If you can make a $300 PDA with, say, 512MB of storage for music (or whatever), it seems it'd sell like hotcakes. I know I'd gladly buy one.
An iPAQ H2210 costs around $300-$350. It is pretty good (400 MHz XScale chip, 16,000 color display, etc) and has both SD and CF memory expansion slots.
Add a 512 MB CF card for around $100 and there's your high capacity PDA.
I have one and it works well, battery life is good. Of course, I'd like to put a 4 GB Microdrive in it.;)
This is really getting down to the fundamental conflict of solid state storage memory vs. magnetic storage.
When I was a teenager, I had an Apple ][ with a blank memory expansion board that I loaded up every few months - as finances allowed - with 16K RAM chips from the local electronics store. I did this until I got to a total of 1 MB. (Now that must have been 1 MB - 640 K more than enough for anyone;)
I used it mostly as a ramdisk loaded with ProDOS and many of my programs (after all, a 5 1/4" floppy only stored 140 K in those days and many programs fitted on floppy, so 1 MB was like the capacity of an early hard drive).
It booted in no time flat and programs were instantly available, provided of course the memory board was kept powered.
Ever since, I've dreamed of using a solid state hard drive for all my successively more powerful machines. However, although solid state media has got cheaper at a steady rate, magnetic media has also continued to get cheaper, and at a greater rate.
Software and our uses for it has evolved to need more and more storage, so the dream has never returned to reality.
I am running my iPAQ with a 512 MB Ultra CF card, which in a sense reminds me of my Apple ][ over 20 years ago. But even for it I'm mighty tempted to pull apart an iPod mini to scavenge its Microdrive!
My gut instinct suspects magnetic media will still be outpacing solid state for a while to come, even for portable devices.
As a longstanding Palm supporter and a Mac user, I too am quite disappointed at this "unfortunate" turn of events.
So disappointed that I've felt it necessary to drop Larry a polite note:
Larry Slotnick (larry.slotnick@palmsource.com)
Chief Products Officer
PalmSource
Dear Larry,
I am extremely disappointed to read that you no longer intend to support the Mac OS with your future products.
As a Palm user since 1996, having owned six iterations of them up to my current T3 and recommended them to countless numbers of buyers (both Mac and PC users), I feel that my support of the Palm platform may now be drawing to an end.
I am aware that 3rd party solution(s) may be available to provide the missing synch support, just as they exist for using Pocket PC devices on a Mac. However, by not providing "out of the box" support for the Mac platform, you are sending a clear message to both the press and the Mac-using community that you believe the platform no longer worth your attention.
I strongly urge you to reconsider this short-sighted and potentially damaging move. You may not be aware that many of us Mac users do actually talk to PC users and influence their PDA buying decisions. To jettison the minority Mac platform because of its low marketshare is one thing, but to cause them to become disgusted advocates for competing products is another.
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If you can make a $300 PDA with, say, 512MB of storage for music (or whatever), it seems it'd sell like hotcakes. I know I'd gladly buy one.
An iPAQ H2210 costs around $300-$350. It is pretty good (400 MHz XScale chip, 16,000 color display, etc) and has both SD and CF memory expansion slots.
Add a 512 MB CF card for around $100 and there's your high capacity PDA.
I have one and it works well, battery life is good. Of course, I'd like to put a 4 GB Microdrive in it. ;)
This is really getting down to the fundamental conflict of solid state storage memory vs. magnetic storage.
When I was a teenager, I had an Apple ][ with a blank memory expansion board that I loaded up every few months - as finances allowed - with 16K RAM chips from the local electronics store. I did this until I got to a total of 1 MB. (Now that must have been 1 MB - 640 K more than enough for anyone ;)
I used it mostly as a ramdisk loaded with ProDOS and many of my programs (after all, a 5 1/4" floppy only stored 140 K in those days and many programs fitted on floppy, so 1 MB was like the capacity of an early hard drive).
It booted in no time flat and programs were instantly available, provided of course the memory board was kept powered.
Ever since, I've dreamed of using a solid state hard drive for all my successively more powerful machines. However, although solid state media has got cheaper at a steady rate, magnetic media has also continued to get cheaper, and at a greater rate.
Software and our uses for it has evolved to need more and more storage, so the dream has never returned to reality.
I am running my iPAQ with a 512 MB Ultra CF card, which in a sense reminds me of my Apple ][ over 20 years ago. But even for it I'm mighty tempted to pull apart an iPod mini to scavenge its Microdrive!
My gut instinct suspects magnetic media will still be outpacing solid state for a while to come, even for portable devices.
The story goes that the iPod drive is configured to only work in IDE mode, whereas digital cameras need the memory mode.
Well, if you have the White Album on CD, you can still use iTunes to rip it into MP3 and sync it with your iPod.
That's legal and with a fast CPU/drive probably takes less time than typing in a credit card number.
After all, iTunes started out with "Rip, Mix, Burn." The Store is just a new thing that builds on the old.