Quote:Original post by Ravuya
A game API (or even Compact Framework) would put this into the "must have" category for me.

What is the likelihood that it is NOT running a version of Windows Mobile 5? I mean, seriously, what would be the point of creating a whole new mobile operating system when you could adapt the great one you already have? If it is a WinMob derivative, then I would not be suprised if people ARE getting .NET CF apps running on it in less than 6 months. That would be boxed awesome and you know it.

And if that's the case, then you can use MDX CF, which is less of a subset of MDX and more of direct access to the video buffer with a few primative tools on top. It's actually quite fast with regard to 2D work.

I really dont see a reason to buy one of these. For a start if I'm listening to music its going to be in my pocket and my Zen does the job just as well (and I assume most people already have some form of portable music device). If I'm on a long journey and fancy watching video I have a PSP (which also plays games) and many people I see now have portable dvd players for these occations. The shareing feature is alright (except for the crappy 3 day thing) but consider the fact that in order to get anything out of this you'll have to convince all your mates to buy one of these and that the people you socialise with, and hence will use this feature with, are likely people who also listen to the same music as you anyway (and if they're not then why would you both want to share music that the other isn't into?). Video shareing will maybe be used a little more but almost everyone I know has a mobile phone that can not only share videos and pictures via bluetooth, but is also capable of taking said videos and photos in the first place. All in all this seems like a pretty reduntant piece of hardware.

I already HAVE a pocketPC derivative player I use for carrying music around with me. A Cassiopeia E-125. I tossed a 12gig CF Microdrive in there and I just use that. It plays movies too. I've got Ghost in the Shell: Innocence on a 512 meg card. The entire rig only cost me $170. $20 for the device and $150 for the microdrive.

No idea if this is true yet or not, but if it is, Zune just lost my mindshare.

A friend of mine has one in its possession right now. It's really nice. A bit heavy but it has a pleasant 'solid feel'. The brown one is actually good looking. It's just the perfect size for something that can play video and still be lugged around easily. The screen and interface is nice. She had just got it and there wasn't any songs on it so I couldn't listen to it.

Rumors I've heard from the sharing feature is that you can only share songs bought from Urge, and that the DRM support for sharing is already in there. Not sure if this is true or not. Kinda sad, but what can they do. An unrestricted ad-hoc file sharing would put the RIAA on their doorstep faster than you can say: "Send my Candy Shop." I'll have to experiment with it.

Quote:Original post by Dmytry
Speaking of ipod... it has tens gigabytes big hard drive right? That's way too much for any kind of legal use. Most songs cost money, and it gets in the thousands bucks range. With such budget you can aswell use flash rather than hard drive, practicaly no price difference.

I'd just buy tiny 1gb flash card based mp3 player btw. In fact i'm going to buy some digital camera with audio/video recording and playback capability, which is for some odd reason cheaper than ipod (in local store that is).

I never understood why the normal IPod's had so much storage, but the video IPod and the Zune need this for videos.

Quote:Original post by Dmytry
Speaking of ipod... it has tens gigabytes big hard drive right? That's way too much for any kind of legal use. Most songs cost money, and it gets in the thousands bucks range. With such budget you can aswell use flash rather than hard drive, practicaly no price difference.

I'd just buy tiny 1gb flash card based mp3 player btw. In fact though i'm going to buy some digital camera with audio/video recording and playback capability (mp3) and 1gb SD card for it, which is for some odd reason significantly cheaper than ipod.

well, I have a lot of CDs that I've collected over the years. Also, when I rip them I tend to rip to a higher quality level than most people, as my computer has a good sound card and good speakers, I can actually hear the difference. Granted, I don't listen to all of them anymore, and I don't think I would want to have access to all of them on one device. I don't own anywhere near as many CDs as some of my friends, though, and I can definitely see some of them being able to legitimately fill 10GB.

Also, one thing that I've seen lately, a lot of bars in my area use an iPod under the bar for the background music. The owner takes the iPod home during closing and fills it with the music he/she wants for the day and then just plugs it into a dock underneath the bar. It's a rather clever solution, but again, doesn't need 10GB.

I think I've got about 70 hours of music on my main desktop right now, and I think it takes up 6GB. 70 hours... that's about 3 days of solid music. Does the battery last that long?