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Handhelds Hardware

Terapin Mine Review 174

Posted by timothy from the does-the-mine-get-the-shaft dept.
Ian Bell writes: "Designtechnica has just posted a review of the Terapin Mine. This handheld device has a 10gb hard drive, ethernet port, PCMCIA port, USB 2.0 and a front display. On top of all this it has a Linux OS installed complete with scandisk and defrag. You can hook this unit up to your television to view pictures as well. I know that the stats on this unit sound great, but you would be surprised by just how usable it is. Click Here for the full review." Whether it's 10 or 20 gigs (the review mentions both figures) doesn't really affect the reviewer's conclusion.
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Terapin Mine Review More

Terapin Mine Review

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  • what? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rootofevil ( 188401 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @04:45PM (#3681776) Homepage Journal
    scandisk and defrag on a Linux OS device? dont they mean fsck?

    • Re:what? (Score:2, Funny)

      by scott1853 ( 194884 )
      Maybe they've added some incredibly new features in Wine ;)

    • Defrag (Score:2, Informative)

      by dcstimm ( 556797 )
      Linux Does have defrag but its very very buggy for the ext3/ext2 file system. fsck does not do a defrag.

    • Re:what? (Score:1, Offtopic)

      by jukal ( 523582 )
      > scandisk and defrag on a Linux OS device? dont they mean fsck?

      ...now I got it! This must be an evil Micro$oft plan: create non-working devices based on Linux, resulting in bad publicity for linux based embeddees and a steady peek in sales of Windows embedded.

      Hey, it was supposed to be a joke - but don't ponder on the idea for too long, or you will start seeing green men and corporate conspiracy in here too.
      • It seems that they have one partition for sharing data in FAT 32 format, it is normal for data storage management device.

  • Good platform for opensource project (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jukal ( 523582 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @04:46PM (#3681793) Journal
    As the review states:
    "its inconsistent performance coupled with its hulkish dimensions make it seem quite undesirable to those of us who can only afford to invest in a technology once."

    They have the things needed stuffed in there, but did not have the budget to get it work, maybe it could work as opensource?
    • This product surely has nice features that can meet our needs. I have read some papers that stated something good about this product, so I am not sure how the reviewer conduct the review process here. Does she/he know how to use mine???
  • What could be cooler than a linux handheld? With 20 gb, ethernet and usb no less. I really need one of these. It looks like it is already slash-dotted...does anyone know which Linux OS is comes installed with?
    • Offtopic, yes I know. But, since the site is totally /.'ed...

      I've been one of the people who complain about the slashdot effect, lack of cached content, etc. etc.

      But in this case, the guy did it to himself. With a database backed site no less... oh well....

      Here's the havok that has been thrust upon his server if anyone is interested...

      Warning: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/includes/sql_layer.php on line 29

      Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Too many connections in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/includes/sql_layer.php on line 29

      Warning: MySQL: A link to the server could not be established in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/includes/sql_layer.php on line 29

      Warning: Cannot add header information - headers already sent by (output started at /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/includes/sql_layer.php:29) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/mainfile.php on line 39

      Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/designtechnica.com/h ttpdocs/includes/sql_layer.php on line 231

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    • Re:Sweet! A linux handheld... (Score:5, Informative)

      by wizzy403 ( 303479 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @05:00PM (#3681906)
      It's not a linux handheld... It's a file store that happens to run Linux on the backend... But you're completely isolated from any of the OS by their software... Thinkgeek has been carrying these for a while now, but they're expensive.

      Here [terapin-mine.com] is the user's manual, which has some good screen shots...

      wizzy
      • sweet, the display does four whole lines of text [terapin-mine.com]!!
      • >It's a file store that happens to run Linux on the backend...

        That was my fealing when I got it almost a year ago. It is a really neat gadget, with good batery life, that technically does everything it says. You should look closely at the manual before purchase. With decent User Interface this would kick A**. However I haven't used it for anything but transfering files from work to home for the last 3 months.

