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Handhelds Hardware

JVC Announces Media-Centric Pocket PCs 88

Posted by timothy from the will-even-play-oggs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "infoSync World writes about two new high-end Pocket PC models from JVC, the MP-PV131 and MP-PV331. Running on Windows Mobile 2003, the Pocket PCs boast 128 MB SDRAM, built-in Wi-Fi and MPEG4 video and audio streaming and capture capabilities. The new devices are also equipped with software for use along with JVC camcorders. The new models will be available in the U.S. in September at $499.95 US and $599.95 US respectively"
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JVC Announces Media-Centric Pocket PCs More

JVC Announces Media-Centric Pocket PCs

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  • It goes without saying (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:08PM (#6269981) Journal
    I would imagine that almost all future "high end" PDAs and Pocket PCs will be heavily media-centric - considering that most already are (the biggest selling points that marketers tend to focus on when advertising their newest hand-held is MP3 playback, image veiwing and manipulation, digital photography, and video capture and playback). Afterall, the PDA has long since evolved past a simple calculator and phone book. I always assumed that many average users upgrade to a Pocket PC for more power, power which is usually required to drive digital media (sure, you can play MP3s on a PDA, but high end media and their associated tools tend to require more power then a low end Sony Clie).

    • A cheap PC can do the same (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, a 233mhz Pentium system can "drive" most digital media. It doesn't require much power to play back an avi file. Ergo, an expensive Pocket PC isn't required.

      • Convienence (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:22PM (#6270052) Journal
        Yes, they (cheap PCs) can. But, that cheap 233mhz system also utilizes and IDE drive, a PCI bus with a PCI video card with at least 16MB of memory, a large operating system complete with at least 200MB of files, and a myriad of drivers and programs. A simple low-end PDA doesn't have the luxury of these things. Pocket PCs or "high-end" PDAs like the $400+ Sony Clies have all kinds of innovations that can. These innovations cost money.

        Besides, you can't lug a cheap 233mhz Pentium system around in your pocket. You pay for convienence.

  • Too expensive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Graspee_Leemoor ( 302316 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:08PM (#6269982) Homepage Journal
    Is it just me, or is the price of PDAs creeping up and up?

    It doesn't affect me because I stopped using PDAs some time ago because of issues with battery life. I'd sooner trust my notes, addresses etc. to paper these days than an electronic device- and I'm a geek!

    graspee

    • Re:Too expensive (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rice_web ( 604109 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:14PM (#6270017)
      Well, when the specs of PDAs aren't "creeping up and up" but rather increasing exponentially, it takes time for the prices to settle. The fact that nearly all the chips are coming from Intel can't help lower prices any.

      This, and a lack of demand in the handheld market has kept prices high. Everybody already has a Palm--a IIIxe or older--and most everyone feels that they have enough.
      • This could be another area where AMD could take on Intel since they own Alchemy & make chips designed for use in PDA's, but Intel has a head start right now... Maybe Palm should invest in some AMD made chips for their next series...?
    • Just blame the current state of deflation (ummm.... yeah) and tell the Fed to screw off.

    • Re:Too expensive (Score:5, Insightful)

      by YU Nicks NE Way ( 129084 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @10:19PM (#6270553)
      Belive it or not, Pocket PC prices have been falling steadily over the last few years. The JVC device costs less that $500 and includes 802.11b and several card slots, but a first generation iPaq cost upwards of $550 before you bought the expansion sled. To spend that kind of money on a Pocket PC now, you'd need to buy a Phone Edition version, and even that's getting pretty hard.

      This is because of the economics of the device market more than anything else. Customers will pay a premium for useful features like 802.11b, but the BOM cost is heavily driven by the screen, the battery, and the CPU. It's more profitable to take a sloppy but reliable reference design and simply slap a few premium features on it than it is to do the extensive optimization of circuit board layout and power supply to make a profit at the low end.

  • I smell a smash hit. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rice_web ( 604109 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:11PM (#6270001)
    It works with JVC cameras and boasts WiFi, which means that small television stations can now act like the pros. Doing live broadcasts that require many angles--like sporting events--requires cameras with expensive antennas, etc. Now, these small stations simply add this $500 device and they're good to go.

