Will we all be using pocket PC's in a few years?
Jan 23, 2009 at 7:01 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 5

Hanafuda

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I never gave the PC-as-source idea much thought, cuz I'm just a family guy with little disposable income for audio gear. And I'm pretty happy with my Zune, a decent pair of IME's (SF5Pros), and an ATH_ES7.

When I started considering a home setup, I looked into this PC-as-source deal, cuz I've got a LOT of FLAC files. Like DVD cakeboxes lined up in rows under my desk full of FLAC. I learned about DACs and what-not, and then realized that within a few years, we won't need ipods or zunes or whatever, any more. Real, practical pocket-sized PC's are coming, and when they hit we'll be able to run FLAC or whatever direct thru USB to a nice portable DAC & AMP and be grinning ear to ear, everywhere we go.

I'm talking something no larger than a Nintendo DS, with a hard drive of 500GB or more. Hopefully, it will not also be a phone. Just a PC, with wifi. And battery life at least as good as the best PMP's get now. I think something like this could be on the market in 3-5 years.

I guess I'm just stating the obvious. I'm probably also missing the obvious. For example, as someone who's over 40, I really can't understand why people want to put a music playback device together with a phone, but a lot of people want this, and it could totally fuggup my dream of a pocket PC-as-source.

I guess I'm just hoping the future has something better for us than iphones.
 
Jan 23, 2009 at 1:41 PM Post #3 of 5
Quote:

Originally Posted by Hanafuda /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I guess I'm just stating the obvious. I'm probably also missing the obvious. For example, as someone who's over 40, I really can't understand why people want to put a music playback device together with a phone, but a lot of people want this, and it could totally fuggup my dream of a pocket PC-as-source.

I guess I'm just hoping the future has something better for us than iphones.



Why? because folks are tired of carrying around 3 or 4 different electronic whizmos all the time. Consider the weight, space, and cost of battery, display, processor, and sound circuits which are common to all of them.

The pundits are predicting that in 10 years there pretty much won't be cell phones. It will all be just wireless internet and though it may "work" the same, mobile phone calls will really just be voice over IP (like skype or Vonage).

PDA's are already merged with phones (ie TREO.) From a user interface point of view, player programs on PDA's blow most all DAPs out of the water. You can enter text for searches, and draw the progress bar to direct access the middle of a long file. The major drawbacks at this point are battery life and storage is limited to what fits on an SD card (getting better all the time on that one).

Again, some are predicting that local storage won't be a big issue in the future as you will typically stream your music over wireless from either your own online storage or a subscription service like Rhapsody.
 
Jan 23, 2009 at 2:06 PM Post #4 of 5
Interesting post. As someone well over 40, I am very happy with my iPhone. It runs Mac OS X, and sometimes it is literally all I have with me. And in that case, my Westone 3s sound just great. When I can, I hook it up to Mustang. When I can, I feed the Mustang with my iMod. Etc. It's all a function of what's pragmatic for the situation. Sitting on a BART train, I don't see much point in having a digital-out on my iPhone to feed a DAC. But I'm still grinning. Now, would I like the option? You bet. Do I see it coming? Maybe. But I am not sure I see Apple doing that. Maybe, but I doubt seriously that many of the major players will see much ROI in digital outs for us HeadFiers. Not sure it fits with convergence and some of the other points other posters have made. Maybe it does though in a less obvious way.

Before the iPhone, I was not a huge fan of device convergence. I had bought and lived with a Pocket PC, several Treos, Handsprings, and devices from Nokia, Siemens, Sony-Ericsson, etc. But the iPhone, shortcomings and all, comes closer for me and millions of others, to getting it right. So, I expect we will continue to get more and better convergent devices. Fortunately, some of those will be iPhones. And maybe some will have digital out.
 
Jan 23, 2009 at 2:19 PM Post #5 of 5
Quote:

Originally Posted by Kicksonrt66 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Why? because folks are tired of carrying around 3 or 4 different electronic whizmos all the time. Consider the weight, space, and cost of battery, display, processor, and sound circuits which are common to all of them.


That's certainly true, but multi-function devices tend to suffer from the "Swiss-Army knife" effect. That is to say, they offer lots of functions, all of them poorly implemented.

I currently have the most basic cell phone you can buy. It cost $10, and it does one thing really well: it sends and receives voice calls. Sound is crisp, it doesn't drop calls, and it fits into the change pocket of my Levis.

Contrast that to the Treo I prevously had. Mediocre phone, very mediocre media player, and absolutely horrible Internet device. It cost an arm and a leg, and I was spending $120/month with Sprint (THIEVES!!!) to keep it live. Ummm....no thanks.

My PC is my PC. My phone is my phone. My music player is my music player. They are all small, and carrying them is not a burden to me. If someone comes up with a combo device that handles all of those functions as well as my separate device, I'll be there on day one, with bells on.

I ain't holding my breath, people.
 

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