November 22, 2006
Turbolinux's wizpy media player/portable PC
Japanese firm Turbolinux is showing off an interesting device called the wizpy, which doubles as a portable media player and as a take-anywhere Linux box that you can hook up to a PC via USB to access your apps and settings. As a media player it handles OGG/mp3/WMA/AAC audio and DivX video and includes an FM radio, voice recorder and still picture/text viewer; in PC mode, you get access to Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype, wordprocessing and other applications and about 2.5G of storage space on flash memory.
The wizpy comes in at a pretty compact 84x42x12mm and a featherlight 60g, with battery life claimed at 10 hours. It's only a prototype at the moment (though the Turbolinux folks had one connected to a Windows laptop to give the launch presentation, so it's certainly beyond the Photoshop stage), but they indicate it should be out next February for under Y30,000.
[Via Impress PC Watch (Japanese)]
August 30, 2006
OQO officially available in Japan
Brule has announced it's to begin selling the OQO Model 1+ (in both Win XP Pro and Tablet flavours) in Japan. There have been a few shops importing the OQO up to now, but this marks the start of sales via an official route with Japanese interface as standard. No changes that we can see to the specs, and the price looks to be around the US mark at Y259,800 for the Pro version and Y279,800 for the Tablet version.
[Via Impress PC Watch (Japanese)]
February 23, 2005
On Sony's canning of the Clie
The Web is abuzz with news that Sony has killed off the Clie. Theories abound that they will either be coming back with a range of Microsoft OS-powered devices or are intending to focus on the PSP. Neither option really lights up our synapses with joy; our experience with the Palm OS and Sony's apps has been good (aside from Sony's lack of Mac support), and the PSP is too chunky to carry around everywhere, especially if you consider the stand and external keyboard + pointing device that would be needed to get it off the ground as a PDA.
Sony certainly has its problems as a company--though at least it is ditching ATRAC3 and recovering some ground in portable audio--but the Clie certainly wasn't one of them; our PEG-UX50 is one of the sweetest devices we have. Why the entire world doesn't want a device that has WiFi, Bluetooth and a thumb keyboard, records audio, video and still photos, has a great screen, and is the size of about half a paperback is beyond us.
[Via Impress PC Watch (Japanese)]