From: Wesley Simon <wsimon_at_lsil.com>
Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 08:28:43 -0500

I work with a guy that knows a few insiders at Apple and he was
expecting a product similar to this one when they did the new iPod
announcement back in May. Rumor is that Apple has a similar product in
the works.

I'd love to have a small device like this that allows me to read files
like PDF, text, perhaps html and (god forbid) Word documents. Given
the amount of written text (manuals, e-books, etc.) that are in
electronic form, I'd love to have a small portable device that would
allow me to kick back in a chair or lay in bed and read them. Granted,
I can take the 12" PowerBook to bed with me but my wife already feels
as though my computer is a mistress! I'm sure one of the new Palm and
Palm-like devices would do all this, but those kind of devices are too
expensive and limited on capacity. I'd seriously consider something in
the $200 price range that could only store and display documents.

And yes, I know that I could convert all the aforementioned document
types to text and then read them on my recorder. Some documents,
especially technical documents, lose meaning without the proper
formatting. I have a 1500+ page Solaris manual in PDF format that
would lose all meaning without the screenshots, bold and italicized
fonts and formatted code snippets.


Enough of my ramblings. The new archos AV300 is pretty damn kick ass.
A person could bring along their own movies on a flight without having
to bring along a computer.

My only wish is that Archos would start supporting firewire.
Received on 2003-06-03