    • Re:I smell a smash hit. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rco3 ( 198978 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:36PM (#6270118) Homepage
      I smell something less savory.

      Even consumer DV cameras use 25 Mbit/s video streams. You might (might!) get one channel of video over an 802.11g link. To do multiple angles means multiple access points - that's a separate ethernet run over to the access point, which has to be fairly close to the camera... and trust me: even relatively inexpensive camera cables are more durable than Ethernet.

      This is all assuming that the Pocket PC is capable of actually taking the DV stream in and firing it back out over WiFi - presumably 802.11b, which can't handle the datastream anyway.

      I'm betting (having been there, thanks) that very few small TV stations are willing to trust multicamera setups to DV and Windows of any stripe.

      It's a nice thought, though. Maybe in 5 or 10 years, OK?

      • Re:I smell a smash hit. (Score:5, Informative)

        by rice_web ( 604109 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:44PM (#6270152)
        Well of course, a typical camera goes at about 10MBytes a second, right? (though those video editing machines require upwards of 30) But.... that's overkill.

        I'm in the cable advertising business. My father started the business two decades ago, and I've been working for him. The cable spots that he runs in most of his markets are MPEG-1, taking 30 seconds of commercial footage into a 10MB file. That's 2.6Mbits a second, much less than you've said above. Plus, the quality is more than acceptable.

        • Re:I smell a smash hit. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by rco3 ( 198978 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @09:36PM (#6270385) Homepage
          Ah, advertising. Now it all makes sense.

          "a typical camera goes at about 10MBytes a second, right?"

          Wrong. 25 Mbit/sec is the rate at which consumer camcorders transfer video over Firewire. That's a little over 3 MBytes/sec. Pro DV formats (DVCPro, etc.) are 50 Mbit/s (6+ MBytes/s). 802.11b is 11 Mbit/s, which includes all the overhead and so your actal data throughput is considerably smaller.

          Second, consumer cameras do NOT allow you to transcode on the fly, and so they CANNOT spit out video data at lower rates. When you run your MPEG-1 spots, those have been transcoded by a standalone PC (probably) to a lower bitrate, and a different encoding method.

          You're now asking a PocketPC 2003 handheld to do real-time, on the fly video transcoding. It doesn't have the horsepower, and it's not stable enough for a production environment. Plus, you've got to have some way of switching between cameras for live events, which means DEcoding the data at the receiving end - figure on a PC per camera. If you're not going to switch live, then simply sticking a DV tape in each camera and doing everything in post is much simpler and more reliable.

          Third, "more than acceptable" quality is fine if you're doing cable advertising. It looks like shit when you're doing live production. Looking "not bad, considering" doesn't get you return gigs.

          So, to sum up:

          Video bitrate is too high for WiFi.

          PocketPC can't transcode in realtime.

          Transmitted video over WiFi has to end up in a form that can be switched.

          Simply putting tapes in the camcorders is MUCH simpler if you don't need to switch live anyway.

          You might consider changing your .sig.
          • We have a machine that does the conversion, yes.

            It's an old 233MHz machine, and it's done at 1:1.

            Granted, it does have a PCI card that handles most of the work, and a sizeable hard drive. However, why couldn't this be done on a PocketPC? I'm guessing it would only take some software.
            • "However, why couldn't this be done on a PocketPC? I'm guessing it would only take some software."

              The JVC MP-PV331 performs MPEG-4 capture. It does not specify resolution or bitrate. I personally would be (very) surprised to find that it was 640x480 at a decent data rate, but let's assume that it is.

              The reason that this idea is not yet ready for prime time (literally!) is that it's still cheaper, easier, more reliable, and of higher quality to run coax instead of being wireless.

              rice_web, I've done lite
              • "Now, if you've got other applications in mind, where you can stand less-than-perfect video and reliability, you're absolutely right - using this PDA and a DV cam is great"

                Well I was initially thinking web cams, where this would actually be an improvement in quality over many of the terrible cams out there. But who cares about web cams?

