying this, we can sucker some more money out of them so they can have digital sound!
"Throw away those 500-page instruction books. If you are familiar with Windows 95 you will be at home with Windows CE."- There are so many problems with this statement that I don't know where to begin. Any Palmtype that requires a 500 page instruction book has more serious issues than a 500 page instruction book. Windows 95 was designed (and I use that term kindly) for PCs. Have you tried to use Win95 at 640x480? Now try it at 320x240: One of two things will result: Either the UI will be too small to be legible, or the UI will be so large as to overpower the rest of the desktop, effectively reducing the usable area to less than that of Palm's 128x128.
"AC with optional AC adapter"- Because you won't get much life out of those batteries if you try to play video or music!
"Flashing alarm indicator" Because our interface is so cluttered and convoluted that even we know that you might not notice a error!"
"Three "assignable" application launch buttons". Be glad you got three. And they're "assignable", too!
And the best feature that I've found so far:
"Exit button for one handed escape"
--I hate people when they're not polite -"Psycho Killer", Talking Heads
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!
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