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PDA+MP3 Player 123

Posted by CmdrTaco from the is-this-the-future? dept.
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.
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PDA+MP3 Player

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  • So THAT's the reason they didn't put in audio in the PVII. :-)

    Seriously, though, Palm.net is expensive because the technology is still emerging... 3Com people have been quoted as saying that the price may well go down with enough volume.

    Give it time, it will all be possible...

    --bdj

  • I didn't moderate the original post, but just looking it over, I find it not at all surprising it was moderated down, for reasons having nothing to do with an anti-MS agenda. Let's consider: (1) Redundant: This post simply repeats the earlier discussion about the E-100 without adding anything new. (2) Off topic: The poster's main thrust seems to be to question what Slashdot articles should be about. (e.g. "Why wasn't THIS news instead of that piece of CR*P click thing?") This article is about PDAs and MP3, not Slashdot policy. Comments about Slashdot policy are off-topic here. (Note, my message, as well as the one I'm replying to and the one asking why the original message was moderated are all also off topic, and should be moderated accordingly.) (3) Flamebait: The poster's frequent use of the word "crap" in connection with Palm Pilots and other PDAs makes this obvious flame bait. Note, misspelling the word "crap" with an asterisk doesn't make it a different word, it just makes it "crap" misspelled. It's particularly amusing when used in profanity -- here's a clue for you: if it's profanity, it's profanity no matter how you spell it. Poor typing skills don't make you more polite. Not that "crap" really counts as profanity -- but the original poster seemed to think so since he couldn't spell it without hitting that asterisk... I used to run a BBS, and I found I needed to delete several messages every day. About 100% of the time, the reason was because the post was completely off topic. About 30% of the time, clueless idiots thought it had something to do with my opinions disagreeing with theirs. Who knows, maybe there are sysops out there who actually moderate based on how well a post agrees with their personal opinions. Maybe it really does happen. I've never seen it, though, despite having seen the accusation made hundreds of times. Thus, my knee-jerk reaction is always to chaulk this up to paranoia. I've been right in every case where I could check the facts on it so far...

    --

  • 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.
  • Flat rate CDPD from Bell Atlantic runs 19.2kbps for $50-$60 per month.. Try muxing a dozen of those in the trunk.. ;)

  • 3. and get charged by the kb with a PalmVII...

    This should work out to be comparable in price to a cellphone connection. And on the pluss side it's twice as fast.

  • 6 Hours of battery life vs my Palm III with over 18-24? I can't even remember the last time I had to change the batteries in my P3.
  • 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.
  • First off, I heard from a not-at-all reliable source that MD's actually store information in the MP3 format internally.

    Your source is unreliable. MD does not use MP3 internally.

    Secondly, the MD is not a mature platform, and I doubt it will ever mature. There are several reasons for this:

    1. You cannot create a MD without a CD

    What do you mean by this? Do you mean I can't record from the radio? Of course I can. Do you mean that I can't purchase prerecorded MDs in stores? Admittedly, I haven't seen them in stores in California, but on a recent trip to Switzerland I saw prerecorded MDs. There are also places online where I can purchase prerecorded MDs if that's what I want.

    2. There is a limit to the number of digital copies that can be made from an MD. While this sounds silly, most people who don't like this kind of restraint, especially if they already own the CD which is digital, and can be copied as such without any limit. Why should I get an expensive MD recording unit which doesn't allow unlimited digital copies when I can get a CD recorder that does?

    One word: convenience. I like my MD because in one little pouch I can carry my MD and 10 discs (700 minutes of music) containing only my favorite songs. My MD rarely skips, unlike my discman w/ shock-protection.

    3. Why should I get an MD recorder when the CD is much more established? If I record a CD, there will be a player at my destination. This is not the case with the MD.

    This is the whole point of MD for me! It's not so much about having music at my destination, as having music on the way to my destination. I listen to my MD on CalTrain, while I'm riding my bike, nordic skiing, or climbing. There aren't CD players there and a discman is just too bulky.

    4. The MD recorder assumes the existance of a separate player, and vice versa. I wouldn't purchase an MD recorder just to record MD's: I would want a portable player to go with it. Most people don't need another way to make a "personal greatest hits" album; they want MD's for their digital, skip-free qualities--qualities which are best demonstrated in stressful enviornments such as car audio. And who would get a player without the capability to record? I haven't seen a combo package of the two for less than $500 here. I'd rather get a new palm pilot for that kind of money!

    Portable recorder/players exist for far less than $500. A quick search on the web shows me that a Sharp 702 player/recorder goes for about $200 these days.

    5. If I can only make one digital copy, why don't I just get a peripheral that plays MP3s? MP3's are much more established than MDs are, and they can be stored anywhere that digital information can.

    MP3s are great. I keep a big chunk of my CD collection on a Jaz disc that I use at the office. But when I'm away from work or home, the 60 minute capacity of today's portable MP3 players just doesn't do it for me. I don't want to have to boot up a computer to change my music selection and additional flash RAM is far too expensive. Right now I'm constantly switch between 3 different media. CD at home, MP3 at work, and MD on the road. I'd love to have one format, but there isn't a single practical format yet.

    -Graham

  • True. It is a battery hog, but it does operate on, unlike the Palm III, rechargable batteries. That's a big plus in my book.
  • I love my Yamaha, Philips makes decent ones also. You probably want the CD-RW variant (re-writeble CD's are possible with this)

    I prefer SCSI (as opposed to IDE or EIDE) connected CDR's, but that will mean buying an additional SCSI card most likely, so more money.

    In either case its probably wise to let a local shop fit it for you.

    Good Luck,

    /Dread
  • But does your Rio run at 121 Mhz?

