> Just got back from a visit to an IBM convention. Perhaps some of you have
> seen this, but they're about to debut, or have just debuted, a portable 1
1/2
> inch square, 1/8" thin one-gigabyte portable "micro drive" that connects
to
> all sorts of things. Pretty impressive little thing.
IBM MicroDrive. I thought they'd been around for quite a while, actually.
They allegedly fit into any CompactFlash mkII compatible slot. Maybe it's
just the 1GB-capacity drives that are brand new? A friend bought one (a 1GB
drive) a week or so ago for his Compaq iPaq... VERY NICE, VERY COOL
> I think the price quoted me was in the 600-800 dollar range.
> Now if they, or a few competitor companies with less corporate-ness, can
just
> deliver it for under 100 bucks.....
I think he paid around 400 UKP for it (so that puts it around 600 USD I
guess, yeah)
It's got a high initial latency cos it needs to spin up and spin down (on
devices that use power saving modes, anyway), and that can cause skipping
and drop outs. Of course once it's going it just keeps going and
everythings ok, but I've seen software stutter when you start playing an MP3
or a MPEG4 video file or whatever (presumably because the software assumes
the file is on regular compact flash memory with instant access etc.)
I heard about a company that could offer 10GB on wafer-thin devices for like
10 bucks. I think it was on www.beyond2000.com or www.tomshardware.com or
something.
now THAT would make a definite turnaround in portable digital media
players...
D
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