        The MP3 playing capabiltys appear as a after thought (does sound good, more later.) It runs like a single task OS. You can either use it as a ftp server, or as a MP3 player, or connect it wirelessly, or USB connect it to your PC, or copy from flash card... You must navigate through menus, to turn each on. Then you must quit that task, and navigate again through the menus to do something else. It doesn't rember where you were when you powered down, or powers it's self down (only after battery is dead, no other settings.) So if you plan to use this as a MP3 player in your car (as I did) You need to hold down power button for several seconds when you leave your car. Then when you return you must hit 5 different keys, no key buffer so don't go too fast, to get it to play a song again. And forget about the random play, it is not very random. If you put all your songs in this, and just start the random play each time, you'll never hear 50% of your collection, because it always selects a song near the beginning of your list, then jumps in a manner that you'll never hear the song at the end unless you listen to every other mp3 file first.

        I do plan to connect it full time to the battery of my car. That way I can leave it on and just hit pause (my cigarete lighter turns off with the key.) Also mp3 is ver susceptable to power line noise. Make sure you don't connect this guy to the same power that gets any noise from your amp's...
  • After all, they already have so many mines that whole organizations dedicate themselves solely to their removal.
  • .. because the slightest level of interaction tends to cause them to blow up!

    sorry, you have to admit, it was a pretty obligatory offtopic/troll/bait post. and its getting boring always having 50 karma. :(
  • What a very strange name this thing has. A terapin is a turtle, and a mine is a place where you dig up riches.
    So if you get one of these you will become rich with turtles?
    • What a very strange name this thing has. A terapin is a turtle, and a mine is a place where you dig up riches.
      So if you get one of these you will become rich with turtles?

      That's the optimistic version. Now, here's my take:

      A mine is something that blows up if you get near it. And a turtle is legendary for being slow.

      What kind of PR department do these people have?! ;)

      • > > A terrapin is a turtle, and a mine is a place where you dig up riches. So if you get one of these you will become rich with turtles?
        >
        > That's the optimistic version. Now, here's my take:
        >
        > A mine is something that blows up if you get near it. And a turtle is legendary for being slow.
        >
        > What kind of PR department do these people have?! ;)

        Hah! Your version is still too optimistic!

        Airline Screener: "Sir, what's that thing in your carry-on luggage?"

        Passenger: "Oh, just my terrapin mine..."

        Screener: *presses Big Red Button, sirens go off, and auto-targeting lasers immediately render passenger into a smudge on the checkpoint floor*

      • They probably have a PR department that speaks very good Engrish [engrish.com].
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • I can almost hear the music for the adverts:
      "Hard drive in a half-shell"
    • The turtles have two "r"s in the name, as in "terrapin".

      No wonder they offered to buy my domain ... "terrapin.com"
  • there have been more and more linux based handhelds is this a new hopefull trend finally coming to light... or just a breif blip on the linux radar

  • Ummm (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why didn't they just put a Linux Journaling filesystem on it instead of FAT32 ? Weird huh.

    • Re:Ummm (Score:1)

      by ADRA ( 37398 )
      Since it is probably a mass storage device in USB 2.0's eyes, so a windows user could plug in the device to windows and read the entire filesystem as-is.

      With Journalling, you don't have that interoperability.
  • It seems to me that the author of this review is right about this, the lack of a FireWire port is quite lame.

    Moving 10Gb thru USB at 12Mbit/s or LAN at 10Mbit/s takes a loooooong time indeed!
    • USB 1.1 transfers at a maximum rate of 12Mbit/sec whereas USB 2.0 (which the T/M uses, at least according to the story write-up) can transfer at a maximum rate of 480Mbit/sec (or 60MByte/sec).
      • USB 1.1 transfers at a maximum rate of 12Mbit/sec whereas USB 2.0 (which the T/M uses, at least according to the story write-up) can transfer at a maximum rate of 480Mbit/sec (or 60MByte/sec).

        Thats nice and all, but my laptop has usb1 and firewire, and doesn't have usb2, so I'm still stuck at that 12MBit/sec (and even that is a theoretical max I'll likely never get close to).

        Has usb2 really been adopted very widely yet?!

        In any case, I'll take a firewired Apple iPod over one of these any day.

