I own a neo35, and it cost me about 5x less than an empeg would. I'll admit the empeg is better, but bang for buck, I can live with the industrial athestics and its few bugs.
Whether an mp3 cd player is good for ya depends how you collect your music. Myself, my home stereo is my computer, and the rare times I buy a CD, I just rip it, and never touch it again. (To TPTB, I would definately buy mp3s online, but its your loss)
If I owned tons of CDs, and I already burn my mp3s to CD, then a CD/mp3 player makes sense. But for me, I just slide the drive into its pc bay, and syncronize it. In my car, I have my whole collection, no time (or blanks) wasted burning CDs, no CDs to switch around and keep track of.
I read someone saying the neo35 has a built in amp?! Mine surely doesn't. Thats ok, cause deck amps are all crap, and I just fed mine directly to an external amp in the back.
There was some buzz about getting SSI to make the neo35 firmware open source... 'cause they were doing a shit slow job with BIOS updates. One guy even talked about getting a linux build to work with it. In the end SSI gave the source to some other company, and they've been doing a somewhat better job with updates.
Basic conclusion, the neo35 is typical "bleeding edge" technology. Cool idea, worked out ok, it'll be better later, geekware, have fun with it.
On the same is an article about an economy Jornada to be released at roughly the same time. It'll run some form of Linux on a 133MHz processor with a monochrome screen.
Sounds like a good Palm competitor, except this thing will actually be able to playback mp3s with software. But hasn't Sharp or someone already released unit like this?
I'm curious where power supply requirements are headed. A year or two ago, 230-250W was fine, now I'm seeing Intel and AMD demanding 400W. The HFCs that come with these things are now two or three times the size of the socket. With PCs outnumbering vehicles (saw that stat somewhere) I wonder how the power demands and the heat generated will effect global warming and such.
Sure, its probably not much more than a few light bulbs right now (in both aspects). But like I said, where is it headed.
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I own a neo35, and it cost me about 5x less than an empeg would. I'll admit the empeg is better, but bang for buck, I can live with the industrial athestics and its few bugs. Whether an mp3 cd player is good for ya depends how you collect your music. Myself, my home stereo is my computer, and the rare times I buy a CD, I just rip it, and never touch it again. (To TPTB, I would definately buy mp3s online, but its your loss) If I owned tons of CDs, and I already burn my mp3s to CD, then a CD/mp3 player makes sense. But for me, I just slide the drive into its pc bay, and syncronize it. In my car, I have my whole collection, no time (or blanks) wasted burning CDs, no CDs to switch around and keep track of. I read someone saying the neo35 has a built in amp?! Mine surely doesn't. Thats ok, cause deck amps are all crap, and I just fed mine directly to an external amp in the back. There was some buzz about getting SSI to make the neo35 firmware open source... 'cause they were doing a shit slow job with BIOS updates. One guy even talked about getting a linux build to work with it. In the end SSI gave the source to some other company, and they've been doing a somewhat better job with updates. Basic conclusion, the neo35 is typical "bleeding edge" technology. Cool idea, worked out ok, it'll be better later, geekware, have fun with it.
Well look at one of the new HP Jornada's. It's the first one to run Linux instead of Windows CE (aka "Pocket PC for Windows" or Merlin).
Sounds like a good Palm competitor, except this thing will actually be able to playback mp3s with software. But hasn't Sharp or someone already released unit like this?
I'm curious where power supply requirements are headed. A year or two ago, 230-250W was fine, now I'm seeing Intel and AMD demanding 400W. The HFCs that come with these things are now two or three times the size of the socket. With PCs outnumbering vehicles (saw that stat somewhere) I wonder how the power demands and the heat generated will effect global warming and such.
Sure, its probably not much more than a few light bulbs right now (in both aspects). But like I said, where is it headed.