http://farsideoftech.disqus.com/A blog dedicated to the insight and clarification of technology of all sorts. From consumer tech, to upcoming topics such as green tech and the Singularity--no technology is taboo.enSun, 20 Mar 2005 01:44:02 -0000http://www.devindra.org/tech/2005/03/07/hdd-mp3-players-round-1/#comment-1273230Well the strictly flash-based players seem to only be serving a small market right now. The inexpensive ones (~$100) allow people to jump into the portable audio game easily, this is the main draw of the iPod Shuffle. On a tangent of my own, I find it amazing how Apple was able to market the Shuffle. What other company could accomplish that?! "Life is random" is just the best excuse for the lack of a display, and people eat it up! As you can tell, I'm not an Apple fan ;)<br><br>The big thing in portable players right now are the microdrive based ones. I find it amazing that the 4GB iPod mini sold so well at $250 when the 20GB Ipod was $300. This trend towards portability is interesting in its own right. Personally, I'd rather have a hard drive player that held alot, instead of sacrificing space for portability. On that rare occasion that I exercise outside, I find the flash-based players to be infinitely more useful than a microdrive one. I would rather not have to worry about the drive heads crashing and whatnot. <br><br>I think I may discuss this further in my second article, still not sure what to cover there...TenkenSun, 20 Mar 2005 01:44:02 -0000http://www.devindra.org/tech/2005/03/07/hdd-mp3-players-round-1/#comment-1273229on a related, but different subject, it seems like products for flash drives are coming up faster than products for mini-disks... but this should reverse, right? <br><br>i can't wait for the cheap and decent phone / organizer / mp3 player / camera thingie comes out. so far, O2 XDA2s and <a href="http://www.palmone.com/us/products/smartphones/treo650/" rel="nofollow">Treo 650 </a> are all i have looked atIcemanSat, 19 Mar 2005 13:13:42 -0000