Registered: Dec 1999
Location:
Posts: 72

Its about time someone makes a springboard with a regular speaker and a headphone jack, and include some software that will use the springboard. I'd buy it and i don't even own any springboards yet.

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Registered: Jun 2000
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Posts: 594

(Sorry for the long post - I guess I had more to say on this subj. than I thought.)

Headphone jack? For sounds coming from the Visor, I guess?

There's already an 8 min. voice recorder module, and I'd guess others (w/a better price/value ratio) can be expected. (I trust you've read about "VaporGear's" "latest prediction" of 1st Q 2001 for the "6-pack/5-pack," or whatever it was supposed to be -- I'll bet SURPRISINGLY, like the MiniJam, it won't come w/the promised voice recorder (if it ever shows up at all)).

One of the smartest things I ever did in life was get the IBM ViaVoice / Olympus DS-150 digital voice rec. that does speech-to-text (not perfectly, but better than I'd hoped). In "LP" mode (w/out the speech-to-text option), you get about 2.5 hrs. of record time. (1.5 WITH the speech-to-text option, I think.)

Yeah, at $199 (I think it's $149 now), it cost almost as much as my Visor -- but it does what I need (for close to a yr. now, and still going), weighs almost NOTHING (astoundingly light in my shirtpocket), is slim & inconspicuous, and the sound quality is amazing. (Win'CE 2.x and prior's sound SUCKED, and I could BARELY MAKE OUT MY OWN mumblings.)

And I didn't have to WAIT for some "perfect PDA" (or SB module) to "save me."

Pkt PC DOESN'T DO speech-to-text (though I believe it was ANNOUNCED in the ORIGINAL SPECS), so their digital voice rec. is all but useless to me. (Have you ever TRIED transcribing your own voice notes? DOZENS upon DOZENS of them? Can you say: "No fun"?)

I hear there's some new digital voice rec. out that does 8hrs. (but I don't think it does speech-to-text).

What other sounds could a user want?
MJ / SoundsGood do MP3 -- and, given "VaporGear's" "latest prediction" and HORRENDOUS customer relations, I wouldn't be surprised if their wares suddenly dropped WAY LOW in price, pretty soon.

A radio / radio module?
I guess this could be done pretty cheaply (though it seems "against the philosophy" of SB dev.'s to charge UNDER $50 for ANYTHING), but none can be had that I'm aware of at the present.

Sound to be added to MTI and/or ActiveSky Movies?
This seems like the most legitimate contender. But is the form itself legit? Video (and sound, for that matter) files are still SO HUGE. And portable mem. is still SO EXPENSIVE. Do we really need to play movie clips (or even FULL-LENGTH MTV-videos, probably the most legit form for portable video files, if you "calculate" the price/value ratio ... of JOY, I guess) ON THE RUN? Or in a meeting?

PRISM HAS LOUDER BEEPS, I've read, for what it's worth. But even this is "DANGEROUS" in the sense that ... in the biz. world, people DON'T WANT TO HEAR your alarms, beeps and boops -- esp. at a big mtg., for ex.

When I used 'CE about a year ago, I WASTED A HUGE AMOUNT OF TIME trying to find "the right" beeps and boops to add as .WAV files, and ... I JUST NEVER DID. If they were "loud enough" to hear on the street -- they were WAY TOO LOUD to be heard in a prof. biz. env. But if I toned them down so as not to interrupt everyone -- I couldn't hear them walking down the street. It's a MUCH more diff. problem than it appears. And I can't blame PDA mfg. for using the beeps they do. It's not perfect, but a pretty close happy medium.

I WISH, though, that since HS IS SAVING the cost of putting in a speaker (a la Pkt PC, etc.), it would have been NICE to, say, bring the PRISM in for $50 less (say $399).

It was Jeff's awesome mkt.-undercutting $249 for the HSVD, I hope he hasn't forgotten, that helped HS take the PDA mkt. by storm.


[Edited by bkbk on 10-28-2000 at 09:54 PM]

Registered: Feb 2000
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 165

quote:

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Originally posted by bkbk
I WISH, though, that since HS IS SAVING the cost of putting in a speaker (a la Pkt PC, etc.), it would have been NICE to, say, bring the PRISM in for $50 less (say $399).

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I don't think the current PalmOS has native support for sounds that would merit a speaker anyway (EG WAV/MP3), so it's not really a matter of saving cost. I'm sure Handspring has priced the Prism as low as it possibly can while still making enough of a profit for it to be worth producing; there was a lot or skepticism when the Prism's price and feature list was released, but just about every post I've read about the Prism on the VC message boards has been positive, and the general consensus seems to be that it's worth the $449 pricetag.

Other than in conjunction with an MP3 or radio module, I'm not sure how useful a headphone jack module would be... maybe for use with a guitar tuner/metronome app; I can't image anyone buying a headphone/speaker module for higher-fidelity when listening to MIDIs

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Registered: Jun 2000
Location:
Posts: 594

I, too (not even ever having seen a "real" Prism in "real life") was AMAZED that HS produced a 64k color PDA under the surpisingly robust Palm OS (that people seem to have thought tech. would have "passed by" yrs. ago). And I'm all for Jeff keeping HS afloat in the ways he sees as necessary. Still.

MTI in fact produced a .WAV player -- I installed it on BOTH my prev. Palm III and now my HSVD. It was abysmal on the Palm III (I think there were a couple of The Simpsons and Tweety Bird "quotes" as demos) -- since it's not quite a "real speaker." And I guess the HSVD has NO speaker at all, as the app crashed me out.

MP3 may be another matter, though.

Last thing: I forgot to mention the obvious about a radio: they can be had for like, what, $3 for a tiny one like 1/10th the size of the original Walkman?

(And, by the way, if MP3 tech., etc. is "so great / so viable" -- why do Walkmans still sell?) Hmmmmmm...

Registered: Jun 2000
Location:
Posts: 594

Dang!
I knowed they'z an impotant thingy I fergot...

Once there is a CAMCORDER SB (a la the Cassiopeia Pkt PCs, which I belive are still the only ones w/this ability) is mfg.'d THEN I can see where some kind of sound ON THE DEVICE will become MANDATORY.
For this use, I can see where someone could cite Jeff as short-sighted.
It puts an extra-heavy burden on such a SB developer to have to, say, make the CAMCORDER SB and ALSO add a speaker. (But maybe even a tiny piezo type, like the Palms have, would suffice. Because baring this, it would have to be "understood" by the User that you could "only FULLY playback" video AND sound ... gee, like REAL CAMCORDERS, huh? ... once you got home to your PC and did a hotsync.)