    More Power= More better

    :-)

  • Finally (Score:1)

    by meme ( 13400 )
    Finally a version of Pirate Radio for the masses. Will this keep the FCC at bay? All this free media and free speech, what's a government to do? I do business ops and i just got email on a private Internet opportunity. One of the sales pitches for this private internet opportunity is they will not allow porn, sites that deal with bomb making, etc etc. A new faster Internet where business will be safe. I wonder though, if the Internet had started out private, would it be as big as it is today. I understand the government offered Internet to AT&T but they didn't see the vision and turned it down. Is this an Urban myth? So if freeRadio comes to the masses, will this be the excuse the government needs to control Internet? Just wondering, g.
  • Heh. I'm really wary of iomega stuff nowadays. After my jaz drive crashed (and took out everything on one of the carts)... I found the Iomega Click Of Death page. My experience isn't unusual (a friend of mine had a jaz that crashed). Zips are useful for sneakernet purposes only (any sort of useful "need-it-or-die" information [presentations, etc] tend to make the zip die at the worst possible time).

    Some URLs:
    Iomega Click of death page (host was down when checked...)
    http://www.thirdeyesp.com/jatin/iomega/index.htm
    Trouble in paradise can be found at www.grc.com (windoze program for iomega drives).

  • Re:Casio E-100: digital camera too (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...and optional digital camera too:

    http://users.vol.net/ithc/e-507view.html
  • Is WinCE in ROM? If so, can it be replaced with some version of embedded, more GUI-based Linux?

    Today's English Lesson: Oxymorons

  • ti-86 compilers (Score:3)

    by sesquiped ( 40687 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:23AM (#1875120)
    There are at least 2 C compilers (more accurately: cross-compilers) but you don't want to use them. The code is bloated and slow, which is especially bad on a machine with only 96k free ram (which can't all be used at once) and a 6 mhz chip.

    For the compilers, try these:
    http://www.ticalc.org/pub/dos/asm/tcc.zip
    http://www.ticalc.org/pub/dos/asm/tisco.zip
    http://www.ticalc.org/pub/dos/asm/zcc_16.zip

    and just browse around the directory to see what else you can find:
    http://www.ticalc.org/pub/dos/asm/

    But Z80 assembly isn't very hard to learn and it's kinda fun when you get used to it.
  • The Casio E-100 is a neat toy. Fast, has color, stereo sound, etc. Problem is, I saw an online review that said battery life under constant use drops from 6 hours to about 2 hours when you play audio.

    Yeah, the PDA-with-audio approach is probably going to be compelling a couple of years down the road, but right now nobody's got a device that gets the battery issue right.

    Since the Palms prove monochrome PDAs can run on extremely low power, a viable approach might be the one taken by the Palm series: the PDA functions are powered by a capacitor that gets charged at necessary intervals from the AAA batteries. The wireless subsystem of the Palm VII, as I understand it, essentially does the same thing, charging a rechargaeable battery roughly daily from the same AAA batteries. The only things powered directly by the AAAs are the backlight and maybe the speaker.

    The problem with the E-100 in this respect is that the device has three very high drain components: the color screen, the high-speed CPU it uses to decode the audio, and the audio circuitry itself. A viable device might work as follows:

    - Low-power PDA subsystem, probably with a monochrome or low-color (like Gameboy Color) display for now, and a slow CPU with a lean OS (Palm or EPOC, not the present WinCE).

    - Dedicated circuitry for hardware decoding of audio files; this piece would run at a higher speed, but only when in use.

    - Isolated amplifier circuitry, possibly with a separate power source (perhaps shared with the decoder circuitry).
  • But is the Z-80 processor in a TI-86 anywhere near fast enough to decompress MP3s? Especially considering how little room a 86 has. (Although the Super Mario Bros. version that has little jumping sounds was pretty neat.) I'd like to see someone write a compiler for a TI-86, I don't have enough time on my hands to learn graphing calculator assembly.
  • Toshiba has provided some info about its IR hardware. This was mentioned in several places, and you can find mention of it in the Linux IrDA Diary [cs.uit.no]. (Search for Toshiba)
  • The only problem I see is that magic free satellite Internet pipe you're talking about. Let me know when that exists for $50/month unlimited access. I'll buy two. : )

  • Dead end vs. Dead end. (Score:5)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @07:18AM (#1875126) Homepage
    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. :)
  • This is why the E-100 will be great:

    1. Yes, it only has 16 megs of RAM, but that can be fixed with a flash card.

    2. Yes, it runs wince, and that is a draw back, but it does run 2.1, and that is a helluv a lot nicer than the first versions.

    3. It _does_ play MP3's and although it's not the perfect solution, it comes closest.

    And, buy.com has it for $410, assuming they ever get it in :-)
  • re: point 3

    My palm 3 has wireless capabilites - "I'd rather buy a modem and connect up to a cell phone." Option international make a very funky modem which clips to the bottom of the palm pilot and connects to my cellphone. (Personally I agree that the Palm VII is steep, but why bother with 2 subscriptions, when I already have a cellphone, and a bundle of off peak minutes)... It all depends on what you want to use it for I guess tho - if you desperately need to surf the web in colour on the move, sure lug a CE machine around. But for email, and mainly text surfing, you can't beat a palm 3 for size, affordability and battery life.
  • oh gosh.... sometimes everyone makes stupid mistakes, just ignore that last part :)
  • and most important the power usage...aroudn a month unless u play chess a lot or use the backlight for reading.
  • Isn't there a way to load a mini disc faster?

    I wonder if Sony will ever make the perfect MP3 player... they are so close already with the Mini Disc...


    Too bad they are a mess of a company...
  • Ram, sound, and color display does not a useful PDA make.

    People like the PalmPilots not because they are technically superior but because they work well. They are handy, easy-to-use, and fairly powerful for what they are designed for.

    WinCE is not nearly as good of an environment for a PDA as PalmOS is.

    And, as mentioned above, the Palm series gets long battery life -- which is one reason why I'm getting a PV this summer and NOT a WinCE machine.


