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That would be a great product, wouldn't it?

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You tease!

That would be a great product, wouldn't it?

I hate it when you do that.
Especially now, since I've just ordered an iPod!

Just purchased a iPod 20gb player for Windows. Should arrive tomorrow by Fedex. I'm off to get a Firewire card right now so I'll be ready in the AM when my iPod arrives. In case anyone who is waiting elsewhere is interested,

B&H Photo-Audio-Video @ 1-800-606-6969 has one more in stock for $499 (Full Retail), but at least if your in CA like me you won't pay tax. I was told by several suppliers that the next available date wouldn't be until the 16th of this month. FYI

That same iPod 20gig costs $650 over here. I hate taxes!

I personally have an Archos JB20, which definitely has a sloppy UI compared to the iPod, but seems to be developing an active user community around an alternative firmware implementation (http://rockbox.haxx.se/)

Cool. Thanks for the link.
I was wondering if anyone would try writing custom firmware for the JB, but had not did a search on the subject in ages.

Thanks again,

I've gotta ask, what is different about their firmware? I imagine anything is better than the company's lousy programming, but I don't want to try anything without knowing what it's for.

I can't find anywhere in a quick perusal to actually purchase the 1.8" hard drives that the iPod uses. But Toshiba's 5GB PCMCIA card that uses one is still $400, more than the 20GB iPod.

Ouch! $400 for only the drive and a tiny amount of electronics (if any) is steep! Toshiba must be making a fair profit on these drives.

- Trevor

Yesterday (2002.09.04) I saw 5 20GB IPods @ Fry's Electronics. They were $400 each.

When rob posts, the world MOVES.

I purchased a RIo Riot. I thought the unit was fantastic. I thought the Computer interface (Real Player) was the biggest piece of crap I'd ever seen. Uploading to the player is pretty slow; not that big a deal until you notice that Real Player has locked up, formatted your hard disk and somehow managed to erase all your CDs...

I took it back.

I tried several possible email name combos for SB's president saying, "GEE, if only you could implement emplode for all your rio products.....you might have more customers" One of them didn't bounce.

In reply to:

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That would be a great product, wouldn't it?

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And more to the point:

I'd buy at least one of them if such a beast were available sometime.
I'd also think that others might pay for one as well.

BTW: For specs I'd like fast USB2.0 interface (with inbuilt charging via the said interface when its docked ala the iPod).

Cool scroll wheel support, with [unlike the iPod] "detents" (probably 16/32 per revolution) (aka "bumps") on turning/scrolling like the Empeg volume knob has so its easy to count clicks.

Ability to work like a "usb storage device" without clunky add-on software being required for common M$ operating systems.

Of course, it must work/come with Emplode, support the same cool UI the empeg had and have really cool visuals on its super cool blue/multi-coloured graphic LCD display.

Inbuilt FM tuner, with the ability to record programming from said tuner to disk.

Oh and by the way, it must be able to run solidly for 7 days between charges.

[only joking on the last point].

Hmmm. I like the smooth action of the iPod wheel. But I can understand why one might not.

I used to think that too,

But I have a Pansonic Stereo in my bedroom with a large knob with detents ("bumps" while turning) on it and I much prefer that when scrolling stations, tracks etc than a smooth wheel.

I find the feedback from the detents, when syncronised with the software [as the empeg is] allows you to navigate menus by 'feel' without even needing to look at the screen. You can easily learn to count "5 bumps to this, 6 to that, scroll down 1 page = of songs = 10 bumps etc".

Very useful in a small device e.g. Ipod-a-like or Empeg while driving.
I've tried the iPod scroll wheel and and "no sir, I don't like it".

How "shock proof" is the iPod? I would be using it in occasionally extreme situations that could shake it up quite a bit. Does it have a large buffer?

It has a huge buffer (it's got 16 meg of RAM and the software is probably much smaller than the Empeg software). I imagine it's not all that shock-proof when it is caching -- there's no space in it for shock absorbers à la car-player -- although presumably the makers of the 1.8in drives it uses are even more aware of shock issues than the makers of 2.5in drives.

Peter

Why, with all the Empeg loyalty on this board, am I seeing only iPod users and Archos users. Is the Riot a POS?

No. But it's the usual thing with the computer industry: I'd have to upgrade all my trousers to be compatible with it. The Ipod is small enough to fit in my existing pockets.

