iPod Photo — Too Expensive?

The new Apple iPod Photo adds nice features to a great product. But $600 for a digital music player? Seems excessive to me. A color screen should have been added to all iPods as a natural evolution of the product, rather than releasing a separate, premium priced product. I’m sure it will sell like crazy, though.

If I were going to buy an iPod, it would be a mini. Its tiny size is nearly perfect. But then, my pda actually does a good job with mp3 files, so I don’t need a stand-alone player. And I can view photos on it, just like the new iPod.

5 Gigabytes in your pocket

Seagate announced a new portable hard drive earlier this week . The “Pocket Hard Drive” delivers five GB of space (4.66 GB effectively) in a small sorm factor by using a 2.5-inch harddrive.

Tom’s Hardware takes an early look.

Home defibrillator

The first over-the-counter consumer defibrillator is available from Amazon. Cool technology, if you need it and can afford it — $1,495.

JuiceBox

I was born 20 years too early. One of the hot toys this Christmas is sure to be the Juice Box personal media player. It’s an awesome value at around $60. I played with one tonight, and the sound and video quality are good. It plays cartridges instead of (fragile) discs like the VideoNow Color. Having Yu-Gi-Oh! carts available should ensure its success among a certain demographic. In other words, my son wants one.

You can also add an SD memory card–up to 512mb–for playing MP3 files and viewing images.

Where were these when I was ten?

Treo 650

ZDNet (UK) has an early look at the Treo 650 smart phone. It looks like this phone will be truly awesome. Yes, and expensive.

Gateway DVD Player/Recorder – Good Price

With DVD burning technology dropping dramatically in price, it seems the DVD player/recorder may finally be set to replace the VCR. Gateway s AR-230 player/recorder can be bought on the company s web site for an amazing $149.99, and supports recording on DVD+R and DVD+RW (rewritable) disks. I personally prefer the DVD-R / DVD-RW standard, which has better compatibility with older players, but this is still a great price. And disks of either format should play fine on any fairly new DVD player.

Recording episodes of Smallville or Charmed directly onto DVD is cool enough, but what I really like is the idea of converting VHS tapes to DVD. Just plug any old VCR (even that old BetaMax) into the DVD recorder and you re ready to go. All those Magnum P.I. episodes are saved from a slow death as your discount-store tapes gradually wear out.

With different quality settings, the Gateway recorder can get up to 6 hours of video onto a 4.7 GB DVD. And a FireWire port means you can even record directly from your digital video camcorder.

This isn t a new product, having originally been released back in, 2003. But it s an awesome price point. And not just for this DVD recorder, but for any DVD recorder. If you find a decent quality DVD recorder/player for less money, be sure to let me know.

XM Radio online

XM Radio is offering a 3 day trial of their new service, XM Radio Online. My favorite channel, Sonic Theater, isn’t there, but most of their other channels are. You can add the service to an existing XM account for $3.99 a month. Or get the online service for $7.99 a month even if you don’t have an XM radio. I would definitely add this to my XM account if Sonic Theater was offered (a few channels aren’t available online due to internet performance rights issues).

New Palm T5 Sneak Peak

Forbes offers a brief look at the new Palm T5. The new pda doesn’t look very innovative (in fact, it looks a lot look like Palm’s budget business pda, the Tungsten E), but a lot about the T5 is innovative. For example, ram is upped to 256 mb, and it’s all non-volatile flash memory. And there is now drag and drop file moving to and from the Palm.