Toshiba launches iPod competitor

[Jason Dunn]

<a href="http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0206/18.toshiba.php">http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/0206/18.toshiba.php</a><br /><br />What a deviant world we live in! Thoughts reporting on a new Palm, and now MacWorld reporting on an iPod competitor. It's sick people, really sick! At any rate, this Toshiba audio player looks quite interesting - as the photo below shows, they're using a removable PCMCIA hard drive, making this unit easy to upgrade. The question is, with the iPod now shipping in 20 gig models, how much space do you need? Still, after my rant yesterday about companies making big and ugly players for the PC, it's really nice to see Toshiba coming out with something that actually competes with the iPod. Way to go Toshiba!<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/gigabeat.gif" /><br /><br />"Toshiba Corp. has chosen a removable hard drive for their new portable music player, which means a physically larger player but one with a much greater capacity for your favorite music. The Gigabeat will playback music stored in the MP3, WMA or WAV digital audio file formats and Toshiba says the bundled 5GB hard disk offers enough space for around 1,000 MP3 files of 5 minutes length recorded at 128Kbps (bits per second). That's 20 or 40 times the capacity of current memory cards. <br /><br />The hard disk drives are 1.8-inch models developed by Toshiba. They are encased in PC Cards and so can also be used with most notebook PCs or other devices with PC Card slots. Of course, using Apple's iPod, simply connecting the player to your Mac via the FireWire cable mounts the drive on your desktop. With all this data storage space, transferring files to the player could take some time and here Toshiba has implemented the new USB2.0 interface, which can transfer data at 480M bps -- a much higher speed than the 12M bps supported by USB1.1, which is found on most digital music players today. Using the bundled application software, Toshiba says an entire CD worth of audio can be transferred to the device in 30 seconds." Source: Dave Furey

[dwprice]

Seems Creative has a 20 and 40gb Nomad that has synching software that even uses firewire.

http://www.nomadworld.com/products/jukebox3/software.asp

Only $399 US.

[PJE]

Apple just announced a new slimmer (18mm thick) 10MB (and 20MB) iPod (with better solid state scroll wheel, case, remote on headphone cable) with software for Windows...

...Now if I can only pursuade my better half to allow me to upgrade my Creative Jukebox... (Offers?)

Regards,

PJE

[murph]

anyone know of an I-Pod style/sized MP3 player with AM/FM too? i REALLY want an IPod but lack of radio is a deal breaker for me. my #1 use would be at the gym where i sent half the time listening to the yankees and the other half listening to tunes.

[klinux]

Form factor for the Nomad is lacking thugh (IMHO). I can't wait until Sony makers a HD based MP3 player.

[Mark Johnson]

The one thing that almost all the mp3 players lack (including apparently the Toshiba GigaBeat) is an "infinite scroll wheel" like the thumb-dial on the iPod. Only the RioRiot even comes close (with a decent, but still inferior "multi-stroke scroll wheel" sort of like the Sony JogDial.)

What I'm talking about is the fact that if you now have 20GB of mp3s, you've got a LONG way to go to get down from "Abba" to "ZZ Top" when you are looking at your list of artists. (No jokes on my music tastes please :D ) It's just an amazing oversight that almost EVERY manufacturer seems to repeat.

With the iPod, you can scroll as far as required in one continuous motion without ever picking up thumb. It's VERY nice, but the unit has FireWire (the Apple's very own "BetaMax of data transfer") which makes it a dead-end. Also the iPos was built with a completely lame restrictive Digital Rights Management mentality (as compared to Archos Jukebox which simply identifies it as a USB hard drive visible in Windows Explorer.) This means that you can't even use it to "mule" your own mps from your own home computer to your own office computer. (Actually, you can, but only in the "non-listening/data partition" duh...)

The next closest is the SonicBlue RioRiot, which does have a scroll wheel, but physically covers part of it so you are forced to lift your thumb. The RioRiot also kowtows to the RIAA by refusing "offloads" of the mp3s.

All the other units (I prefer the Archos) make you push a button for every down arrow stroke, so getting to the end of you catalog takes a really long time. Now that the drives are getting really big, it's just amazing that there is no one but Apple and SonicBlue that seem to "get it" when considering the user's need to browse their own menu.

The pictures of the Toshiba GigaBeat don't lend a lot of hope that they've done any better...

[Perry Reed]

All the other units (I prefer the Archos) make you push a button for every down arrow stroke, so getting to the end of you catalog takes a really long time.

Actually, the Archos (which I have) lets you hold the button down to scroll through the catalog.

But a scroll wheel, a la iPod, would be much nicer.

[marlof]

It's VERY nice, but the unit has FireWire (the Apple's very own "BetaMax of data transfer") which makes it a dead-end.

Don't know yet if this is a dead end. Sony, Dell and the likes all have FireWire / iLink slots ready to use in their new products, and the cards cost next to nothing nowadays. I for one am not an Apple user, but still a very happy FireWire user. No hiccups in many years of FireWire use...

[klinux]

Firewire is a dead-end?? Surely this is a joke right?

Forget the fact that firewire is the standard in the film/broadcast industry, most digital camcorders comes with one equipped, and that every Sony and Mac machine ships with a firewire port.

The firewire2 standard should be out by the end of this year that doubles (may triple or quad) the speed of USB 2.0.

[st63z]

And that's when the HAVi golden age of home electronics will begin :)