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October 19, 2004 |
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Searches for PalmOne's business-friendly PDA are high, but the user ratings are not. Maybe you're looking for an alternative. Meanwhile, MSN Messenger's woes still have your attention, and Nextel releases its first-ever camera phone.
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Tungsten T5
As we all know, the biggest trend in gadgetry is gear that goes beyond the call of duty. The Tungsten T5 is one such toy. It's a 20GB MP3 player about the size of an iPod (only thicker), but its big claim to fame is the 2-inch color screen and the USB 1.1 port on the bottom that lets you plug in a digital camera and transfer files directly to the H320. Yes, you can do this with an iPod as well, but you can't turn around and look at the photos in nice, crisp color while you're at it. There's even a name for this nifty convergence: MP3JPEG players. Well, OK, possibly we made up that name. Anyway, the H320 can also record voice and supports playback of multiple audio formats.
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Nextel i860
Nextel users are among the most loyal customers you'll find (other than Mac people, of course). So it's no wonder there's so much interest in the carrier's first-ever camera phone, the Nextel i860. The $349 i860 (Nextel really is all about the business-class audience, but rebates are available) offers a clamshell design, a VGA camera, a 4X zoom, a built-in flash, and of course, all the ultrapopular Nextel features, such as Push To Talk, now available in Canada and Latin America. Coincidentally, Nextel also launched a new multimedia messaging service (MMS), which lets you send your photos to...well, only other people with the i860. You can't have everything. Done.
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Satellite radio
Satellite radio has been sort of dawdling along, as tech phenomena go, but it got a huge boost this month when it emerged as "the cool new thing that will let you say cusswords on the air." Howard Stern announced that he'd jump from regular broadcast radio to satellite in 2007, in order to have more freedom to say what he wants. Meanwhile, rapper Eminem will launch a new radio channel on the Sirius network on October 28. In other news, after XM Radio discontinued hardware that let you send its broadcast to a PC, citing low demand (and cursing potential piracy), car hobbyists re-created the hardware hookup, citing, well, plenty of demand. Has satellite radio arrived? Depends. We've heard you can't get a station if it's raining, so they'll have to invest a lot in weather control before the thing really takes off.
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MSN Messenger 7.0
Yes, you're remembering correctly--MSN Messenger 7.0 was also in last week's Buzz Report. Such carryover is rare, but MSN Messenger was the most searched-for term on our network and review sites for the second week in a row. Maybe it's simple schadenfreude--the brand-new release has had a miserable go of it in October. First, the beta release was suspended because of security concerns over unauthorized wink-sending. Then last week, users couldn't log in to the service for three solid days because of a mysterious outage. Finally, the new Funner virus spreads via Messenger, sending itself to all your contacts. Our tip? Read our review of the last version and run, don't walk, to download Trillian.
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Dell DJ
We're not saying the iPod is any trouble, but it's certainly going to suffer some dents by the time this holiday season is over. The iPod Mini is a particularly appealing target, but mondo-storage players are trickling in, and some of them are serious competition. The $250 Dell DJ, for example, costs $50 less than an iPod of the same capacity, and it's small, light, and WMA-compatible. Granted, it also has 4 fewer hours of battery life, but its 12 are still more than the iPod's 10 hours. Smart Buzz money, though, is on the 20GB, $249, multiformat-compatible, supertiny Archos Gmini XS200. Well, OK, truly smart money is still on the iPod.
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