                But, I was also thinking of live broadcasts of basketball games for over the internet broadcasts. I live in North Dakota, and we take quite well to minor league basket

  • Meh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SHEENmaster ( 581283 ) <travis@utk. e d u> on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:12PM (#6270006) Homepage Journal
    All PDA development seems to be geared toward media and organization.

    Some of us (geeks/coders) just want a portable UNIX system. I wish the Debian/Zaurus port wasn't abandoned. X11 on such a thing would kick some serious ass.

    Anyways, if you want more than a gameboy/organizer, check out the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500. The 5600 really skimps on RAM, so ignore it.

    • Re:Meh (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      X11 sucks on PDA since it make it usable ( meaning run some apps) you would have to install various toolkits which is really stupid considering the size of memory on these devices.
      I mean, it is bad enough without having motif, gtk, qt and some other .so libraries around ....

      • memory? (Score:3, Informative)

        by SHEENmaster ( 581283 )
        My zaurus has 64mb of ram, 256mb of SD, 128mb of CF, and 32mb of internal flash. Don't tell me that can't hold the necessary libraries.

        Hell, the Agenda VR3 fit X11 and FLTK into its pitiful amount of ram and storage.

    • Re:Meh (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:47PM (#6270164) Journal
      How economically feasible is it to sell a decent PDA with a portable Unix OS and develop Unix drivers for it's hardware, and then write and/or port applications to it? How much of these could you hope to sell? This is what the open source community is for: if you desire a small niche, take it upon yourself to develop it - or even better, find the rest of that small niche and develop it together.

      As a side note, the intricities of X11 are not well suited to a PDA. It just simply isn't "light" enough.

      • Apparently it's economically feasable to sell a PDA with WinCE (pronounce like prince) on it and develop linux to run on the side!

        A check out handhelds.org [handhelds.org] for info on that one. Yes, you can run linux on Compaq, pardon me, HP, iPAQs. Yes it runs pretty well. Oh, and yes we run X11 just fine thank you (and my X server itself is about 800-900kB, not too shabby).

        If X11 isn't for you, you can of course run OPIE (basically an opensource fork of QPE, which is what runs on the Zaurus). Still works great.
        • also uses Opie. I prefer it over QPE, but I'd still rather have a distro based upon X11.

          When I'm done with my latest project, I might take some time to for OZ for X11 use.

          I doubt I could stand an iPAQ. A unix box w/out a keyboard is basphemous!
          • I'm fairly sure that there is an X11 server for OZ. At the very least there is an arm-ipkg of X11, because I had it installed on my iPaq (w/familiar) before I got my Zaurus.

            BTW You can forward the OZ screen to your desktop as well as X11 apps...

  • MPEG-4 or WM9 (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A media-centric handheld based on PocketPC 2003 featuring MPEG-4 instead of Windows Media 9? Or is the author just perpetuating the old MSconception that Windows Media is synonymous with MPEG-4?

    • Re:MPEG-4 or WM9 (Score:2, Informative)

      by qorkfiend ( 550713 )
      MPEG-4 is not a player, it's a standard that many video compression codecs (AVI, ASF) are based off of. These things have "[the] latest Microsoft Windows Media Player...", which is 9, I would guess.

      In addition, they use JVC's AV player, with AVI and ASF (which was developed by MS, btw) MPEG-4 support. Looks like JVC's got the MSconception straight, if they're using a non-MS media player and at least one non-MS MPEG-4 codec.

      • Re:MPEG-4 or WM9 (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Parent post was not about the player, but about the article (and perhaps JVC) possibly misrepresenting a Microsoft format as MPEG-4.
        One more time - AVI, ASF, WMV, etc etc are *NOT* standards compliant MPEG-4 codecs or file formats. Microsoft, by referring to their early ASF codecs as "MS MPEG-4" before the true MPEG-4 standard was ratified, created a climate of misinformation and confusion that has carried on to the present.
        From the MPEG-4 Industry Forum http://www.m4if.org/

        "MPEG-4 is an ISO/IEC standar

  • Of course (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JanusFury ( 452699 ) <kevin.gadd@gmail.COBOLcom minus language> on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:16PM (#6270024) Homepage Journal
    Of course, the battery will only last an hour if you do anything intensive like that.

