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TECHNOLOGY BREAKDOWN: Dispatches From The Wireless World – Part 1
*Unless you've been hiding out under a rock for the last couple of years, it is no surprise that anything with the word “wireless” in it gets the same kind of media attention today that dot-com ventures got a few years ago during the “Internet boom”. The major difference between the wireless boom and the “dot-bomb” craze is that there is actually some profit potential in many of the emerging wireless products and associated ventures making news. In an effort to rebound from the dismal reception the (still) forthcoming Playstation 3 (PS3) got at the E3 show this year, Sony today (August 8, 2006) announced the release of a new wireless personal media player (PMP – yeah, I know but let's not go there) called “Mylo”, which stands for “my life online”. Sony's Mylo device looks a lot like a PSP, but while it is not being marketed as a game console, it does allow internet access, so it is fair to assume that you could actually use it on some to play games on certain internet game sites. What Mylo is intended for however, is to provide a wireless digital entertainment alternative to laptops by leveraging the popularity of wireless hot spots.
To this end, the device comes loaded with JiWire's hotspot directory, which lists over 20,000 open hotspots across the U.S. Like the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, the device is (obviously) WiFi ready and works over any 802.11b compatible wireless network. The Mylo is designed to support internet communications (instant messaging and email) with a full keyboard that is hidden underneath its 2.4 inch display. In addition to the aforementioned text based communications modes, Mylo also can be used for voice communications by using Skype (the device comes with a Skype client loaded). Mylo's feature set is rounded out with the expected multimedia support for MP3, WMA and Atrac audio, as well as MPEG-4 video. Last summer, when I wrote about the video iPod and gave my opinion about how the ideal personal media player should be configured, apparently someone at Sony was listening because the Mylo addresses just about all of those issues.
First, the Mylo comes loaded with a meaningful amount of memory. While the Nokia 770 can be upgraded from its factory default 64 megabyte (MB) memory by using a 1 gigabyte (GB) memory card, Mylo comes with 1 GB of memory built in. Why is that significant you ask? Well, consider that the average MP3 file uses in the neighborhood of 5MB, 64 MB will barely hold a CD's worth of audio, and with that little storage you can't even think about putting video on a Nokia 770 without upgrading. For the same price, the Mylo gives you roughly 16 times the storage – and that is just the built-in storage; you can bump up the storage by adding a Memory Stick card. The Mylo can play content stored either on its internal memory or directly from the Memory Stick.
Second, the Mylo, like the Nokia 770 circumvents the problems associated with using an micro hard drive for storage by using Flash memory (a la the iPod nano). My biggest winge with the hard drive based iPod is that its internal hard drive is formatted with as a FAT filesystem. FAT is a compact filesystem, but it also has reliability problems; that is why Microsoft moved from FAT to NTFS a long time ago.
About the only thing I wish was different with the Mylo is the size of its screen. The 2.4 inch display is just too small for watching a movie while I'm on an airplane. The Nokia 770 sports a 4.3 inch display and the Zen Vision player from Creative Labs comes with a 3.7 inch display. The Zen Vision, however, does not support wireless communications, which I view as a big liability. While the Zen Vision does have a Compact Flash (CF) slot, and you could attach a CF WiFi card to the device, you would still have to modify the device to support wireless communications. With all three of these devices selling at the same price point (about $350), the lack of wireless communications is a significant drawback.
Next week, I'll move from the devices and we'll look at what the impact of these emerging next generation devices will have in light of such things as the emergence of municipal wireless networks and the entrance of cable and satellite companies into the wireless communications markets. By the way, with Christmas only 135 days away, guess what's on my list to Santa?
Russell de Pina is a Principal for n2active, a technology consulting firm located in Houston, TX and Long Beach, CA. Russell can be reached by email at rdepina@n2active.com
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