CNET has two great little reviews here and here of my unpurchased-iPod replacement, the Archos 605 WiFi. InfoSync also has a snazzy little video review.
Stuff that makes me drool…
- WiFi + Browser + Flash support + GMail = Me quivering with geek delight
- PDF viewing (Hello eBooks!)
- Touch screen
- Customizable wallpaper (look the little things count like being able to put your kid’s face on your gear…)
- Treated as a removable hard drive
- Supports folder based sorting (this is how I like to organize and listen to music)
Now to get Management to authorize the necessary funds…business cases anyone?
Oh yeah, and it fits in your pocket too…
See, I bounced back quickly from that little Apple induced psychotic break.
Published by james on September 9, 2007
in Lust.
I’m sure your thinking, “Ha! James and his sense of smug superiority is slinking back to Vista!” Well, sorry to disappoint as I would rather drive old garden stakes into my thighs with a pillow than do something as patently crazy as that. No, after motherfucking the iPod as long as I can remember I bought one for Management last month as a birthday present and now in light of the 160GB model and a couple of weeks of getting to know the device I’ll be getting myself one. Yeah, I’m a flip-flopper.
My H320 is dying being prone to random freezes, track jumps, and for the fact that only USB charging works, which can take about the same amount of time for light to travel from Alpha Centauri to here, I am now desperately in the market for a new player. iAudio appears to have given up on their X5 line and managing our Zen on Ubuntu is a less than pleasurable task. So, here I am coming clean. I want an iPod.
Did I mention that it is 160GB? I can actually carry a good chunk of my collection with me now.
My iRiver does have plenty of life left in it but it doesn’t hurt to look down the road a bit. Just added my lust list is the iAudio X5 60GB version, though likely to be 80-100GB when I buy.
Highlights include:
- MP3, OGG, WMA, ASF, FLAC, WAV, MPEG4 playback
- USB Host
- Supports Linux v 2.2 or higher
- Supports BBE (I had one of there units for my recording studio and all I can say is, “DAMN!”)
- Remote Control
My lust list continues to grow, mostly because I’m better at list making than actually breaking down and purchasing anything on them. However, since the time that Management and I first broached the topic of having a kid I always tacked on a DSLR as a required contingency. Honestly, how could I call myself a good parent if I were not documenting my child’s formative years with the best digital photography equipment that I could afford.
To torture myself I’ve begun researching cameras and think that I have settled on the Nikon D50, the D70s is too rich for my blood and the Canon EOS Rebel XT feels a might bit janky. Ritz seems to have a good price on it with a bundled Quantaray 28-90mm F/3.3-5.6 Lens for $549.99. Now, I’m not a photography professional–I occasionally play one on the Internet but only when trolling–and it is possible that a DSLR is overkill but I want features, customizability, and the flexibility that one offers. Plus they look damn cool.
Anyone out there among my meager readership have any suggestions on DSLR cameras? Is the D50 the best in its group?
Sagaciously he stated, “Screw a practice amp. You don’t plan on playing out so why buy one. Get a pre-amp or an amp simulator.” Yes. Yes, he is right.
So my list of lust continues to grow.
Seeing as I did a complete re-installation rather than an upgrade I half expected that it was going to take me a week or so to get things back to that warm and fuzzy zone. Not so, everything is nicely organized and I’ve actually started re-using some services that sort of fell by the wayside and now feel re-energized and more productive. The combination of Beagle, Gnome Deskbar, Liferea, Mozilla, and Foxylicious plus del.icio.us is a one hell of a force in organizing and perusing through the detrius of my online life.
My desktop is very OSX-y in that I prefer an application bar at the bottom for all my regular tasks and applications and the main menu bar on top and both these panels are set yo autohide to maximize screen real estate. The single most used item for me is on the bottom panel between Liferea and the calculator: Gnome Deskbar. From there I can launch applications, search with Beagle or any of my MyCroft engines, as well as both my normal bookmarks and my del.icio.us ones. It is that damn cool.
This is a good example of what Beagle can do; searching for the word “Books” returns some PDFs, IM conversations, news feeds, applications, and folders. Tied in with the Gnome Deskbar I can also search across my bookmarks and surfing history.
Now I’m not the biggest fan of Rhythmbox as its iTunes inspired interface does little to excite me and, like iTunes, it pretty much sucks for managing large collections. However, the one huge thing going for it is SMB support so I can easily point it at my backup music server (running Ubuntu but only holding 30% of all my music) and have my collection at my fingertips for playback and with native last.fm support I can keep track of all my listening habits.
With a kid on the way I’ve decided to get a little more serious about keeping track the photos I take and I’ve found F-Spot to be very intuitive and adept for that task. Highlights include the slider bar to search photos by date and the tagging feature which helps in providing metatags to group photos across the collection.
Needless to say this release of Ubuntu has taken it to the next level and I’m back to that bubbling feeling of joy when using my laptop. When trees stop falling on my house I have to pull out the old PayPal account and make a donation as the work they and the rest of the OpenSource community are doing is worth paying for.
