The real benefit of a solid-state player would be in battery life, don't you think? Most of those tiny players use a AAA battery and last for weeks, as opposed to the hard-drive based players that include an expensive rechargable battery lasting 8 hours. If Apple thought 1GB was enough storage for an iPod, they'd already have an even cheaper flash-based mini.
And, to that dude who's sister's birthday is coming up: you are aware that the waiting list on the current model is 3-4 weeks (or more), right? Better get a move on, 'cause updated are NOT going to happen in time!
Pretec just announced a *** 12GB *** CF 80X CF card. Yes, it's going to cost $15K US, but the fact that this sort of CF storage is even possible should be eye-popping good news. Transistors must be mighty tiny/tightly packed. That means lesser denominations of flash memory will be even cheaper to produce in the coming year.
How long before a 4GB card sells for under 500 USD ?
I agree that the form factor of the mini is mighty appealing, and if/when it goes up to 8GB, I'll probably get one.
But I also saw where a company called Kangaru released a 4GB USB Flash drive today....for $1,600! Looking at that and Matsu's item makes me hope that Apple doesn't switch to a Flash-based drive any time soon.
Given that analysis that someone (Apple?) did about the capacity to hold ~1000 songs being a sweet spot, I feel that the mini's capacity won't go up soon but instead Apple wants to bring the 4GB model's price down to the super-magic $199 mark. This would crush flash-based player competitors and pave the way for a 8GB, $299 model sometime next year.
"But Screed," you might be thinking, "$299 is cost of the low end regular iPod."
Indeed, is my reply, for now. But mayhaps we may see the 4th generation iPod debut with a higher cost to match the larger feature set. As I say, mayhaps...
I agree that the form factor of the mini is mighty appealing, and if/when it goes up to 8GB, I'll probably get one.
But I also saw where a company called Kangaru released a 4GB USB Flash drive today....for $1,600! Looking at that and Matsu's item makes me hope that Apple doesn't switch to a Flash-based drive any time soon.
Less than 2 years ago, 1-1.5GB could cost you about 1K. The news item I mentioned isn't so significant in it's own right, but with each new generation pushed the previous ceiling well down.
1GB cards are available for less than 200USD, and 2GB for just over 400.
It won't be long at all before 2GB cards cost less than 200 and 4GB moves into the 350-500 range.
To me a 2GB solid state iPod Mini looks pretty tempting. You take a hit in capacity, but get a huge boost in battery life, and durability, and absolutely skip free performance to boot!
Eggsactly. I think CF prices will take a dive later this year and next year and Apple will make the switch for the Mini. Sigh. Just wish they could've done it this year. Too bad for my sister. But not for me maybe! My birthday is the end of October and there's always Christmas!
Given that analysis that someone (Apple?) did about the capacity to hold ~1000 songs being a sweet spot, I feel that the mini's capacity won't go up soon but instead Apple wants to bring the 4GB model's price down to the super-magic $199 mark. This would crush flash-based player competitors and pave the way for a 8GB, $299 model sometime next year.
"But Screed," you might be thinking, "$299 is cost of the low end regular iPod."
Indeed, is my reply, for now. But mayhaps we may see the 4th generation iPod debut with a higher cost to match the larger feature set. As I say, mayhaps...
Screed
I really hope that they increase the capacity sooner then that -- 1000 songs is a sweet spot, but I always rip my CDs at 320kbps, not the measly 128 that Apple is pushing.
I really love the form facter, and I'll buy a mini iPod when it gets a larger capacity drive.
Geez I hope they update them soon. Does anyone think it's likely they'll update at WWDC? I mean if not then, then some other time soon. I think I'm going to wait and have a card that refers to a mysterious surprise coming soon for my sister. Also going to get the iTrip to go with that since it looks real cool and she won't have to fuss with wires.
I would like to inject a little reality into this thread. CF cannot read/write, anywhere near the speed of a HardDrive, that's why microdrives exist.