  • I agree that those are reasons that the post could have been downgraded (Especially the profanity) but after a month of reading Slashdot I'm skeptical. Maybe its the comments I see on them. Instead of Redundant or Offtopic I often see comments like Troll or Flamebait when the most offensive comment in the message is some lame comment like "Microsoft Rules!" etc... I don't think any poster that enthusiastically supports Microsoft or puts down Linux should automatically be marked a Troll. I see plenty of comments referring to Windows NT as a buggy piece of junk (often using more colorful language) that aren't graded the same way. Messages with a politically correct viewpoint seem less likely to be moderated in the negative direction or with negative comments.

    Well that's my $.02

  • Casio E-100: Palm + Rio killer (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29, 1999 @07:34AM (#1875135)
    The Casio E-100 has 32M, a color 320x200 display, and plays MP3/MPG (yes MPG!) files:

    http://www.casio.com/hpc/
  • I don't want to use cd-r cds ( I have a cd-r ) for a few reasons, first of all, it skips, second, its bulky.....I want to listen to high quality music while riding my bike, and hitting the trails, without it skipping.
  • I have a Rio (SE + 32MB). I like that it just plays music. I have a mobile phone. I like that it's good at phone calls. It's cute that I can set alarms on it, and apart from wanting someway to hear it when I'm listening to my Rio, these two units don't need to be merged.

    Anyway, the combined price of the two units would be somewhere around, lets see, US$1,300 - and things only get more expensive when they're converged.

    P.S. moving parts == bad. solid state == good. 96MB should be enough for a while...

    Kris

    Win a Rio [cjb.net] (or join the SETI Club via same link)
  • "Windows CE has REAL internet access via a standard TCP/IP stack." So has PalmOS.... No real difference there then..

    And maybe if you are loaded you can afford to get (and lug) your "flash card, CLIK drive, microdrive, etc." But for something affordable, that does what you need out of the box, you can't beat PalmOS... You don't need all that extra storage if you don't have MS bloatware installed.
  • Some sort of a combination design would be best. Say something equivalent to a Rio that has a CD drive attached. 650 MB of MP3 files could be cached on the CD disk, but they would be cued up into 90 MB of RAM where the song would be played from. With a reasonably fast-access CD drive mechanism, motors would only need to run (and draw significant power) intermittantly to load songs into the RAM.

    The processor should probably be a specialty DSP chip of some sort (i.e. from TI or someone who makes good DSP) so it wouldn't be a power sap itself. What processor is used in the Rio?
  • Am I the only one who doesn't want an All-In-Wonder monster device? I don't want to take my sub$1000 dollar cellphone/organizer/mp3player/virtual pet with me when I want to go jogging, or if I want to lend it to a friend for an afternoon to check out some new songs.



    Plus given the delta of change with all the various portable mediums, upgrading would be a nightmare.
  • i see no mention of anything on Varo's site that checks to see if the mp3s are legal.
    meaning the Varovision people have decided not to play lackey to the RIAA, and not to fear the RIAA's empty threats. we should all be proud of Varo, even those of us who have no intention of buying their products.

    as for me, i'm just going to sit here and wait for someone to make an MP3 player app for the TI-86. Hey, it could happen! There's already TI software that lets you hook up headphones to the graphlink port.. -_-
  • The best feature of the RIO is "no moving parts." Also, Click is only 40 megs, which is less than the latest RIOs or the first RIOs with 16 meg expansion card. That means you need to be carrying around extra media with you.

    Listen, I'm not going to claim I go jogging with my Rio. Truth is, I am as lethargic as your typical /. reader. But I also don't own a car (why waste money on one? Less toys) so I do a lot of walking to bus stops. The Rio's lack of moving parts is perfect for that.

    Sure, I'd also love a portable CD player that could read MP3s. That would be perfect for car use (if I owned one).

    My motto: The right tool for the right job

    Anyway, the future of computing is not smaller and faster hard drives. It's NO hard drives and no moving parts. A 100% "solid state" beast. We're not there yet, but getting there. My office computer has 10x as much RAM as my first office computer had hard drive space (256 megs/20 megs). (It also ran DOS 2.1 but I digress!)

  • what we REALLY need (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    What we really need is the combination of wireless communications and voice recognition on a handheld... Use the handheld as the remote interface to your home server. Bingo! Cheap device with access to high-powered services and your personal files--and yes, that creates theoretical security problems, but nothing's perfect.
  • Thanks alot. That's just what I wanted to know. The only other thing I'd like a Slashdot Nerd opinion on is, who makes the best CDR burner for a teenager's use?
  • Actually, the reason that it's so expensive is that the Palm.net service (before they were bought out, RAM mobile data) runs at about 100Mhz. This is great for in-building coverage because the lower frequencies really penetrate well. The downside is that first, that spectrum is very valuable and therefore will be priced accordingly. Second, data rates achievable are limited by low frequency. Third, data rates are further limited by low s/n ratio on that portion of the spectrum. BellSouth has a pretty sparse tower setup, perhaps they could install more, but I'm pretty sure that the max datarate (per tower) is less than 9600bps. The future of wireless data is CDMA and I don't believe that BSWD is going to be able to expand their network's capacity to be a major player. With CDMA you can get a 14.4k connection all to yourself for about $.10 per minute. Real web browsing can be done at those speeds.

  • Re:How about PDA+Mobile Phone+MP3 Player? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How about a Toshiba libretto they have sound and
    hard drive + IR communication
    you just have to install linux + X11AMP

    just plug in a CellPhone/Modem PCMCIA card and you can even surf the web

    I don't like the idea of a small keyboard, i'd like a normal QWERTY keyboard of a usable size.
  • Well, you only need the xterms in Linux FOR the extended functionality. If you were using it like you use a palm pilot, of course you could get away with only the gui. And for the cases when you simply can't survive without them (setting up, compiling software etc) you could always use Telnet and run the commands from your PC.

