A Sad Goodbye

I can go on record and say I hate Sony. It seems they can make the coolest product and yet screw it up so badly. Example the Minidisc. I guess in their effort to support mp3 on their new Hi-Md players they have degraded the quality so they can showcase their own format. I am now washing my hands of the Minidisc. It breaks my heart but once I can afford it I am getting a Ipod. Heck I might get a Ipod Mini. I know its not that much more to get a 20 GB instead of a 6 GB one, but I have to admit I like the mini size. If I need more than 6 GB of mp3s then I need to get a life. Also there are some Linux music programs that support The way flash memory is going in capacity and price I won't be surprised if they take back the market from the harddrive players. I figure get a Ipod once it dies they should be selling 1 or 2 GB SD cards for fairly reasonable. Especially with the Consoles supporting them in the next generation thats not an extreme stretch of the imagination. As long as I get a player that can support the higher capacity cards I'm ok. I am still kinda bummed that such a cool concept of the Minidisc got so mishandled. Unless Sony seriously gets its act together I doubt I will ever own a MD player. I will always feel sadness everytime I will see blank Minidisc at Best Buy. Thanks to Sony stop selling the one computing product that seem to done almost everything right their Palm based handheld I don't have too much reason to buy anything else from Sony (maybe except a PS3). Its just overpriced but good quality stuff. I am officially bummed.

MS

Update: Just saw some speculation about 2 or 4 GB Ipod Shuffles. If they can sport a small screen I am all over it. Considering I can't afford a Mini anytime soon then that might be the ticket especially if its cheaper than the Mini.

Gaming Consoles

Ok I hate apologize every other post for not posting but I am sorry.... Now that you have forgiven and we are all happy and such. Lets talk gaming console systems, not just the current ones but the Next Gen ones. Last week we got a preview of the systems in question. Some more detailed than others but a preview. From the specs it is looking like the PS3 seems to be the leader as far as power but only by a hair. All of them are going to have wireless controllers, be powerpc based (yes hell froze over), be online, will have some kind of standard memory card slot and will feature wireless is some form. So beyond that its pretty much more of the same from both the ps3 and xbox 360. Oh they are pretty too (looks wise and Graphics wise) Big bad boxes I have to wait a couple years to be able to afford. The running rumor has the price somewhere between $350 and $500 for either system. So what about the big N? Well there console is called the Revolution. It small its black and has a glowing blue cd slot. Oh it can act as a wireless hub, will be online with a Live like service (via Gamespy technology), supports SD cards, will have a hard drive (a small one), be powerpc based (starting to get redundant huh?) and graphic chip from ATI. Pretty much that same feature set as the other two. Beyond that they are pretty tight lipped. In that lippedness they win the Least Amount of Hype Award. I have to admit the other 2 have impressive specs but do we really need it. In the current generation we have gotten fairly close to photo realistic. Come on folks how shiny does it have to be to keep it fun. I personally rather have a game that looks mediocre and be fun than a game that looks impressive that isn't all that fun. Oh I forgot to mention the big N is going to offer a service for a fee to download and play 20 years of past Nintendo games. Not too sure if that means only Nintendo titles or if there are going to be 3rd party titles. Either way I'm excited in that regard alone. Oh well I guess we will see how this all plays out in the next year or two.

MS