Next generation of PDAs?

Stephen Pair spair at advantive.com
Fri Sep 7 02:41:11 UTC 2001


I'm sure many people on this list have seen the relatively recent HDD
based MP3 players that have come into the market (if not:
http://www.pjbox.com).

What strikes me as incredible is that there hasn't appeared an entry in
the PDA market based on this concept (that I know of).  I would love to
have a device that has 20GB of secondary storage that fits into a shirt
pocket.  I would love it even more if it ran Squeak (of course) and
could:

- become the computational engine (or just storage) for your home
entertainment system (with that much storage you could store a good bit
of video, mp3s, video games, etc)
- interface with a automobile computer system
- serve all the traditional PDA functions
- interface with your home network (and automatically back itself up
overnight)
- plug into a desktop or laptop form factor as it's computational engine
(or it's storage)
- interface with a home and cellular wireless network

Does anyone know of such a device?  Seems like it could be a huge
market.  Current PDAs are too limited in terms of storage capacity and
it's a pain to keep them in sync.  The current devices only have about
12MB of DRAM, but I would imagine you could build something with 256MB
of DRAM or more and still keep it small.

- Stephen





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