Surprise, surprise

by Volker Weber

tungstenc_box.jpg

When the doorbell rang this morning and the person on the other end of the intercom said "Courier", I was somewhat surprised since I did not really expect anything. Even greater a surprise was that the package turned out to be from Palm containing a Tungsten C. It is currently charging on Clyde's cradle. The next days will show whether this device receives the prestigious "editor refuses to give it back" rating. :-)

Comments

Volker,

perhaps you can answer me a question regarding Tungsten for which I didn't found a final answer yet.
Is it possible to attach any kind of 20GB harddisk (f.g. as PC-Card) to a Palm?

Julian Buss, 2003-08-15 09:37

Sure. You put the HD into a notebook and hook that up to the Tungsten. :-)

No, I don't believe this is possible. The Tungsten has four interfaces:

- the Palm universal connector
- the SD/MM card slot
- I/R
- wireless (T: Bluetooth, W: GSM, C: WLAN)

Where would you want to attach the device? I/R is out of the question. Nobody has done any work to interface the drive via SDIO or the universal connector. Finally you could potentially attach the drive via WLAN or Bluetooth. But then you would need to write an application that would move files in and out of the Palm device via FTP, SSH or (gasp) NFS.

Forgot to ask: WHY would you want to do that?

my goal is simple: I'm looking for a nice portable mp3 player with lots of storage. iPod 15G / 30G is an option, the new Neuros is another option, or the new Philips HDD100.

But the logical conclusion for me would be: a PDA is able to play mp3 and can do lots more (which I do need, too). Why not giving the PDA a 20GB harddisk, like iPod & co have, and use that as mp3 player?

Perhaps someone has developed a mp3 player with the ability to crossfade between tracks, which I really would like to have (a must-have for parties...).

So I know that one can attach a PC-Card harddisk to the iPaq. But I only know that one can attach a 5GB Toshiba hdd to the iPaq, I need at least 15G. So I wondered if Palm would support something like this.

Why carrying around two mini-computers (mp3 player and PDA), when one can do everything...?

Julian Buss, 2003-08-15 11:10

Simple answer: Battery life. No PDA is able to power a hard disk for more than demo purposes.

If you want to run a party from a portable device, get a notebook and Tractor DJ. You will also need an external sound device that has more than two channels. Your other options is two mobile players with standard DJ equipment. Everything else is child's play . Yes, I know what I am talking about. Hint: vowe 4.0.

ok, you do have a point :-)

But I disagree with "everything else is child's play"... that depends on the kind of music. For mixing dance/hiphop/electronic style music seamless, you are right.
For running a party with german/schlager/pop/rock style music, winamp with MEXP and a crossfader does very well and enables the DJ (me) to put some tracks in the playlist and join the dancing crowd :-)

Therefore for me a mp3 player with crossfading would do the job. And I don't need to pre-hear the next track, because I know my music archive quite well.

So, thanks for the info anyway. And BTW: if you have time, have a look on www.neurosaudio.com -> a new feature-rich mp3 player from a very "open minded" company who seems to listen to their customers. With direct connect to the developers through the forums. And the Neuros has a build-in FM sender for listening to mp3 music in a car without any problems.

Julian Buss, 2003-08-15 11:38

...and boy, I am interested what was vowe 4.0 like...

Julian Buss, 2003-08-15 14:19

Different. :-)

The idea of using a Palm as portable MP3 Player is ok, the Tungsten C would be the wrong one though. It only plays MONO sound. Yuck!

Christian Kube, 2003-08-15 17:39

Post a comment











Shall I remember this for you?




Use your full name and a working email address. Unless you want your comment to be removed. No kidding.



Recent comments

Volker Weber on BIS customers now getting instant IMAP e-mail at 10:38
Dirk Steins on BIS customers now getting instant IMAP e-mail at 10:26
Yury Kats on Site news: Chrome already accounts for almost 10% of page hits at 02:59
Volker Weber on BIS customers now getting instant IMAP e-mail at 23:04
Stuart Mcintyre on BIS customers now getting instant IMAP e-mail at 22:59
Volker Weber on BIS customers now getting instant IMAP e-mail at 22:09
Jan-Piet Mens on BIS customers now getting instant IMAP e-mail at 22:01
Ingo Seifert on Nur bei Regen at 19:53
Dirk Steins on Nur bei Regen at 09:01
Carl Tyler on Everybody's PIN Number: Revealed! at 01:09
Armin Roth on Everybody's PIN Number: Revealed! at 00:43
Frank L. Quednau on Everybody's PIN Number: Revealed! at 23:42
Volker Weber on Everybody's PIN Number: Revealed! at 22:00
Chris Linfoot on Everybody's PIN Number: Revealed! at 21:57
Jan-Piet Mens on Everybody's PIN Number: Revealed! at 21:39
Marco Klop on Synchronizing iPhone with ... Lotus Notes at 18:55
sunny gerscky on Pwnage 2.0 released at 16:00
Tobias Lange on Remember, it's always the cable at 13:16
Volker Weber on Remember, it's always the cable at 12:21
Ian White on Remember, it's always the cable at 11:56
Andy Brunner on Remember, it's always the cable at 11:37
Ben Rose on Remember, it's always the cable at 11:33
Ben Poole on It has only been less than two hours at 09:44
Frank L. Quednau on It has only been less than two hours at 09:29
Martin Hiegl on It has only been less than two hours at 08:27

Ceci n'est pas un blog

vowe.net is a personal website published by Volker Weber a.k.a. vowe. I am an author, consultant and systems architect based in Darmstadt, Germany.

rss Click here to subscribe

Hello

About me
Contact
Publications
Certificates
Frequently asked questions

Twitter Updates

More >

Poll

Can you bring a camera phone to work?

Getting poll results. Please wait...

Local time is 10:40

visitors.gif
141 visitors online

News

Other sources of news, imported into my own format to make them more accessible:

Heise Online
Schlagzeilen
Weather

Archives

As most of my articles roll off the front page rather quickly, I am making an archive of previous posts available here. You can also use the handy search box at the top of the page if you are looking for something particular.

Last 30 days
More archives

Got the T-shirt?

Got the T-shirt?
Are you buying from the US?

Systems Architecture

This site runs on an Apache web server on top of the Linux operating system. The content is managed with MovableType which is implemented in Perl. Last but not least the HTML code your browser sees is put together with PHP.

© 1992-2008 Volker Weber.
All Rights Reserved.

Impressum