    I don't know about the rest of you, but the idea of Telneting to my PDA make me feel all warm and fuzzy...

    And besides, I said "next generation" and there is (as always) a lot of cool interfaces (voice rec etc) just around the corner.

  • how about the lyra? (Score:5)

    by sesquiped ( 40687 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:31AM (#1875150)
    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.

  • Re:Casio E-100: Palm + Rio killer (Score:5)

    by Ether ( 4235 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @09:16AM (#1875151)
    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"

  • subnotebooks (Score:4)

    by blaine ( 16929 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @04:59PM (#1875153)
    Am I the only person who feels that anything that manufacturers try to squish between PDA and Notebook size is just DUMB?

    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! :P).

    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.
  • I had been looking at the Casio pda as a possible replacement for carrying both a palm V and an mp3 player. The hardware for wince machines seems to be pretty nice, but I really dislike wince. Does anyone know if there are any other practical alternatives? I've seen the custom projects for Linux and NetBSD on the dragonball based machines, but I don't have the free time to try a full port myself. Perhaps eCos?
  • Because SlashDot is dominated by pro-Linux, pro-open source, anti-Microsoft types. There's nothing wrong with that, but instead of responding with a post, many seem to like to use moderation to comment on views they don't like.

    Messages that have comments that promote a Microsoft product or suggest that Linux is less than perfect are regularly downgraded and marked as Troll or Flamebait (whether those labels are deserved or not).

  • My gripe is it's parallel port based, I want a USB or SCSI solution darnit! I have enough hnaging off my parallel port as it is!

  • Not CE again. (Score:4)

    by LittleStone ( 18310 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @09:29AM (#1875157) Homepage Journal
    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.
  • My Rio uses 1 AA battery and lasts for 8-9 hours. Phht.

  • Price vs. Quality (Score:5)

    by Rayban ( 13436 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @07:22AM (#1875160) Homepage
    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.
  • If you like CE machines so much, perhaps you'd be willing to relieve me of my HP320LX?

    The current crop of CE devices is still too darned big. A PDA that you leave on your desk because carrying it around is too much of a pain is just plain useless. I came to that realization when I found myself carrying around a pad of post-its and not the 320 to make notes on.

    When I came to that conclusion, I went right over to CompUSA to pick up something else. I spent a lot of time looking at the current offerings from all of the players in the market. The WinCE palmtops with keyboards were getting bigger, not smaller; the ones without keyboards were still too big: my metric was simply to drop each one in my shirt pocket and see if it was still comfortable. I wound up with a Palm V.

    I do believe the Palm platform can be easily extended to provide the capability of playing audio, but if it's any bigger or heavier than the Palm V, I, for one, won't care. If it's any bigger than that, it won't be with me when I need it, and will therefore be useless.
    --
  • I really doubt the ti-86 has enough processing power to decode MP3 on the fly. (If you don't know, it's a Z80 running at 6Mhz) My p166 uses about 10% of the cpu time playing mp3's, that means you'd need (roughly) a 16 mhz pentium. But the Z80 has a smaller instuction set than the pentium and would need more instructions to do the same thing. Even with an accelerated ti-86, it only runs at 10 mhz (I think). Add to that that the ti-86 only has 32k of contiguous ram to work in. I won't say impossible, (maybe very low bitrates?) but I wouldn't hold my breath.
  • let's not forget the rumors that Be is developing a version of it's OS to run on the Super H processor. imagine a Be powered handheld device with one of those new IBM hard drives... sounds like the ultimate MP3 player to me!
  • 1. Why? While more resolution would be nice on the Palm Pilot, it serves it purpose well. Why a PDA, an overglorified notepad, would need 65k colors to display a planner and a notepad? It's too small to be functional as a full notebook, yet it's too large to be a functional PDA. The Palm succeeded where the Newton and others failed because it did several things well. It didn't have feature bloat.

    2. 32 MB ram- believe I covered this: ten 3 minute songs. 6 5 minute songs. Not that impressive. (At MP3 128k. See an earlier post regarding alternate bitrates). CF cards are expensive and are an expensive addition to an expensive larger-than handheld.

    3. $500 + 300(+) cellphone + service ($25/mo + cell access) + cellular modem ($150), so you can recieve email IN COLOR! If you have email that is that important go get, then get a $200 alphanumeric pager, and have a computer auto-forward your email to the pager.
    As for the Palm VII, yes, the service is expensive. And the coverage IS limited. (Of course, where I'm from you're lucky if you've got plain cellular and paging support)
    But if you're gonna be doing any browsing the web, we can agree whether it's at 320x240 or 128x128, it's functionally impossible. How many web sites don't look good at 640x480?
    If you want to be 'cool' and be always connected to the internet, a Libretto w/cellphone + modem would give you much more functionality, plus the ability to run any program that runs on X86 (Linux included! [afaik]).

  • Why not MiniDisc? (Score:3)

    by Scodiddly ( 48341 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @01:03PM (#1875166) Homepage
    Why not the now-mature MD platform? There is both data and audio versions, and you can cram about 140MB onto a single MD (that's 74 minutes of ~MP3 quality audio; I can't tell the difference from CDs). Plus MDs are pretty cool in their own right, and the media is about $2.50 each (US) for audio.

    Still, I like the idea of an all-in-one for ease of carrying, but I hate the idea for reliability. I'd hate to have to work on my PC without music playing...
  • [...] and apart from wanting someway to hear it when I'm listening to my Rio, these two units don't need to be merged.

    I listen to my discman a lot on the train so I got a vibrating battery for my phone. Simple and yet effective.

