Gateway today releases its first portable music player as it continues its expansion into the realm of consumer electronics reports CNET News.com.
CNET reports, “The Gateway Digital Music Player combines three functions in one, according to Rick Griencewic, director of digital audio at Gateway. It can play MP3 files, it can be used as a portable storage device for shuttling data between two PCs, and it can also function as a digital voice recorder. ‘You don’t have a cable you can lose, which can generate a support call,’ Griencewic said.”
“Two versions of the music player are on tap for this month. On Tuesday, a version containing 128MB of storage capacity hit the market at a price of $129.99. A $169.99 version holding 256MB of memory is scheduled for release Aug. 14,” CNET reports. “These initial players use flash memory to store data. Gateway is also looking at the possibility of coming out with music players with small hard drives, as well as with portable CD players. ‘It takes a little bit longer to develop a hard-drive player,’ Griencewic said. ‘We saw this as an easy way to get on the scoreboard early.'”
Full article here.
As Gateway gets squeezed down the drain, it throws up random crap. Hopefully, death will come quickly.
20 Songs In Your Pocket!
Did you notice that they have included a built-in voice recorder? Not only do the WINTEL folks rip ideas from Apple, they also look at the Mac site BBS. Quite a bit of space was taken up around ITMS/New iPod time discussing the use of an iPod for digital voice recording.
Apple innovates
WINTEL regurgitates
I refuse to buy anything that won’t play OGG.
that is a sad story
Gateway is a sad company.
move along, nothing to see here…
This isn’t an Apple thing, solid-state mp3 players (with recording features) have been around for over 2 years. Apple has no solid-state device and this concept predates any harddisk portable device (including all versions of the iPod)
This is a case of Gateway being late to the party.
…and NoPC Zone, too much kool-aid is a bad thing. Switch to water every now and then or one day the Mac users will have to coax you out of your shack in the woods and convince you to get rid of your (Apple branded) tin-foil hat.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! … 128MBs?!! … Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! … 256MB for $170?! … Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! They should post the pictures of morons who end up buying this crap! Direct USB connection… at those sludge speeds?! … Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
It does not support WMA. Why?
“It takes a little bit longer to develop a hard-drive player. We saw this as an easy way to get on the scoreboard early.”
Yeah, Baby! LOL! You took ’em all by surprise! I suppose it’s staggering enough to wrap one’s mind around the herculean engineering required to swap a 128Mb chip with a 256 megger, hence the delay in marketing the larger offering.
It’s also a bit weird to wax on the connectivity by saying “You don’t have a cable you can lose, which can generate a support call,”
I can see the wisdom:
Q: Um, Tech Support, I can’t transfer my songie-wongies, what’s wrong?
A: Is the USB cable connected at both ends?
Q: Um, cable? Oh, that! I lost it. Is that the problem here?