Navigating On the Go, Listening and Chatting at Home
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: networking, digital, entertainment
- 1. High Speed Ensures the Right Shot
- 2. Scraping to Screen
- 3. Easier Home Networking from D-Link and Linksys
- 4. Remotes With More Control
- 5. Yahoo Plans to Automate Your Information
- 6. Navigating On the Go, Listening and Chatting at Home
- 7. Portable Printing, Presentations and Power
- 8. Mix match and Sounds
- 9. Cisco Knows You Talk to Your Television
6. Navigating On the Go, Listening and Chatting at Home
You know iriver for the Clix navigation system on its MP3 players but it’s branching out with a touch screen on the WING (a clamshell Linux PDA), a toggle wheel on the SPINN MP4 player, Mickey Mouse ears on the Disney-licensed MPlayer and two planned devices for navigation and in-home media. The W7 is a 4-GB or 8-GB media player with a 3” touch screen that supports the usual music, video, photos, FM radio text and flash games. What makes it different is that you can plug it into a car cradle that has a GPS receiver. Saving GPS for the car keeps the size and weight down, and you won’t run out of power because you’re only navigating when the W7 is plugged in.
The W7 won’t go on sale until the second quarter in the United States because the company is still negotiating a deal for maps (and it may not reach Europe until the third quarter), but the demo unit had maps for Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
The touch screen interface is simple but gives you a lot of control. Graphical icons let you specify toll roads and car pool lanes without tapping through several levels of menu. And even though you only get a GPS signal when the W7 is in the car cradle, you can still request routes, look up places to go and preview routes when it’s in your hand.
You can carry the iriver UNIT 2’s 7” touch screen around with you inside the house and use it to browse the Web, make phone calls, watch DVDs and DiVX videos, listen to music, look at photos and make mobile or VOIP phone calls. You can drop it into a charging base anywhere in the house. Use it as a keyboard for sending text messages and browsing the Web on your TV. Or carry it over to the wireless base station and snap it into place between the two sliding speakers. The base station has a 30-GB hard drive for media, as well as Ethernet and cable TV connectors, a SIM slot for mobile calls, HDMI, composite and optical connectors and USB ports for adding extra storage - and an FM radio in case you get bored with all the music on Rhapsody. The UNIT 2 will go on sale in Korea in the fourth quarter for around $700; it should reach the United States and Europe in 2009.
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