    I don't see any reason to buy a PDA if the battery only lasts a few hours under heavy load, and that's what I've seen of most PDAs these days. I remember when people would run their PDAs on AA batteries and they didn't need to replace them more than once a month.

    • Yes, but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lpret ( 570480 ) <[lpret42] [at] [hotmail.com]> on Sunday June 22, 2003 @09:21PM (#6270311) Homepage Journal
      You're almost comparing apples to oranges. That PDA that ran on 2 AA batteries for 4 weeks had:
      • 4 shades of black
      • 4 Mhz processor
      • Had Address book, Notes, Calendar, To-do list, calculator.
      Now, my Toshiba e740 with the extended battery has:
      • Color screen capable of full-screen video
      • 400 Mhz processor
      • Address book, Notes, Calendar, To-do list, graphing calculator, universal remote, e-mail, full web browsing (with Javascript), and two expansion slots for hardware or up to 1 GB each of memory.
      • I stream and control audio wirelessly from my computer to my e740 which I can then listen to whenever I'm connected to the internet.
      • The battery lasts 11 hours of constant wifi usage

      Now, these are two completely different beasts and the one concession that has to be made is battery life. Everything else is much better in the new handhelds.

      • Good points!

        I recently dumped my Handspring and moved to a Sony Ericsson P800. I was expecting the move to a much higher-powered (and power hungry) device that needed recharging every 2-3 days to be a real pain, but it's not a problem.

        I just drop it in the sync cradle when I get home and it's topped up within 15-20 min. No problem. I've got a USB charger to use at work if necessary, but I've never had to so-far.

        I'm waiting for the new splashpower battery charging technology which uses the pad to wirel
      • You're almost comparing apples to oranges. That PDA that ran on 2 AA batteries for 4 weeks...

        You are correct. People aren't seeing the whole picture
        There are three types of people on this board:

        1.) My pen and paper dosen't crash.
        2.) My Palm has better battery life.
        3.) My PC is in my pocket and I will recharge it.

    • A small battery pack for the Zaurus can be made with 4 AA batteries. It lasts about 8 hours and spare ones are easy to get/buy/recharge. Yea most users don't want to build something and if you mess up you can fry the boards inside the Z but if done right external battery packs work great.

  • When will the CE line end? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:17PM (#6270029) Homepage Journal
    The differences from old Windows CE aren't that much, except for added multimedia functions, wireless functions and CPU and memory speed.
    The loser, now as with earlier new PDA OS versions, is battery life.

    When will they do something about this? When they find out that MPEG4 is only useful if the battery actually last through a long movie?
    • Windows CE already has adequate power management features. Decoding audio/video is a processor-intensive task, and the 16-bit high-resolution color display requires battery power. There isn't much Microsoft can do about it. It is up to the hardware manufacturer to put a bigger battery there.

  • epensive but extremely mobile (Score:4, Funny)

    by sukottoX ( 601412 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:20PM (#6270043)
    Features that both JVC iO Pocket PCs share include the JVC AV player that supports MP3, WAV and Ogg Vorbis compressed audio files, as well as AVI (MPEG4) and ASF (MPEG4) video files.
    Other shared features of the two models include 128 MB of SDRAM, 32 MB of Flash ROM, a CompactFlash Type II expansion slot, an SDIO capable SD/MMC Card expansion slot, a 16-bit (65,536 colours) 3.5" transflective TFT display, a USB client port and a non-exchangeable 1100 mAh Lithium Polymer battery.

    Sure, they're expensive, but this would be a great little toy to take on a bus or a short trip where a laptop would be cumbersome. (not to mention the bathroom at work) ;-)

    • Re:epensive but extremely mobile (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You want to take a video player with you into the bathroom at work? Why?

      Oh, GROSS!!

    • Dangerous (Score:2, Funny)

      by mao che minh ( 611166 ) *
      While it may sound like a good idea (and a magnificent way to spend a lunch break), I wouldn't suggest using your PDA to download "adult media" at work, and especially then decide to make use of it in the restroom.

