How long before we see a PPC with a hard drive ?

[Shaun Stuart]

I have been looking for some time at the proliferation of new Portable Video Players coming to market and wonder how long it will be before we see the first Pocket PC with a 20/40 GB hard drive.

I know that Sharp have a linux based PDA with built in hard drive (4GB I think) - I am suprised this hasnt happened with WM2003 devices - does anyone know if there are restrictions in the current PPC software to prevent hard drives being used ?

Will Windows Mobile 2005 make it easier to achieve ?

These new media players appear to be priced similarly to PPCs - do you think that OEMs will deliberatley hold off producing PPCs with hard drives to maximise sales of dedicated media devices first ?

[surur]

I know that Sharp have a linux based PDA with built in hard drive (4GB I think) - I am suprised this hasnt happened with WM2003 devices - does anyone know if there are restrictions in the current PPC software to prevent hard drives being used ?

Yes

Will Windows Mobile 2005 make it easier to achieve ?

Yes

These new media players appear to be priced similarly to PPCs - do you think that OEMs will deliberatley hold off producing PPCs with hard drives to maximise sales of dedicated media devices first ?
Yes

Surur

[Menneisyys]

I know that Sharp have a linux based PDA with built in hard drive (4GB I think) - I am suprised this hasnt happened with WM2003 devices - does anyone know if there are restrictions in the current PPC software to prevent hard drives being used ?

I don't think so. FAT16/32 support is already present, and so is CF/SD interface support. I'm not sure about IDE support: but, if there is no IDE support, then a built-in CF HDD would work.


These new media players appear to be priced similarly to PPCs - do you think that OEMs will deliberatley hold off producing PPCs with hard drives to maximise sales of dedicated media devices first ?

No, I don't think so. HP's, Dell's etc. dedicated media players suck big time so it wouldn't be their interest in not releasing HDD-based PDA's. It's just that HDD's are not small enough / consume far too much power that they are not used (as yet) in PDA's.

Personally, I prefer keeping my 2.5" 60Gbyte HDD in a MamboX case with me - it's battery-operated and, with a PL720, I can always access its content thru the USB hosting functionality, can even stream videos from it to my PDA.

[surur]

I know that Sharp have a linux based PDA with built in hard drive (4GB I think) - I am surprised this hasn't happened with WM2003 devices - does anyone know if there are restrictions in the current PPC software to prevent hard drives being used ?

Yes, the OS is poorly optimised for using a slow access media that needs to spin up, e.g pocket word will try and traverse all the directories to find word documents. Gets tiring after the first gigabyte.

Will Windows Mobile 2005 make it easier to achieve ?

Yes, the new OS will have as one of its features better usage of persistent storage.

These new media players appear to be priced similarly to PPCs - do you think that OEMs will deliberately hold off producing PPCs with hard drives to maximise sales of dedicated media devices first ?
Yes, they are differentiating the market, and expect to make more money from tech neophytes than from pocketpc gurus who actually want more complexity and flexibility.

Dont look for this special combination until 2006.

Surur

[Skagen]

Is there really any point with HDD considering that 2-4GB SD cards are pretty much here already?

[KimVette]

Is there really any point with HDD considering that 2-4GB SD cards are pretty much here already?

Some of us want more capacity. Heck, I've been using a 5GB HDD in my PocketPC for over three years now, and I frequently have to shuffle files around depending on what I am doing.

[Menneisyys]

Is there really any point with HDD considering that 2-4GB SD cards are pretty much here already?

Sure there is. I have a 60Gbyte portable, battery-operated USB HDD with my USB host-enabled PL720 and sometimes find its capacity small :)

[applejosh]

Although I'm behind the curve, the concept is the same. I recently upgraded from a 256MB SD card to a 1GB SD card, and it's already filled. So, no matter how much capacity you have, there are some who will always need (want) more.