  • It's all already available...
    Right now I'm writing this on my Sony picturebook notebook on a very typable keyboard, listening to very decent streaming audio. I'm home, but I could be almost anywhere I can find a phone jack. (See below.)
    I often go downtown to a cafe with net access and plug in there for a few hours of work. I toss the computer into a small backpack,(It's 2.5 lbs.) put on my rollerblades and take off. Usually I listen to my Minidisc player. It weighs about 3 ounces and runs for 9 hours on a single AA. I have an older one that I record on, using an optical cable and a discman.
    When I'm in Tokyo, I often will open my laptop on top of one of the public phones, plug in to the analog data port, dial in and check my email and browse slashdot for a while. (I even did video conferencing with a guy in england from Shinjuku subway station, just to see if I could...) When I move there next week, I will have to wait about a month until the new Generation3 cellphones come out. They are supposed to do data at 200mbps. Some of them will have a built-in camera and color display and will send/receive 2fps.(With size and weight about the same as a snickers bar.)
    The Sony picturebook's screen is about letterbox format. When I find a portable DVDrom drive that is compatible, I'll be all set.
    You've probably guessed that I'm a bit of a gadget freak. Though I've never had a palm pilot, I've already given away my desktop, Newton, Cassiopeia, Pocketmail device, 2 pagers and 2 cellphones.
    If the RIO used compact flash, I would have probably bought one, but my digital camera uses CF as does my synthesizer and most other devices.
    MiniDisc is the best for music. They never skip, even when shaken really hard. I can put 144 minutes of mono (I like old jazz, which was usually done in mono.) or 74 minutes of Stereo that I cannot tell from the original CD. I buy the disks for 198yen , which is less than $2/ea. They re-record a million times and you can carry 5 of them easily in a pocket. Yes, I wish they did data, but they are still well worth their weight.
    I use a Nokia 6160 phone here in the states - it's phonebook is the pda-ish aplication that I've ever actually used for any length of time. You just have to type in a name for the number it saves when you get a call. I have it tell me when I get an email. It's also my pager.
    Well, I've gotten way off topic - I should wrap this up...

    Jim O'Connell ICQ5213098
    http://www.wirefarm.com/index.html


  • Just out of curisioty, do you actually own and use one? I saw one in one of the shops near my office, and after doodling with it for about 2 minutes I walked away... My impression was it was way to slow for regular use (I hit the launcher button and it took *10* seconds to draw the menu button screen).

    The interface/speed problem, coupled with size, power and the fact that I'm lefthanded seems to downgrade the coolness factor for me into negative levels... Maybe if they'd make a lefthanded model I'd be more charitable.

  • The kernel IS Linux...everything else is just gravy on top of Linus', Alan's, et. al.'s gourmet dish!!!

    The key to the Linux/OpenBSD/FreeBSD community is that it is open...if the PLC's get fast enough, the embedding of Linux will happen....already has happened: the Qube, WatchGuard, the Tiny, the MatchBochs WebServer, and Linux on the Palm are allwitness to this.

    Because the system is open, you can compoile it as big or small as you like...Linux is not ANYTHING based! The oonly reason there's a marke for WinCE in hand-helds is to give Intel a place to sell low-end power-sucker x86's and the Japanese and Taiwanese to sell RAM...the bloated beast is so I/O bound, it will never fly as an embedded OS! Where does that leave M$? With the W2K bug, and 1/2 a gig for the kernel and required services! YAAAAY!
  • I know it wouldn't have too much appeal for anyone but us coaster ninjas, but a generic $100 discman with a mp3 decoder welded inside is what I dream of.

    128mb is just not enough to be really useful. One album, blah, that's not even enough for a short plane ride. Burn myself 600+ megs on a nice disposable cdr and we're talking..

    It's too bad cd burners are still too flakey and expensive for most..

  • Re:Casio E-100: Palm + Rio killer (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1. Like all Wyvern (WinCE 2.0) devices, the E-100 comes with a built in rechargeable LithIon battery.

    2. 32MB RAM in the 105, 16MB in the 100. You'd probably want to store your MP3s on a CF card though (which the Casio supports -- imho the main reason why the CE machines are better than the current MP3 playing machines which currently use Smart Media)

    3. and get charged by the kb with a PalmVII...

    the total cost of a 48MB CF card and the E-100 still tops $500, but it's not a bad deal if you consider you can use the CF card for your digital camera, and it replaces the functionality of both your Palm (Professional in my case) and Rio.

    peace and chill with the smart ass comments.
  • All I can add to this thread is to say that MP3 has been fully embraced by all the young music fans and preformers.This holiday season will really put them on the map. As the father of a pretty hip teenager, I can tell you it's very very popular. Especially the downloading of music free or not.
    With collections growing, which disk will prevail? SanDisk, Iomega, somebody else? What's a layman to think?
    I don't want to end up buying something that plays "eight tracks" when "casettes" are the next format, excuse my outdated analogy.
  • Not quite what he wants but it plays MP3s, has a nice color screen, and can browse.

    Today's English Lesson: Oxymorons

  • Well, that seems like a whole lot of bandwidth. A whole city's worth of people retrieving their favorite music from their home servers will use a lot of bandwidth. Well, as long as everyone is paying for their own use then we may get some interesting applications falling out of so much bandwidth.

  • Clik! disks and similar. (Score:4)

    by jamie32 ( 25798 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @07:17AM (#1875179) Homepage
    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.
  • http://www.casio.com/hpc/detail.cfm?PID=1182


    They can play MP3 & MPG (video in full colour). Some Palm-size PCs also support voice recognition as well as hand writing recognition.
    The E series come with 240x320 displays with a 16bit colour screen. The NEW E-105 has 32MB of memory...and like the E-100 supports PC Card devices (you can use cdroms etc).

    They run a true preemptive multitasking, multithreaded OS (Windows CE). Yes, it's made by Microsoft, but it works, and it's the most powerful OS for PDAs. It's totally modular (has very small footprint) and supports heaps of processors (AMD, ARM, Cyrix, Intel, Hitachi, Motorola (inc PPC), IBM, NEC, Philips, STME, Toshiba).

    Windows CE 3 will support even more features that start making it look more like 98/NT. Eg. DirectX, Java, and a free (optional) web server for remote admin of embedded devices - but CE3 remains very modular.