        The big selling point for the slashdot crowd seems to be that it runs linux, but with a proprietary front end running on that 4-lines-of-text screen, and fat32 for the filesystem, I hardly think thats very cool. The instructions don't even mention how you'd connect it to anything besides windows; this isn't really a linux (or mac) user targeted product at all. Methinks they went with linux not for the "love of the game" but rather because it makes for a good cheap embedded OS.

        btw, anyone know anything about hacking these things?
        ie actually getting a shell on it?
        (on your pc, of course, on it's own screen would be a joke)
        • The big selling point for the slashdot crowd seems to be that it runs linux, but with a proprietary front end running on that 4-lines-of-text screen, and fat32 for the filesystem, I hardly think thats very cool. The instructions don't even mention how you'd connect it to anything besides windows ... ie actually getting a shell on it?

          Ummm, it's got an ftp server. Plug it into your local network and go to town. Does iPod do that for you? WinCE, ha ha ha! You might also try a shell escape on the ftp prompt like:
          ! ls -lh
          to see what comes up. Sounds more portable than a key fob, and yeah hacking it would be cool.

          Sadly, I'm not buying any $500 devices anytime soon. My poor man's answer to this has been to take plastic Quick (the drink) boxes and cram hard disks in them with some packing foam. Yeah, it's ugly and I have to open the target computer's case, but the hard disks are spare. It works great with older laptop hard disks which fit into the smaller boxes. My wife laughted at me for not knowing my quick drive was acutally in a Quick box. Eh, so what. Mounted media custom Debian installs, here I come. Perhaps I should call it the Quick Liberator?

    • USB2 is 480mbs, theoretically anyways.

      Firewire would have been great for interoperability, but there is one option, anyway. They are probably MAC users who use built-in firewire.

      Just my assumption since the slash effect is still running rampant.
    • Actually, didn't it say usb 2.0? that is just as fast as firewire.. read the specs before saying something unintelligent/uninformed.

  • It must inhale the battery (Score:3, Interesting)

    by peterdaly ( 123554 ) <{petedaly} {at} {ix.netcom.com}> on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @04:52PM (#3681849)
    One +2 posting, and the site is already slashdotted...wow.

    Needless to say, I have not read the review, but the battery life on this sucker must be horrible! Either that, or you wear around a battery on your belt.

    The features mentioned in the slashdot summary sound great, but I don't believe current battery technology can power such a package for any reasonable amount of time. I may be wrong, as I said, I havn't read the review, but I bet battery is what will make this unit suck.

    -Pete
    • $355 is dirt cheap? methinks you're making money off this link...
    • The 10G disk and a display are compatible with an all-day battery life. iPod is rated for 10 hours.

      So it depends on the current draw for the USB port, the Ethernet and so forth.
    • ?!?! current battery technology can power my car to work everyday, i think it can handle a PDA.
      • Unless you're talking about an electric car with a massive amount of batteries, you're mistaken. The battery provided in most automobiles powers the car only when being started, after such time the alternator (SP!?!) kicks out the necessary power to run all the electronics. The only time you would be using your battery while driving would be if you're drawing more power than your alternator(sp? again) can crank out.. And that is a bad situation there.
      • ?!?! current battery technology can power my car to work everyday, i think it can handle a PDA.
        Your car has an alternator. A PDA doesn't have one. The alternator keeps the car battery charged, while the PDA batteries just continue to drain with nothing to charge them.
        • Your car has an alternator. A PDA doesn't have one. The alternator keeps the car battery charged, while the PDA batteries just continue to drain with nothing to charge them.

          The whats the point of filling the PDA with gasoline?
      • Battery technology has almost nothing to do with getting your car to work every day -- the only thing it does is get it started so the alternator can run your car's electrical system. You won't get far without an alternator -- but you can actually run your car with no battery installed, or with a completely shorted battery that won't turn it over... Just push and go for those of us lucky enough to be driving stick-shifts...

