iRiver Clix

In the history of electronics there have always been products that people fall in love with as soon as people see them.  The iRiver Clix series has always been one of those.  Now, iRiver hasn’t impressed me much with their other models, but the Clix series took the concept of a PMP in a new direction.  Design has always had to balance usability with screen and beauty, and the Clix solved this dilemma in such an amazing and simple way.

iRiver continues to taunt us with these products.  The only problem:  to every product, no matter its greatness, there is a catch.  The catch with the Clix series has always been the storage:price ratio.  Too little storage for too much of a price.  The other drawback?  A PMP simple does not work well with 512mb of storage.  Even low end conversions for movies range around 300mb.

Hopefully iRiver can solve their ratio problems with this player.  4GB is a very good storage size.  I don’t see anyone actually watching full length movies on this, but for short clips and a good sized music library it is a good size.  I’m only hoping that their price point can stay competitive so that this model series can take off.

Clix homepage

Apple: kiss your ass goodbye cause SanDisk’s got ya

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/afx/2006/08/21/afx2961842.html

An 8gb player for $250? No, this isn’t even part of their cheap-ass M series, this is a full out E series with video/radio/recording/etc.  Meanwhile, where the hell is Creative in this?  A year ago they were gung-ho to take Apple down and SanDisk was just the player you got because you couldn’t afford anything else.  Creative hasn’t really moved anything new, but SanDisk has really started to put the heat on by actually making players decent enough that not even I can sell the ipod over them.

Apple, my friend, if you ignore this you will lose this battle. I’m glad to see this competition finally start to take off. Your move Apple.

Movies for purchase in itunes…and then?

http://www.engadget.com/2006/08/18/lions-gate-ceo-confirms-itunes-movie-downloads/

Movies on iTunes, I was so totally right last year.

Oh come on, you knew they had to do it. Just as there are apparently people who will spend $2 on music videos, I’m sure there are people willing to shell out the big bucks for renting movies on their ipods.

Every week we hear about new contracts for TV shows to be made available for purchase in the iTunes music store, and every time I flip open a magazine I see an ad telling me to download a new show’s pilot episode for free from iTunes. It will be interesting to see their method of DRM as well as their price point for the movies, but my general reaction to this is “Why took you so long?”.

To quote an old drive thru lady: …and then?

The ‘Keyboard organizer’: lame name, great product

Great product, at least on the web page.  I seriously can’t be the only one who has lost important papers under a keyboard, or pushed crap off my desk on accident via scooting the keyboard around.

This is such a simple, wonderful idea, I’d get it if I could afford to drop $50 on it, and if I were willing to part with my DiNovo set now (which I’m not, grr!!! DiNovo or bust!!).

My only question:  are there mac drivers for the extra buttons/will there be a mac version?

http://www.keyboardorganizer.com/ (it looks like the product page was made by a 12 year old who stole Flash off limewire, but the keyboards look great!)