      Next time you beat off, focus for a second and think about all of the audible sounds that you are eminating in your pud-pounding fury. Now imagine how those sounds will fill an echo-riddled restroom.

      • Next time you beat off, focus for a second and think about all of the audible sounds that you are eminating in your pud-pounding fury. Now imagine how those sounds will fill an echo-riddled restroom.

        Yeah, completely aside from that, you know, "spanking in public" thing...
  • Features that both JVC iO Pocket PCs share include the JVC AV player that supports MP3, WAV and Ogg Vorbis compressed audio files, as well as AVI (MPEG4) and ASF (MPEG4) video files.

    • Huh? (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by mao che minh ( 611166 ) *
      This is Slashdot, who here would ever ask about OGG? Everyone is too concerned about whether or not it runs Linux, or imagining the implications of running these in a Beowulf driven cluster.

  • Another Name Change? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by quandrum ( 652868 )
    So, yeah... Windows Mobile 2003?

    What happened to PocketPC?

    What happened to WinCE?

    Is the Microsoft mobile platform so disliked they have to change the name every-time they release a new version? Just an observation.
    • I think it had something to do with the fact that WinCE had a really bad connotation to it, becuase literally, devices that used WinCE 2 and before were just useless, horrid devices, IMO. I have a WinCE 2.0 Pocket PC (Sharp Mobilon 4600), and though the hardware is good, the software renders it almost useless. It is now only slow, but the features are all superflous and don't work well. Pocket word was a joke, excel was far too slow, powerpoint could only view files, the movie player could only play like 0.
      • "WinCE" is the name of the Microsoft's real-time, embedded OS. "PocketPC" is the name of WinCE 3 with all the userland apps like a media player, ebook reader, pocket word, etc. I don't know what the hell "Windows Mobile" or whatever is. I just call it all CE :)
      • The other poster has it mostly correct. Windows CE has gone nowhere. It's still here. What they have now done is developed more userland stuff to make a PocketPC work like it should. The core is still Windows CE, it's just customized to work in a portrait format. PLUS the prices aren't creeping up on the devices that most users use. The Dell and HP 1910 are the most popular ones and they are in the 300 dollar range. The Toshiba(the WiFi one) and iPaqs are for the Power PocketPC user. The reason your
  • This is what Sony's PDA's should have. While I lust in my heart after Sony's top-end models, the abilty to control and playback movies from one of their camcorders would be great.

  • Funny, I'm not at all excited.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by King_TJ ( 85913 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:46PM (#6270162) Journal
    Seriously, unless it's just me, I sense a general malaise about the whole PDA thing. Companies keep launching the "next greatest thing in pocket PCs", but I just don't see mass numbers of people adopting/using them.

    Basically, they still feel like "toys for the man who has everything" and "nifty prizes to win in a contest" more than "must have" items.

    I'm still using a Kyocera 6035 combo cellphone/PalmPilot, and I really don't find myself needing such things as "128 megs. of RAM" or streaming video in it. I simply keep a few important addresses and phone numbers in it, use an applet every once in a blue moon that turns the phone into an alarm clock, and regularly read news items on it via "AvantGo" software.

    As people keep saying (but the manufacturers don't seem to be listening), long battery life is more useful than thousands of colors and tons of storage space. When I need a computer, I want a full-size keyboard to type on and a screen large enough to read easily. I'll deal with the extra size of a slim laptop. When I don't, I just want something with the basics in it - and no extra flash.
    • Agreed.

      What is great about simple Palms is great batter life and reliability.

      I need an alarm, TODO list, pim, calander, and maybe a game like Tetris. Thats it.

      PocketPC's alarm system is not reliable, the battery life is limited, pocket word/excell really suck( especially without a keyboard).

      You also have to ask yourself how much video's and mp3's could you fit in a pda?

      It supports dvd playback. WOOAA. But how can you play a dvd on it? You probably need a big bulky external device.

      The newer handsprings
      • Hmm... I don't think you have thought about this completely.

        What is great about simple Palms is great batter life and reliability.

        Lets see, can you really let your cell phone go more than a day or two without charging? I didn't think so. Today's PocketPC's have lithium ion batteries. They last easily 6 hours a day, more than you could ever possibly go through. The newest do 10 hours even with high load (like active wifi) If it is a problem, just get an extra battery.