  • Oh no! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From article: Maybe students aren't out of the closet and don't want people to know they're going to the Gay & Lesbian Resource Center

    Student 1: Why didn't you take a free PDA? Student 2: Ummm.... I.... I'M NOT GAY!!! Student 1: Sure thing.
  • There seems to be scores of companies that are coming to the portable mp3 device way too late in the game. Is there enough market share to handle dozens and dozens of devices that do the exact same thing? Doesn't seem to be. My real question is, why hasn't anyone released a device similar to the ipod (in physical size, speed, and hard drive space) with a decent sized color screen that includes pda and cell phone capabilities? yeah, it would probably cost a pretty penny, but i think these things would sell like crazy and *nobody* has done it yet.
  • Okay, the link seems dotted so i can't quite access it right now, however based on the poster's comments, why in gods name would you need a defrag and scandisk program for this system. Particularly if it runs a derivative of GNU/Linux. Did they decide to run this system with a FAT partition and have linux run in a file? Or are they perhaps using standard EXT2 but referencing fsck? Reguardless, wouldnt a journaled filesystem (ala EXT3, ReiserFS, etc) been a more prudent choice? The nature of EXT2 makes a defrag/scandisk program useless. Obviously for a portable device they want the security of a journaled filesystem in case the battery dies, etc. Neet idea - needs better explination :P

    (I muse at the difficulty of hacking this and converting this to ReiserFS or EXT3)...
    • Perhaps we need to rethink what ``running Linux'' means. This thing uses a filesystem intorduced by mess-DOS which even M$ realizes is obsolete and doesn't seem to give access to anything that makes Linux great...so what's the deal here? Now I do remember something about firmware updates so perhaps we could really load up Linux and have a console and a decent filesystem? But then, what use is a console if you can't type and a filesystem if your batteries are dead?

  • Review - since it's slashdotted (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @05:01PM (#3681909)
    Terapin Mine Review

    Terapin Mine Review
    In the last year or so we have seen a practical onslaught of hand held storage devices. The Terapin Mine is one of many such devices currently on the market. Boasting the Linux operating system, a 20 gig hard drive, and an impressive array of connectivity options, the Mine appears to be a unique entry in this extremely competitive industry. Practically a Swiss Army Knife of file sharing options, this Linux based behemoth would appear to be the clear front-runner on anyone's hand held wish list. With all that being said let us get down to the nitty gritty. Does this bad boy deliver or not?

    Looks and First Impressions
    Upon first opening the box, I was surprised to see what appeared to be an oversized protective carrying case for the Mine. It wasn't til I removed the item that I realized that in fact it was the Mine itself. To put it frankly, the Mine is huge. Weighing in at an impressive 1 lb and measuring 7" x 3.5" x 1" it will undoubtedly give your notebook computer a run for its money. The actual ergonomics of the Mine seemed quite fine with its various controls and ports located in a logical and intuitive manner. The sheer amount of connectivity options is staggering. Located on top is a 16 bit Type II PCMCIA card slot. The bottom contains a LAN port, a USB master port, and a USB slave port. Rounding it off is a standard head phone jack and Video Out. The absence of Firewire is a legitimate complaint though.

    Specifications and Features
    Size (HDD) 10GB
    Dimensions 180mm (Height) x 90mm (Width) x 27mm (Thickness)
    Weight 375gms
    480gms (with 4AA Alkaline batteries)

    Operation System Linux
    Video Composite video out for still images (JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, CRW, NEF)
    Video Format PAL and NTSC
    Audio Stereo Playback
    Mono Recording (with external microphone, in WAV format only)
    Audio Format MP3 and WAV
    USB Master 1
    USB Slave 1
    10 Mbps Ethernet 1
    16-Bit PCMCIA Type II Slot 1
    Screen 16 Characters x 4 lines high contrast LCD
    panel with back lighting
    Power 4 x AA Alkaline batteries
    Internal Rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery (Optional)
    External Rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery (Optional)

    Simple 3 front-panel buttons and 3 side buttons for all device controls
    Upload and download from Digital Cameras (via USB or via PCMCIA Memory Card Adapter)
    Display photographs and graphic files on a TV or projector
    Rotate photographs
    Upload and download MP3 Players (via USB or via PCMCIA Memory Card Adapter)
    Removable HDD (Compatible with Windows 98, 2000 and ME)
    Share via Local Area Network (LAN)
    Receive attachments and send email
    Auto online backup, download and upload
    Online and FTP sharing
    Online upgrading and diagnostic features