    You don't need to wait 2 years for 3COM to catch up with Casio/Microsoft. You can have a multimedia palm-sized pc today.
    I mean, Palm doesn't even have a colour screen, let alone sound beyond beeps.
    Windows CE is licensed to many manufacturers, so you can buy your PalmPC from heaps of manufacturers.
    www.nino.philips.com
    www.casio.com

    ...to name two leaders

    www.microsoft.com/windowsce for more ...

    No I don't work for Microsoft. :P
    It's just hard to ignore coolness like being able to play full colour MPG files on a palmpc...regardless of what OS it runs.

  • You can't stream to a Palm VII (Score:3)

    by hatless ( 8275 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @04:34PM (#1875181)
    The Palm VII works like a pager. It does not establish a persistent net connection; nor, at between $0.17 and $0.30 per kilobyte, would you want it to.

    Okay, well, if you hook a modem to any Palm's serial port, I guess you could get the data transfer part right. But a Palm gets its combination of speed and long battery life by using a very slow CPU (a 16MHz 68020-derivative) running a very lean OS and lean apps.

    Putting aside for the moment that the Palm doesn't have audio circuitry (it clicks a speaker, just like a soundcard-less PC or an Apple II), I'm more than a little skeptical that that 16MHz CPU is going to be able to decode MP3s, much less do so while doing anything else.
  • First, I think you're missing the point of why the Palm[Pilot] became so successful where all others failed -- a lot because of that "stupid serial-based 'cradle'". It doesn't try to be a PC, but rather a PC accessory.

    That said, what you want already pretty much exists. Get a Libretto, or one of Sony's new tiny computers. They're no bigger than the device you describe would have to be, they can do pretty much everything you describe with the aid of a cdpd card.

    --

  • My HP320LX runs WinCE 2.0, and uses (and eats) AAs.

    32 MB RAM? Whoopee. When you add apps to that CE machine, you soak up huge chunks of that memory. A typical nontrivial WinCE app takes up a meg without breathing hard. All that MFC bloat really eats up memory, and the typical Windows programmer couldn't write tight fast code if he got paid $1000 for every byte he saved.

    My dgital camera doesn't use CF, nor will I wind up with one that will, I suspect.

    The E-100 doesn't replace one critical piece of the functionality of my Palm V: it fits easily and comfortably in my shirt pocket. No CE palm form-factor device even comes close to the V's compact size, and the difference is enough that, unlike the Palm, it wouldn't go with me everywhere.

    I really hated to get away from the WinCE platform, since it meant jettisoning the WinCE development kit I paid good money for as well as a bunch of registered shareware. The simple truth is that a PDA that is sitting on your desk when you're elsewhere is just plain useless.
    --
  • Don't forget the weight and thickness of the units, either. The E-100 is not that thin..

    --bdj :)

  • Re:Convergence?[shudder] (Score:3)

    by leiz ( 35205 ) <leiz@juno . c om> on Saturday May 29, 1999 @11:35AM (#1875185)
    I think an All-in-wonder device would be nice, but it is too futuristic. People should keep it simple and build one-function devices. Once they perfected these one-function devices they can start combining them and build multi-function devices.

    Instead of constantly waiting for vaporware products, why don't all slashdotters combine our talents and resources and design our own mp3 player? let's see...

    runs on AA batteries
    use CD-R or CD-RW for 10 hours of music
    12X cdrom - read a 3.5 min song in ~20 secs and then spin down to conserve battery power
    8 megs of ram to buffer the mp3 file
    some kind of mp3 decoder chip?
    and an USB or parallel connector to the PC

  • Wearables are the future (Score:3)

    by edLin ( 5192 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:40AM (#1875186) Homepage
    A pair of goggles and a pair of VR touch sensitive gloves. You could program it so that a screen appeared floating infront of you (in case you miss your terminal). For input don't use any of this pens or tiny keyboards rubbish, have a VR keyboard floating infront of that you can use but with your hands at your sides, the computer projects a pair of imaginary hands out in front of you! Make it run hurd (linux is dead). Don't build in a mobile phone, bandwidth is too low and the range to limited, include a satellite phone interface for surfing the net. Don't just play MP3s play music videos and watch films. If you have a high bandwidth Internet connection you do not need lots of storage, stream it from another machine on the internet. The only immediate problem I can see is power, but with no hard drive that should save some.
  • No it haven't but someone reverse engineered the FIR-chip in Libretto 100CT.

  • Re:Price vs. Quality (Score:3)

    by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:43AM (#1875189)
    My ideal for MP3s would be CD-R storage.. It's cheap enough, and quite robust media. CD-RW would even allow for R/W (but not so cheap).. as for speed, MP3 is 1/12 the size of CD-DA, so you only need to read at a twelfth the speed, and anything you buffer (10 seconds shock protection?) will contain 12x the amount of sound.. (120 seconds shock protection!)

    I'd really like to see a discman that plays CD-DA and MP3 from CD-R. Surely Philips could make this.. (Sony could too, but they have a record company as well.. Philips sold Polygram a while ago - and immediately started marketing a cd-da copyer..)

    Hey, maybe it would even be possible to make some sort of booster kit for discmans.. Probably not enough room left in them to stick in some extra mp3 chips, though :(

  • I know it is proprietary tech but minidics just can't be beat.

    Not quite as small as a click disc but a heck of a sight smaller than a CD.