Peter

Hmmm. I like the smooth action of the iPod wheel. But I can understand why one might not.

Have you got one of the original ones like mine, then, where the wheel is actually a wheel? They changed that for subsequent versions (10 and 20Gb) to a no-moving-parts glidepad thing. That doesn't strike me as an improvement, but they must have had their reasons.

Peter

> That doesn't strike me as an improvement, but they must have had their reasons.

I think there were two reasons. High failure rate and it allowed them to make the case slightly thinner.

Ok, my iPod has arrived and the packaging alone is enough to score Apple some brownie points (those of you who have new iPods coming will know what I mean). It's charging now and I'm running thorugh my Music Match learning curve so I'll be ready to put music on iPod when it's charged. More later...

It requires Music Match? Well, that's one point against it for me. I can't stand that program. What could make music organization more complicated than Music Match?

I suppose that's one point for the Archos. I'd prefer a simple hard drive structure for loading tunes onto a player over using Music Match or a Real product.

We've all been spoiled to death by emplode. Damn you empeg people for making such lovely software!

Biggest advantage of the alternative rockbox firmware for Archos jukeboxes is in my opinion that it comes with source and is being actively developed. As opposed to the official firmware upgrades which are sporadic and seem to introduce more new bugs than bugfixes.

The rockbox firmware has some games for the JB recorder, which probably has a bit more CPU to spare compared to the JB studio. They recently got playlist support working and are adding things like mp3v2 tag support, editable persistent playlists, etc. Basically trying to fix all the things that are annoying with the existing firmware.

I looked into the options of upgrading the iPod and it doesn't look good...

The Toshiba 5GB drive has a different interface than the 10 and 20GB drives. And the 20GB drive is actually larger (thicker) than the 10GB drive. This really cracks me up... Jobs brags about how they made the iPod thinner and added the 20GB model at MW... but in reality the higher capacity drive is larger than the original iPod. Heh... he is a master.

EDIT: I REALLY want a laptop drive MP3 portable with an empeg style interface... REALLY REALLY want!

Just because the drive is thicker doesn't mean the overall player is.

Just because the drive is thicker doesn't mean the overall player is.

I am afraid in this case it is.

Size and weight (5GB model)
Height: 4.0 in
Width: 2.4 in
Depth: 0.78 in
Weight: 6.5 oz (185 g)


Size and weight (10GB model)
Height: 4.0 in
Width: 2.4 in
Depth: 0.72 in
Weight: 6.5 oz (185 g)


Size and weight (20GB model)
Height: 4.0 in
Width: 2.4 in
Depth: 0.84 in
Weight: 7.2 oz (204 g)

PS: I am about to overtake you on Shines... Okay-go!

What could make music organization more complicated than Music Match?

Realplayer Jukebox.

Have you got one of the original ones like mine, then, where the wheel is actually a wheel? They changed that for subsequent versions (10 and 20Gb) to a no-moving-parts glidepad thing.

Yes, and I didn't know they did that. I always thought that the wheel seemed a little flimsy, as it wobbles a little bit, but I've never had any problems with it, other than software beyond the original seems to have thrown out some debounce logic, so that the borders between ``clicks'' seem a little pickier than they once were and sometimes go back one ``notch'' due to the movement caused by removing your thumb from the wheel.

I'm not a big fan of iTunes, either. (Personally, I don't like the concept of keeping a database of your music in a program since I have multiple computers all sharing the same network share of mp3s, and that means updating the database on each machine each time I rip new music. Huge pain.) Fortunately, you can totally avoid using the ``features'' of iTunes and simply use it as an upload program. You can just drag-and-drop files from your filesystem directly on the iPod icon within iTunes and it'll never try to integrate them into the iTunes database.

I'm curious to hear your comments on how MusicMatch works with the iPod.

We built the interface as a separate applet that runs independently of the jukebox (sort of). It's similar to how the new burner runs in a separate window. I had to QA the help files, so I learned all about how it worked. Seemed pretty easy and straight-forward to me.

Pro: very fast (IEEE1394) file transfer

I don't see any advantage to the IEEE1394 connection yet. I'm uploading 18gb to the iPod right now and it's taking forever! It's been running for about 1hour now and it's less than 50% finished, that doesn't seem any faster than uploads to my Empeg through ethernet.