    Setup and Use
    Given the fact that the Mine is running the Linux OS, I was curious as to how fast the boot up sequence would be. The average boot up time was a mere 10 seconds....I wish my Windows box could do the same. The user interface for the Mine consisted of simple text options laid out in a no nonsense fashion. I suppose that the Mine's interface emphasizes readability and clarity but I found it to be rather plain and much of the precious LCD real estate was wasted. Navigating the menu's proved to be extremely easy. After a few minutes of playing around I felt confident that I had a complete run down of the Mine's basic features.

    As far as configuration is concerned this is handled through your PC as opposed to through the Mine itself. Using the USB slave port, I proceeded to hook the Mine up to my PC, which at the time was running Windows 2000 Professional. As expected, Windows immediately detected the presence of the Mine and assigned it a drive letter. Located on the Mine was an executable that allowed me to configure its various and plentiful capabilities. The configuration process was relatively painless although I did resort to the manual.

    Testing
    So far my experience with the Mine had been all smooth sailing. Installation and configuration was a breeze and the impressive feature set was begging me to put it to the test. Unfortunately, this is where the Mine truly distinguished itself from the rest of the pack. Here's what I found.

    With the Mine still hooked up to my PC, I copied onto it a collection of MP3's and some images I took with my digital camera. For comparison sake I burned onto CD the same MP3's that I had placed on the Mine. The MP3's on CD sounded fantastic when played on my dedicated stereo but upon connecting the Mine, I was simply shocked at how mush the sound quality had degraded. I can only assume that in the D/A conversion process the Mine simply cannot compete with my dedicated CD player. I'm not talking a difference that only an Audiophile would notice, I'm talking a substantial decrease in the overall clarity and imaging of the music. This seemed pretty unfortunate since one of the main selling points of hand held storage devices is their ability to transport large volumes of digital music.

    A little disapointed, I proceeded to hook the Mine up to my TV via the provided RCA connector. Taking into consideration the resolution restrictions of a composite connection, I was very satisfied with the image quality. Without any configuration on the users behalf, the Mine will automatically display your stored images in a slideshow manner. Just as I had gotten comfortable watching the images, a blue screen of death appeared indicating that the image to be displayed was corrupt. After several minutes of troubleshooting and several attempts at downloading the images onto the Mine, I eventually gave up without resolving the situation. The images seemed fine on my PC but simply would not display correctly when viewed via the Mine.

    At this point, I was feeling a bit let down so I decided to try out one of the Mine's features that would be of most use to me. Via the USB master port, the Mine should in theory be able to connect and control a USB compliant device. This would be a fantastic option for anyone who has a digital camera and has felt the wrath of storage limitations. For the sake of this I broke out my Olympus C-3020 Zoom camera. Like the old saying goes "3 strikes and your out". For the life of me, I could not get the Mine to connect to my camera. Although it detected the fact that my camera was an Olympus, it failed to properly recognize its model.

    Up until this point, the Mine had behaved flawlessly via USB. Every time I connected it to my PC it was detected immediately and mapped as a local drive. The same was not true when I tried to access it via my LAN. I followed the directions to the letter but I was never able to access it. Its FTP capabilities seemed attractive but failed to materialize during my test. If this process proves difficult for me I can't imagine the frustration that would be experienced by a less technology savvy owner.

    Conclusion and Final thoughts
    At this point in time it's hard for me to recommend the Terapine Mine to anyone but those whom are willing to invest in bleeding edge technology. On paper it boasts an impressive feature set and seems to offer more than any of its competition. But its inconsistent performance coupled with its hulkish dimensions make it seem quite undesirable to those of us who can only afford to invest in a technology once.
    • "Olympus C-3020 Zoom camera"

      well, the website says it supports the C-3040, not the C-3020... of course it isn't going to work.

      network connectivity problems can almost conclusively be blamed on the network setup and not the device in general. probably duped IPs or a router issue.

      blue screen of death on the images can probably be blamed to a .gif image or some other proprietary image format that of course would work on the PC and not on the mine. or maybe a .gif image with a .jpg extension. i have seen this all before.

      i have never used the device, but i don't think the review is very fair, those were his 3 strikes why he wouldn't recommend it, and as far as i'm concerned they were right on the corner of the plate.
      • Hey Mr. EdrugTrader man. I was looking forward to June 8 as the start of a new edrug trading season. But now I haven't been able to trade edrugs for almost a week! I'm so sad...