    See http://www.minidic.org for more info
  • Posted by Napalm4u:

    They did, goto mp3.com to find out which one but for the price of the drive its just not practicle for a consumer to buy this thing
  • 1. Lifetime on the rechargable batteries? Cost to replace?
    2. I saw no mention of the 105 on Casio's site. Is it some sort of Phantom Menace? It's A PDA, people! 16 MB of 'applications' is bloatware. There is no reason that applications running at 320x240 should require 16 MB of storage. Even with 32 MB of RAM, you still only get 30 minutes max. 15 songs if you're listening to 2 minute wonders at 128K. A more realistic estimate (5 minutes a song) would give you a laughable 6 songs! If you reduce the encoding rate to 64K it'll give you 60 minutes, but this requires decoding and recoding existing mp3s, effectively creating two collections of mp3s. You then run into managing two seperate libraries, increasing again by 1/2 the storage on your computer, and are handicapped by the time that it takes to decode and encode mp3s. If you purchase another 48 meg for $100(?) that brings your total cost for 78 minutes to $500 (assuming 128k/s). One CD equivalent. You could buy a SCSI 4x CDR (350), a $50 CD player, and a 100 CD-R's (100), all proven technology, as opposed to any MP3 player currently on the market (I woudln't buy any of them right now: "It's hell being an early adopter."-Dilbert). If you want a PDA, you could get a Palm 3 (200), IDE 4xCD-R (200), CD player (50) and 50 blank CD's (50).
    3. As opposed to Microsoft's or Casio's currently shipping wireless service? I believe (afaik) that .30k's still cheaper than hooking a cell phone up to your Casio and using a cellular modem.

    I'm not gonna buy a Rio. I don't plan on buying an mp3 player until they have the majority of the kinks worked out and it's a valid alternative to an mp3 or CD storage.

    -Peace. And do the math.
  • All the CD-R MP3 players I've seen use Linux. Do we really need linux? Can't we have something dumber that fits in an EPROM that just reads an ISO CD and plays all the mp3's it finds? Maybe a few programmability bells and whistles, but really, I don't think we need an entire OS in there.

    Bah.

  • Casio's latest WinCE palm device has most of this - it can play avi and mpeg video, has 65k colors, I believe it can cope with a MicroDrive, and the only things missing are the mobile phone (I'm not sure about the VoIP thing though - UMTS seems to be rather good, too), and the Bluetooth and USB ports. USB could be neat because it could also power the device, and Bluetooth would enable a wireless headset for your phone - Ericsson has a design study.

    Sorry, I'm too lazy to put in URLs - most of it is .com or .org anyway.
  • bull, my sony discman runs fine for at least 8-12 hours at a time on 2 AA batteries. Also, it has great shock protection in a tiny unit not much bigger than a cd. An extra mp3 chip and slower drive (1x instead of 2x it has now) would be trivial to implement. Maybe not as convenient as a half a gig of flash memory, but a hell of a lot cheaper.
  • First off, I heard from a not-at-all reliable source that MD's actually store information in the MP3 format internally. : ) food for thought.

    Secondly, the MD is not a mature platform, and I doubt it will ever mature. There are several reasons for this:

    1. You cannot create a MD without a CD

    2. There is a limit to the number of digital copies that can be made from an MD. While this sounds silly, most people who don't like this kind of restraint, especially if they already own the CD which is digital, and can be copied as such without any limit. Why should I get an expensive MD recording unit which doesn't allow unlimited digital copies when I can get a CD recorder that does?

    3. Why should I get an MD recorder when the CD is much more established? If I record a CD, there will be a player at my destination. This is not the case with the MD.

    4. The MD recorder assumes the existance of a separate player, and vice versa. I wouldn't purchase an MD recorder just to record MD's: I would want a portable player to go with it. Most people don't need another way to make a "personal greatest hits" album; they want MD's for their digital, skip-free qualities--qualities which are best demonstrated in stressful enviornments such as car audio. And who would get a player without the capability to record? I haven't seen a combo package of the two for less than $500 here. I'd rather get a new palm pilot for that kind of money!

    5. If I can only make one digital copy, why don't I just get a peripheral that plays MP3s? MP3's are much more established than MDs are, and they can be stored anywhere that digital information can.

    6. Blank MDs much more expensive than blank CDs.

    Clearly, this is why we are having this discussion. : )

    FusionGyro

  • I'd bet on impossible. My IBM PC-110 (486SX@25Mhz) chokes on any MP3 that I try, using mpg123 with appropriate options on a virtual console under Linux. Even if it did work, you wouldn't be able to get anything that resembles music out of it :)

  • If your looking for PC storage, buy your son a CDR burner, they will be around for a while. Cheap, usefull solution. And they hold lots of MP3 audio, like 10 hours orso.
    It will stay around for a few years no doubt. And Three years is 1.333 lifetimes in this industry...

    Greetz SlashDread
  • Posted by My_Favorite_Anonymous_Coward:

    I would have scroed you up, but I want to write ;)
    You are corrent. The whole idea of the need to replace CD is than it IS too big. How many of you geeks wear baggy pants? And how many of you can fit a cd-player in your normal shirt. Don't tell me "You know my jacket..." excuse, it's summer now. Of course, we know what the adventage of cd media is. 4 years ago, I picked up the cheapest CD player (aiwa) in the store and I thought I could get it under 100 dollar was incredible. lately I keep reading this 40, 49.99 clearence sale on the flyers.

    I don't think CD mp3 player will ever become mainstream though, because it uses too much battery power. The most powerful rechargable AA is NiMH and they are deadly heavy, you want Hi-Lion (I forget the name, something Sony uses) but it's expensive. So you say the battery price will come down. Yes it will but so will the solid state memory. A whoppong 10 hour CD-mp3 player that runs on 5 hour of Energizer Buddy battery doesn't make sense, you see? (Don't forget decoding mp3 consume more power.)

    Also, there's no easy why to get mp3 to a cd (compare to other storage method which behave like a floppy/zip. I laugh when the geeks want a CD-rw readable mp3. You know how much hassle you have to gone through to reburn a cd-rw to its maximum limit.) If you want to sell a $100-$60 product to the mess market, you can't make it so difficult. Most people who choose cd-mp3 player over slightly more expensive solid state player don't have a burnner anyway. A compact flash/smart media card only needs a serie port.