        I need an alarm, TODO list, pim,
        • I'm not about to argue with what you find useful about a newer PocketPC. If you actually take the time to encode movies to compressed DivX format and write them to smartcards, so you can then watch them while taking public transportation - then good for you. Enjoy!

          I already have a PDA version of Quicken on my Palm phone. I can jot in purchases and sync them into my full version of Quicken later. I have Outlook integration too, if I want to set that up. I even have pocket spreadsheets and a Word docume

  • Check out those prices (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pettifogger ( 651170 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @08:48PM (#6270172)
    Did anyone else notice that these prices are creeping awfully close to that of a laptop? I know they're bigger, but laptops are getting thinner and are usually fully-fledged computers. If I wanted to watch movies and do heavy media applications, I'd much rather have a laptop.

    I don't have a PDA (I still keep a spiral bound small calendar, nothing I've seen beats it so far, though I keep hoping) but if I did, it'd be more for scheduling/calendar and keeping track of phone numbers.

    • Re:Check out those prices (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Billly Gates ( 198444 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @09:26PM (#6270341) Journal
      This is all marketware by Microsoft in order to kill Palm.

      I agree. If you do professional video editiing, an Apple Powerboor or Ibook is a much better buy.

      Come on guys. You need storage and not a 64 meg stick to do video editing.

      I pefer palms because they are best at what they are designed to do. That is act like a pda.

      The apps are great too, including the browser for the color handsprings, free vnc, ssh, and vpn clients, etc. Try that with a pocket pc?

      The most important thing is battery life though and I am sure these dvd playing large Apple Newtons, grrr I mean pocket pc's have shitty battery life if you try watch mpegs all day with them.

      • The apps are great too, including the browser for the color handsprings, free vnc, ssh, and vpn clients, etc. Try that with a pocket pc?

        For Pocket PC:
        Web broser - Pocket Internet Explorer
        Remote Access - VNC, Terminal Service Client
        Remote shell - SSH, telnet

        Best of all, unlike the ancient single-tasking Palm OS, Pocket PC allows you to run all of them at the same time.

      • Come on guys. You need storage and not a 64 meg stick to do video editing.

        The article talks about using the JVC Io's USB port to control certain JVC USB equipped camcorders. It doesn't mention *anything* about using the Io as storage.

        I'm interested in this. Even if the Io can do something as simple as read my JVC DV camcorder's timecode and give me the ability to log tape as I go, that would rock. Especially if the logging software stored the In-Out points as a standard format that any NLE could read in


      • I am sure these dvd playing large Apple Newtons, grrr I mean pocket pc's have shitty battery life if you try watch mpegs all day with

        I've successfully run the following on my desktop with the Newton unplugged running a webserver with a wireless card and the backlight on:
        while true; do wget http://newton.my.tld/; done
        Six hours later, the sucker died. My Jornada dies after an hour just being on :)

  • What about DRM? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 )
    What about DRM (better called DRD = Digital Rights Denial) in these devices?

    Is it going to come to the point where you don't have digital rights on devices promoted as being "media oriented"?

  • i'd like to see... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scotty777 ( 681923 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @09:20PM (#6270306) Journal
    A cheap machine ($200-$250)
    NO video (adds expense)
    MP3 player
    802.11g
    -- easy ad hoc connection mode with nearby friends
    -- IM / IRC ad hoc over the 802.11
    -- email via any open 802.11 WAPs
    -- share tunes (like with Kazaa), ad hoc over the 802.11
    -- simple PK crypto for "private" IM conversations
    Java on board (so apps/games can readily be written)
    small keyboard (like on palm titanium)

    Is that hardware price point impossible for the features?
    • Apparently we won't see 802.11g on PocketPCs for sometime [cewindows.net] yet. CompactFlash simply can't handle those types of speeds :-(
    • Bah. Drop the 802.11g (use b instead -- g devices will talk to b hardware), use a DSP for the MP3 decoding, so the core CPU requirements can be less demanding (and the DSP can be powered off by the core OS when not in use).