        Anyhoo, what seems to be the trouble? Is there any hope of the site coming back? Will slashdot ever get private messaging so I don't have to post this in a story?
        • Will slashdot ever get private messaging so I don't have to post this in a story?

          You bet this is needed. Think of all these posts which could be slapped (-1, Offtopic)

          Btw your fans list has grown quite a bit lately. Neat! Check mine out, too :)

          • Thank you.
            Good work on your friends. Almost 800 already. Congrats on that.

            In other news, you seem to follow my every move on slashdot. Thank you for your interest. My AIM name is recursiv.

            That is all. Good day.
            • Following your every move sounds a bit dramatic and exagerated, but it is true that I like to check on to friends whom I consider to be dear to me in their own way :)

              Gosh I hadn't realised that I'm already up to 800 friends. Am I really that far away ? I thought I might have 100 or 200 or something. I haven't been adding scores like you have ! How many do you have anyway ? Well over 1000 or 2000 I suppose. Perhaps more, I could be very wrong.

              I don't use any IM system unfortunately; but my /. username is forged ;)

              Regarding private messages: this would be beneficial, or we could just use each other's journal to allow fellow users to communicate in a semi-public way (like on BBS).

              For the moment, my techique of writing was inspired by sllort's Modbombing Disable HOWTO [slashdot.org]. I like finding old and obscure comments to some story in which the /. mob has lost interest for, and using these to reply to and post "private" messages to friends. It's less risky to so so because
              a) I choose to stay very close to the archival event horizon (under section 2.1), and,
              b) it lessens the number of people who care to read old comments.

              I consider other Slashdot users like heroes, such as sllort [slashdot.org] (activist) or Klerck [slashdot.org] (troll/crapflooder) but not for the same reasons :) In the latter case, for researching exploits and bugs in the system, which is a quest in itself, and too bad if some people abuse it. It'll make the system better eventually..

              However I don't talk quite as much as with the other users as we do. I'm normally a quiet person. So, for the evening, goodbye and write to you some time.

              Oh, btw: you're famous [slashdot.org].

    • Okay, it obviously is running Win32 and Linux both, but which is under which?

      Concerning the review, why was there no mention of CPU clock speed, memory wait states, cache size, RAM, or any of the other statistics that any self-respecting geek would require?

      This looks like just another Win32 brick with either WINE or a dual config, and the reviewer told me nothing about what it is actually capable of.

  • http://www.terapin-mine.com/terapin/index.htm

  • Some Links (Score:5, Informative)

    by Nynaeve ( 163450 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @05:10PM (#3681971)
    Since the site is gone for the moment, here are some quick links:
    Web Site:
    www.terapin-mine.com [terapin-mine.com]
    Purchase:
    http://www.thinkgeek.com [thinkgeek.com]
    Reviews:
    http://www.digitaljournalist.org [digitaljournalist.org]
    http://www.edgereview.com [edgereview.com]
    http://computers.cnet.com [cnet.com]
  • You can learn some about it (and buy it) here
  • Recalling the recent Ask /. about the perfect PDA feature list, I thought these guys had make my wishes come true. I was slightly bothered by the suggestion that the device had a harddisk, though, because I feel that devices with disk drives (or any moving parts for that matter) eat batteries like there's no tomorrow.
    Trying to follow the link in the article soon led me to conclude that the site had been slashdotted, but hey, there's always google! A couple of minutes later I still didn't have any further information on the battery life, nor about input methods. I did find out that the device seems to have a ridiculously small display that makes it mostly useless for me. Maybe adding a couple of bucks to the ~ $ 500 it's listed for at geek.com could give us a QVGA color display and boost battery life (I'd rather have 10 times the battery life with a CompactFlash card than 10 times the storage space with a harddisk). Maybe the day I'm going to buy a PDA isn't that far from now...