    CY
  • You mean there are people out there who treated Iomega drives as anything but sneakernet devices?

    I find it insane that anybody would keep archival information on expen$ive Zip disks, when a CDR costs 1/10 as much and holds 6 times as much data (and is readable on any machine with a CD reader)

    I bought six zipdisks when I bought my parallel port Zip drive (it was $65 on buy.com, a price I've never seen there since then) and never intend to buy another Zip disk.
  • Question: How exactly do you store the MP3's on the CD so that the player can read them? An ISO file system? Wouldn't the player then have to recursively scan the fs? Some form of standardized catalog? I mean, a catalog would work pretty well because the media is static (read only).. Any ideas on this? Just something I've always wondered.. Redbook audio is a cool thing just because of how it's set up but you can't hardly do mp3's that way..

    Food for thought
  • I don't see the big benefit of using click. It only has a 40 meg capacity, that's not even an improvement. Why can't somebody make an MP3 player that uses IBM's microdrive technology? It has a 340 meg capacity! The thing is tiny. Although it's a bit expensive, it's worth it. Cost per meg is cheap.

  • I just don't know.... (Score:3)

    by Moochman ( 54872 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @04:17PM (#1875204)
    For all those people asking for gadgets that do a million things at once I pose this question: will they do all those things well? Furthermore, will they be simple to use? The answer to both is most likely no. Without these two factors, no multi-function gadget will be good enough for the mainstream, and I must say that I wouldn't want to use it personally. Of course, yes, there's always Windows CE, but those systems usually eat tons of batteries and anyway, it's Microsoft. As far as this VARO thing it sort of looks like a swiss-army knife of pocket appliances, not doing any of its functions particularly well, but of course I've never used it... However, I must say that the most likely, and probably easiest to deal with, future will involve one-function computing devices, just like kitchen appliances - toasters can't make juice.
  • Yeah. I"ve been thinking that this would be a nice thing too. I recently burned a cd with about 600 MB of mp3's on it. If an mp3 is roughly 1 minute per meg, that's 10 hours on one disc!

    And it doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to throw in a mp3 decoder chip.

  • bad idea (Score:3)

    by datazone ( 5048 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @09:16AM (#1875207) Journal
    there are alot of flaws in using a cd media for portable storage/playback. First of all the energy consumption will be pretty crazy, so unless you find a way to decrease the energy usage, or find a larger form of energy storage, you end up with a lemon that you have to carry loads of battery backups and a recharger unit to plug into anywhere you are to recharge. Second of all is the skip factor of such a unit. You will have to either design some new gyro-static device with lots of shock absorbing ability, which would cost alot to implement in a consumer unit. however if you are planning on putting a pretty large dynamic memory storage device in it, so that you can pre-buffer at least a few megs of mp3s and decode them so that you can read from the cd in bursts that can, that would be good for the anti-skipping, but would also increase the power consumption for each read burst, unless you find a perfect balance.
    Either way, the R&D of that design would cost any of those devices to start at ove $500, probably higher, unless the manufacturer is willing to take a short term profit hit in hope of building a large user base.

  • While we're on the topic of alternate media for MP3 players.. How about Orb disks? A few gigs per disk ;) Tho i must admit, i have no clue what kind of battery use an orb reader would need.. Nor do i even know if the things still exist..

    Just a thought

  • Price? Availability? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I looked at the site but couldn't find any information on price or availability. Anyone have links?

  • Shhhhhh.... (Score:4)

    by Hobbex ( 41473 ) on Saturday May 29, 1999 @08:32AM (#1875214)
    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.
  • The last time I check, Toshiba hadn't released the specs to it's IR hardware to the Linux IR project. Has this changed?

    Although I do agree, the Libretto is a neat toy. The mouse-replacement is nice, although going to another notebook will get you strange looks when you start grasping the side of the notebook's screen.

  • Palm $ervice $pending (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29, 1999 @10:00AM (#1875217)
    Good idea, except that Palm's have an outrageous pricing plan. Figure that you listen to 10 hours of music a month.
    $24.99- Expanded Rate Plan. Because You're Gonna Need It.
    Now, it's gonna cost you money. Assuming 9.6 KB/s because it's a cellular modem.
    36000 Seconds * 9.6 KB/S = 345,600 Kilobytes.
    345600 - 150 (free kb b/w)= 345450 kb.

    345450 * $.30 = $103,635 + 24.99 Service Fee.

    That's:
    A Sony Minidisc Player ($350) and 34661 Minidiscs, for 2079700 Minutes of audio.

    A Dodge Viper ($70000) with $30,000 worth of audio equipment.

    Your Own T1 for 28 months. Or a 28 T1's for 1 month.

    A $10000 computer with $90,000 for someone to carry it around at all times behind you. Or two people at $45,000 to take shifts.

    57 Librettos with 230428 minutes of audio storage total.

    Your Own Radio Station. WK/. All The Who, All The Time.

    7971 Who CDs.

    And at 103,000 a month, it'd take you 388,349 months (32,000 years) to get half of what bill has currently, assuming that he didn't make any more money, or spend any.
  • Hmm, they cost $9.99 apiece and hold 40MB (which is about 2/3rd of a CD at 128KBit/sec). So they're about $15 a CD and you need to swap them 2/3rd of the way through.

    CD-R discs cost about $1-2 apiece and hold 74 minutes of audio (1 CD worth). You can decompress your MP3s, burn them as CD audio on CD-R discs, and use a $30-50 Discman to play them. Also add in about $200 for the CD-R. However, the discs are 1-time only unless your Discman supports CD-RW.

    If you just want to listen to music, this thing is a pretty crummy buy. You'd have to basically treat it like a Rio and re-transfer the songs every time you want to listen to avoid sending all your cash to Iomega.

  • linux based PDAs (Score:5)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Saturday May 29, 1999 @09:30AM (#1875220) Homepage
    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.

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