      Forget Java also -- with a slow CPU, I'd think that GC delays would suck. Palm OS is easy to code for, and you can use free tools (GCC, etc.).

      With the switch to 802.11b and using a DSP instead of a battery-sucking CPU, I'd say that price sounds reasonable.

      (Basically, you're left with a
      • The thing I like about g is the guard intervals that were added. Those really improve clutter rejection, which would be a boon indooors (schools, office buildings, shopping malls). The thing would be like a walkie talkie/cell phone without the cell phone charges.

        I'm curious why you would switch back to b. I think the b chip makers are all switching to g, aren't they? They get better capability out of the same silicon real estate, don't they?

        GCC is fine. As a long-time C programmer, I can handle th
        • I don't know much about g, other than that it's supposedly backwards-compatible. I do think that for a low-powered device with modest amounts of storage, ultra-high bandwidth shouldn't be a major concern. Even if storage runs as high as 256MB, a fully-utilized 11MB wireless connection could back up the handheld's entire store in just a few minutes, and with a USB dock (cradle) you could transfer all of the data pretty quickly. I'd think that the wireless would more be used for instant messages and the occas
  • Really, these devices are from before the .com burst. Things are different now and not just in marketing requirements.

    And that's not bad. It keeps our beloved reasonably unencumbered and much-choice i386 ATX "open" PC architecture alive somewhat longer.

    What do people want, and how much are they going to pay for it. If most people don't want it in the first place unless free...
  • I see this as great way for all those laid off .com peeps to start a new career in the hi-tech-mobile-entertainment profession. ;o)

  • How cute. (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Sunday June 22, 2003 @10:53PM (#6270656) Homepage
    Small enough to fit in your pocket.

    Unfortunately, you'll have to fill all your other pockets with batteries... *snicker*
  • I think most people would benefit from the use of a PDA, if they were taught how to use it. People try to use a PDA as a replacement for their planners, and thats fine. The bad part is they don't learn how a PDA can make that task so much easier. Once you learn to sync it up to your computer, and services like Yahoo! then you can begin to use the real power of these devices. I think the apps that ship with most PDA's are a bad representation of whats out there. With the addition of a simple Wi-Fi card,
  • soooo........handy little new media device.....what do you think the odds are its gonna have DRM on it? Better yet....since we're now reaching the point where new devices aren't necessarily new, just miniaturizations of existing technology.....how easy do you think it would be for M$ for example to just say "yup, here's the new small computer that does EVERYTHING......(except play your pirated files because of the DRM on it).....take it or leave it.

    I'm gonna go wrap myself in tinfoil now.

  • I keep waiting for someone to come out with a PDA based around the same toshiba harddrives Apple uses in the iPod (or similar HD... I'm too lazy to google and see if one exists). Apple's proven that they can eliminate most shock and battery life problems inherent in a harddrive by aggressive caching and spinning down the drive, what's stopping someone developing a PDA around the drive? And it really wouldn't bother me too much if Apple came out with a PDA, at least the UI won't suck... and that's getting
    • The main problem is cost, size, weight, and probably battery life. Sure, a small toshiba HDD will give you tons of space, but the physical size and weight of the HDD alone would be a put off. Then theres the added cost (though youll save on not having to buy FLASH based cards, but they are cheap compared to a 1.8" HDD anyway). Pocket PC PDA's are expensive enough, an added HDD would make it avaliable only to the financially endowed.

  • Hmmmmm (Score:2)

    by Sevn ( 12012 )
    Pocket PCs boast 128 MB SDRAM, built-in Wi-Fi and MPEG4 video and audio streaming and capture capabilities. The new devices are also equipped with software...

    We are rapidly approaching a handheld porn creation studio!
  • Pocket PC Thoughts [pocketpcthoughts.com] - great site maintained by Jason Dunn and team.
  • These things obviously aren't designed to do professional editing. they are designed to take movie clips along on plane rides and such w/o lugging a laptop. Put a hard disk into it like the archos players, and you have a usefull movie watching platform that fits in a large pocket. Put a good organizer into the archos player, which will probably come, and I'll buy it.

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