Doug Twilleager's Weblog The Wonderful World of 3D

New gadgets and what I really want

I picked up two new gadgets this summer – a Treo 650 and a Sony PSP. I love certain aspects of both as well as have some real irritations about them.

First is the Treo 650. I got this one for a number of reasons. I wanted a combination phone/PDA, and I am hooked on the Palm organizational tools. I needed a global phone. And, I liked the idea of being able to read e-mail on the phone. The Treo can also play songs and surf the web, but I wasn't all that interested in those features. As it tuns out, my usage pattern for the device isn't quite what I expected. I do use it for appointments, which I can sync with all of my various desktops. I haven't configured it for e-mail yet. I use it a lot to surf the web. This surprised me, but their web browser does a really good job of formatting large pages for the small screen. I haven't installed any truly addictive games on it yet – except solitaire – but that will eventually happen. I also haven't used it for a music playing device yet. With the exception of the weekly system crash, I am really happy with this one.

I just recently picked up the Sony PSP. I got this one for two reasons. First, the screen is absolutely stunning. The other reason was simple – I got sucked into the marketing. There aren't any truly compelling games that appeal to me for this device yet, but the pipeline does look good. I love the idea of being able to watch movies on this device, even though I have yet to purchase a movie for it. When the right movie comes along, I will no doubt start the collection. The real value of this device is the potential that it represents. My main complaint of this device is the inability to access mass persistent storage. It can be in the form of a hard drive or a method to write UMD disks. I don't really care, but give me one of them. Buying a bunch of 1 gig memory sticks is not my idea of a solution. And, I don't want to use the memory stick as a cache to be refreshed from another mass storage device. Just give me access to a persistent mass storage device so I can burn/copy my content.

I will be taking long flights (Japan, London, ...) in my new role, so now it looks like I will have a very full gadget bag – Laptop, Portable DVD, PSP, Treo, RIO, Gameboy. This asks the obvious question – when will the all in one portable device finally show up. There are form factor reasons why I believe it will never be just the phone (iPhone or not), but can we at least get it down to 2. If the PSP had a more complete movie library and a hard drive, it would be close. I could consolidate the DVD/RIO/PSP/Gameboy to just the PSP. Well, it probably won't happen in this generation, but here is to hoping for the next.

Posted at 08:29PM Sep 13, 2005 by dtwilleager in General  |  Comments[2]