Tuesday February 13, 2007

The iPhone sounds like a great consumer device, but as you may know it's not for me (yet). Good thing because the 20GB iPod I have carried around for 2 years died Saturday. The hard disk sounds a bit like nails on a blackboard if you put your ear up to it. Can you believe my birthday (the big 4-0) is next week? What are the odds? Yeah, my wife didn't like the odds either but she bought me an early birthday present anyway since I have to travel this week. I'm the proud owner of an iPod Video Why not try to fit it all on the Treo 700p? Well, a few reasons:

• The iPod Video has 80GB disk space. That's 20 SD cards in my pocket. While it might help my self-esteem, it's a bit much. It's also 10x what the iPhone will have. I have a boatload of podcasts and Video content for my daughter thanks to the Neuros Recorder 2.
• To be rather frank, listening to podcasts on the Treo sucks, and that's its primary role for me. I have yet to find an application that effectively bookmarks the audio and returns to the bookmark. Kinda crucial for listening to podcasts, don't 'ya think? I'm tired of guessing where I left off at. The Treo is fine for listening to music, though. In addition, I can stream audio off the 'Net with my Treo - something I can't do with the iPod. This has come in handy.
• I can listen to audio and browse at the same time. While it takes two devices, I don't get the choppy audio I tend to get combining the two on the Treo. I don't know if it's an need-more-CPU problem or a Palm OS problem, but it doesn't work great. To be honest, I can live with this but the experience is better with both the iPod and Treo
• The iPod video has better resolution - 320x240 versus 240x240. Big enough difference, but not for a 6 year old :)
  

Hey, my 10 year Sun anniversary is a couple of weeks away. I think I hear the hard drive making funny noises. ...