    ---
    The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a
    dialog box and lets you press [OK] first.
    • I don't know the battery life for this thing, but my Archos Jukebox 20 (20GB hard drive, as implied) lasts; I haven't run it all the way down, but folks have said 10 hours before, and that's not inconsistant with how the battery indicator looks after I've run it for about 4.

      OTOH, the Jukebox's batteries take forever to charge... but being that they also take forever to drain, I don't find that to be a problem.
  • Here are a few other reviews of the Terapin Mine.

    Terapin Technology - Mine Product Reviews [terapintech.com].

  • Is it too much to ask for a goddamn lithium battery on this thing? I mean c'mon people there is no way that I could transfer 10GB over a 10Mb network and this thing have a long enough battery life to stay alive. I would gladly rather see firewire replace the ethernet as some have already suggested.

    -Jeff

    Trolling, trolling, keep those /.ers trolling! Rawhide!

  • hook it up to TV to view pictures... (Score:3, Funny)

    by edrugtrader ( 442064 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @05:19PM (#3682021) Homepage
    its great how pornography industry has finally gotten its hooks into linux portables.
  • This really isn't news. The product has been on the market for a really long time. I remember reading about it last year. ThinkGeek.com has had it for sale for months. Why do we always post such old news?

    Well, enough trolling, I do have a legitimate question that perhaps a few here have resolved. I've looked into this and other devices as an easy way to carry around a lot of my work, since I tend to bounce from using a computer at home, at work, and on campus. I have control over the computers at work and home, but not on campus. From what I understand, you would need to load certain drivers or other software to get this device to work with Windows, which is what they have on campus (please correct me if I'm wrong). So, since I can't load the drivers, I wouldn't be able to access any of my stuff stored on the drive when I on campus, right? Is there a solution to this? How do some of you carry large amounts of data around (other than zip disks or burned CD-ROMS)?
    • ``From what I understand, you would need to load certain drivers or other software to get this device to work with Windows''

      From what _I_ understand, though, Windows automagically assigns a drive letter once the device is plugged in (into the USB-port, that is). No drivers, no nuthin', PnP how it was meant to be. Leaves the question of how the folks on your campus feel about you plugging devices in their boxen...some BOMFs are really clueless...

  • Complete Linux ? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Etyenne ( 4915 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @05:55PM (#3682230)

    On top of all this it has a Linux OS installed complete with scandisk and defrag.



    [root@cerberus root]# scandisk

    bash: scandisk: command not found

    [root@cerberus root]# defrag

    bash: defrag: command not found



    Sh*t, my Linux is not complete ...


  • I *like* the USB master port. I think the terapin is ridiculously priced (particularly when compared to the Archos Recorder 20 - USB 2.0, smaller form factor, 20Gb,lighter and plays *and* records mp3s).
    The USB master port is a killer feature though - if it works as expected. In principle that should allow it to be directly connected to any slave device (eg: a digital camera) and data transferred. Seems like it would be extremely handy for backing up PDAs, and digital cameras.
  • That has to be the most broken link I've ever seen.

    Talk about being slashdotted HARD
  • are they running their webserver off this thing? it's all f*cked up!
  • I'm sure I'm not the only University of Maryland student/alum to see this and think for a second that someone at UMCP has just produced a new handheld and named it after the school's mascot.

    Go Terps!

  • some serious disconnect (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    did no one else *read* the review? the guy totally panned it.


    I have this piece of dog poop... runs linux and...

  • Linux OS installed complete with scandisk and defrag

    Kinda like Windows?
  • /. article without the obligatory IABCWT post!

  • Does anybody else think this thing looks ugly compared to other handheld devices?

    Geez, at least they could have made it circular or maybe added some interchangable plastic skins.

    The device looks like an oversize old cellphone with no keypad.

  • The MP3's on CD sounded fantastic when played on my dedicated stereo but upon connecting the Mine, I was simply shocked at how mush the sound quality had degraded.

    So much for using oatmeal as a storage medium. Back to the drawing board.

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