As an experiment, I just shot 8 pictures with my Digital Rebel, roughly 18.5MB, popped the card into my belkin media reader, an hit transfer. Those 8 photos took 65seconds to transfer. I went into iTunes, and made a playlist of 4 songs that aren't on my iPod, those 4 songs were 19MB, I did the sync, and those 4 songs transfered in roughly 4 seconds. The CF card I'm using is a SanDisk Extreme 512MB(a fairly nice CF card, it's around $150 Retail), and it's roughly 13x slower than HD to HD transfer via Firewire. The Media Reader as far as I know is not a bottleneck. My dad just bought a Nikon D70 about 3 weeks ago, and also bought a media reader, and a 1 gig microdrive, after realizing how slow the CF transfered. He's told me that the speed difference between his CF and Microdrive was huge and he estimated that the MD was 15x faster. He was using a 40x lexarCF(I belive the sanDisk extreme is 66x).
If anybody want's to prove me wrong that would be great, but unless CF goes from 40x, 66x, 80x to 400x660x 800x, in the next couple of months, it's safe to say you won't be seeing a CF based iPod anytime soon.
I am not an expert, on CF or Microdrives, or anything else for that matter. I just see no evidence that CF could actually perform up to the standards that an iPod requires.
I truthfully don't know how it works belkin doesn't actually say anything about what type of connection it uses, but it's obviously not USB. Which leaves us with USB2, or Firewire. Either way it doesn't appear to be a bottleneck in the system. Sometime in the next week or so I'm planning on picking up the SanDisk FW media reader, that should shed a little more light on the subject.
I was just doing a bit of research on CF vs. Microdrives, I could only find comparisons with the 1GB IBM. Typically the 1GB 30-50 percent faster than most CF while writing data, there were quite a few CF's that were faster at reading, but for an iPod writing is the more important factor. I checked out the Hitachi Global Storage site, and Compared the specs for the 1GB vs the 4GB, according to the Hitachi site, the 4GB transfers data Roughly twice as fast as the 1GB.
None of the published data points to the MicroDrive being that much faster. In a lot of the CF data I was checking out though i noticed a lot of discrepancies between what the cards were marketed as vs real world performance Some cards that are marketed as 9MB/sec write 10MB/sec read, in real world tests with a FW card reader, were only writing at 1.7 reading at 2.4.
The more I look into this the more confusing it gets. To me it seems that CF speeds have been overhyped by the marketing people at almost every media manufacturer...
Hell my Sandisk Extreme card is rated at 10MB/sec read, and it's never even came close to that in the real world so far the fastest it's actually trasfered is .29MB a sec, how the hell does that work... Maybe i Just keep getting bad CF Cards or something. I personally have never seen a CF card that actually performs at the speed it's supposed to.
Comments
And, to that dude who's sister's birthday is coming up: you are aware that the waiting list on the current model is 3-4 weeks (or more), right? Better get a move on, 'cause updated are NOT going to happen in time!
How long before a 4GB card sells for under 500 USD ?
As soon as it reaches 8Gb (which may be a while I imagine) I'm dumping my current iPod and getting a mini.
But I also saw where a company called Kangaru released a 4GB USB Flash drive today....for $1,600! Looking at that and Matsu's item makes me hope that Apple doesn't switch to a Flash-based drive any time soon.
"But Screed," you might be thinking, "$299 is cost of the low end regular iPod."
Indeed, is my reply, for now. But mayhaps we may see the 4th generation iPod debut with a higher cost to match the larger feature set. As I say, mayhaps...
Screed
Originally posted by Michael Grey
I agree that the form factor of the mini is mighty appealing, and if/when it goes up to 8GB, I'll probably get one.
But I also saw where a company called Kangaru released a 4GB USB Flash drive today....for $1,600! Looking at that and Matsu's item makes me hope that Apple doesn't switch to a Flash-based drive any time soon.
Less than 2 years ago, 1-1.5GB could cost you about 1K. The news item I mentioned isn't so significant in it's own right, but with each new generation pushed the previous ceiling well down.
1GB cards are available for less than 200USD, and 2GB for just over 400.
It won't be long at all before 2GB cards cost less than 200 and 4GB moves into the 350-500 range.
