RSS8GB iPod Mini Coming Soon?
By Nate Mook | Published June 8, 2005, 12:51 PM
Seagate on Wednesday announced the first 8 gigabyte 1-inch drive for portable media players, opening the door for a higher capacity iPod Mini. Apple moved the Mini to the same Seagate ST1 drive in its 6GB form in February, introducing new colors and an improved battery life of 18 hours.
Apple is expected to transition the iPod Mini to a color screen later this year - a move that could also usher in the storage bump. However, iPod software updates are likely to arrive this summer before a hardware refresh.
Manufacturers such as Seagate have endeavored to boost capacity of shrinking hard drives to take advantage of the growing popularity of digital media players. In the first quarter of 2005, Apple reported shipping 5.3 million iPods.
Seagate calls this emerging digital lifestyle trend the "terabyte life," referring to the future of storage counted in terabytes - not gigabytes. As part of this change, Seagate launched Wednesday its largest hard drive -- at 500GB -- designed for digital video recorders such as TiVo.
"Seagate's unique, unflagging ability to meet the demands of both the consumer electronics and traditional computing markets is why we are the industry's leading seller of hard drives and why some of the biggest brands in the world partner with Seagate," said company CEO Bill Watkins.
Seagate also said Wednesday it is planning to introduce an 8GB CompactFlash Photo Hard Drive. The drive will work with existing digital cameras that support Compact Flash, and will be sold directly at retail outlets.
Yeah well iRiver just got done releasing a 20gb that is the same size at that thing, will a full color display and great battery life.
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|18 hours battery life? Okay great, but in what way does this compare with Sony still?? Personally I don't need 8gb so I'm not bothered about that. There's only so much music I want to listen to afterall. But I do want long battery life and 18 hours ain't enough I'm afraid.
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|Firsly, how can 18 hours not be enough for you. I'm pretty sure you don't sit up all day and night listening to your little precious Sony (whatever it may be).
Secondly, its not about how much music you wil listen to afterall, its about choice. When you have all your songs on the iPod you can listen to any song whenever you feel like it, without having to connect it up to you computer get rid of the songs you dont want and replace them by songs you feel like listening to.
What you people have to realise is that Apple has made a hard drive music players that is better than its competitors.
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|First you say - "Firstly, how can 18 hours not be enough for you" and then go on to say - "Secondly.....you have all your songs on the iPod you can listen to any song whenever you feel like it". Huh??
Look I only want to charge up something rarely. The longer the battery life the better for me. The reason I don't want anywhere near 8gb is because if I had all my songs on it - I'd spend all day looking for what I wanted to listen to! Think about it. If I _did_ have all my songs on it then I'd _definitely_ want more than 18hrs - definitely!
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|Still will NOT BUY, there are still better and cheaper products out there. I WANT CHOICE
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|I am looking to buy one, what are the others you talk about and what is a good one?
thanks
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|creative, iriver, nomad, dell, etc. Any product that has the plays for sure logo. Several people I know bought them and love them better then the iPOD.
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|Well not according to CNET:
http://reviews.cnet.com/...21434-3.html?tag=dir.tp
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|when you look around for products you don't just look at one company, staples, bestbuy, compusa, etc have these cheaper when they go on sale
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|It would be awesome if they used perpendicular bit organization for those tiny drives. Just imagine it: an 80GB iPod Mini.
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|Why would you need it on an ipod? Do you or any other average or even power user have that much music or photo media? Then think about trying to index it on an ipod mini. yea right.
Any way you look at it it's still an Ipod, there are much better choices out there.
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|Why would you need it on an ipod? Do you or any other average or even power user have that much music or photo media? Then think about trying to index it on an ipod mini. yea right.
Any way you look at it it's still an Ipod, there are much better choices out there.
13 gigs just music alone here and still got many CDs to rip yet.
But you're right better choices out there like portable media centers because they play video files aswell just wish the price of those would drop (music isnt enough when your sitting at the laundrymat whatching the drier spin lol)
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|For the Mini Ipod, a perpendicular one would max out at 30GB.
For the rest of them it's 80GB (and that's only the beginning).
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