To me a 2GB solid state iPod Mini looks pretty tempting. You take a hit in capacity, but get a huge boost in battery life, and durability, and absolutely skip free performance to boot!
Originally posted by sCreeD
Given that analysis that someone (Apple?) did about the capacity to hold ~1000 songs being a sweet spot, I feel that the mini's capacity won't go up soon but instead Apple wants to bring the 4GB model's price down to the super-magic $199 mark. This would crush flash-based player competitors and pave the way for a 8GB, $299 model sometime next year.
"But Screed," you might be thinking, "$299 is cost of the low end regular iPod."
Indeed, is my reply, for now. But mayhaps we may see the 4th generation iPod debut with a higher cost to match the larger feature set. As I say, mayhaps...
Screed
I really hope that they increase the capacity sooner then that -- 1000 songs is a sweet spot, but I always rip my CDs at 320kbps, not the measly 128 that Apple is pushing.
I really love the form facter, and I'll buy a mini iPod when it gets a larger capacity drive.
I haven't seen or heard of any 8GB CF hard drives, so I don't think there's an update coming any time soon.
I think the mini will stay as is until the holiday shopping season when they can hopefully drop the price to $199.
As an experiment, I just shot 8 pictures with my Digital Rebel, roughly 18.5MB, popped the card into my belkin media reader, an hit transfer. Those 8 photos took 65seconds to transfer. I went into iTunes, and made a playlist of 4 songs that aren't on my iPod, those 4 songs were 19MB, I did the sync, and those 4 songs transfered in roughly 4 seconds. The CF card I'm using is a SanDisk Extreme 512MB(a fairly nice CF card, it's around $150 Retail), and it's roughly 13x slower than HD to HD transfer via Firewire. The Media Reader as far as I know is not a bottleneck. My dad just bought a Nikon D70 about 3 weeks ago, and also bought a media reader, and a 1 gig microdrive, after realizing how slow the CF transfered. He's told me that the speed difference between his CF and Microdrive was huge and he estimated that the MD was 15x faster. He was using a 40x lexarCF(I belive the sanDisk extreme is 66x).
If anybody want's to prove me wrong that would be great, but unless CF goes from 40x, 66x, 80x to 400x660x 800x, in the next couple of months, it's safe to say you won't be seeing a CF based iPod anytime soon.
I am not an expert, on CF or Microdrives, or anything else for that matter. I just see no evidence that CF could actually perform up to the standards that an iPod requires.
Solar
Originally posted by Michael Grey
Is your Belkin card reader also Firewire?
I truthfully don't know how it works belkin doesn't actually say anything about what type of connection it uses, but it's obviously not USB. Which leaves us with USB2, or Firewire. Either way it doesn't appear to be a bottleneck in the system. Sometime in the next week or so I'm planning on picking up the SanDisk FW media reader, that should shed a little more light on the subject.
I was just doing a bit of research on CF vs. Microdrives, I could only find comparisons with the 1GB IBM. Typically the 1GB 30-50 percent faster than most CF while writing data, there were quite a few CF's that were faster at reading, but for an iPod writing is the more important factor. I checked out the Hitachi Global Storage site, and Compared the specs for the 1GB vs the 4GB, according to the Hitachi site, the 4GB transfers data Roughly twice as fast as the 1GB.
None of the published data points to the MicroDrive being that much faster. In a lot of the CF data I was checking out though i noticed a lot of discrepancies between what the cards were marketed as vs real world performance Some cards that are marketed as 9MB/sec write 10MB/sec read, in real world tests with a FW card reader, were only writing at 1.7 reading at 2.4.
The more I look into this the more confusing it gets. To me it seems that CF speeds have been overhyped by the marketing people at almost every media manufacturer...
Hell my Sandisk Extreme card is rated at 10MB/sec read, and it's never even came close to that in the real world so far the fastest it's actually trasfered is .29MB a sec, how the hell does that work... Maybe i Just keep getting bad CF Cards or something. I personally have never seen a CF card that actually performs at the speed it's supposed to.
Solar