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Natural Born iPod mini Killer |
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 Well the most recent iPod-killer hopeful has been announced: it's Packard Bell's Pocket M@estro and it aims to compete with the iPod mini. Now the name might not be quite as terse as we Apple fans are used to, but hey, at least it has less syllables than the Dell Digital Jukebox. And the irreverent and wacky "@" symbol is a sign that Packard Bell is willing to take some chances in the portable music player war.
The specs are pretty decent too, as the 'lil guy will be able to play MP3 and WMA files, it has an FM radio, voice recorder, and a respectable-like battery life of 7 hours, and will be available in 5GB and 2.5 GB models (not shipping until September). Ok, all good so far, so what's it cost?
Well, £200 and £150 pounds for the 5GB and 2.5 GB models respectively. I'm pretty sure that's the symbol for the British pound, and a quick Google search and currency conversion later puts them at .... *clickety clack* ... $365 for the 5 gigger and $274 for the 'lil brudder 2.5 gig model.
Er, What?
Apple's own iPod mini is only $249 and it holds 4GB, is pretty, has Apple's world class ease-of-use, choice of colors, cool accessories, works with the world's leading online music store, yadda yadda yadda.
So what in the hell could possibly make the, ahem... Pocket M@estro (how do you pronounce an @ symbol?) cost so dang much?
Well, duhhhhh - obviously it's the nine buttons used to operate the thing! Button technology, while having made great strides in recent years, still ain't very cheap. But let's bust out the calculator and see how Packard Bell justifies their price.
Apple's iPod mini has four buttons and a scroll wheel, so let's just be fair and call it five. The M@estro's nine buttons minus the mini's five gives us a four button difference.
We take the M@estro's price ($365) minus the iPod mini's price ($249), which is $116. The M@estro has an extra GB of drive space, but the iPod mini has an extra hour of battery life, so some might call it a wash - but we'll be kind (as well as make the math easy) and subtract $16. $100 divided by the four button difference is $25 a button. So for $100 bucks more you get four extra buttons at the low, low price of only $25 smackers each!!! What a bah-gain!
With such a deal we imagine the pre-order list will have over 10,000 people on it! Or at least maybe 10 people.
Minus the 0.
With a negative sign in front of it. |
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August 12 2004, 5:26 PM EDT, by
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Comments:
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| DJ-LC |
8/12/04, 6:00 PM EDT |
it's....so...UGLY (the Packard Bell thingy...)
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| iKen |
8/12/04, 7:44 PM EDT |
It looks like they took an iPod and beat the hell out of it with the ugly stick, and then again with the complicated-functionaliy stick and charged people for the trouble.
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| iKen |
8/12/04, 7:46 PM EDT |
That made more sense in my head....
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| Bill Palmer |
8/13/04, 12:01 AM EDT |
I'm pretty sure that it's not an ipod knockoff, but in fact a Tic-Tac-Toe machine. I mean, think about it...nine buttons in a square, three across and three down...dude, I know Tic-Tac-Toe when I see it.
I only wish they'd had Tic-Tac-Toe machines like this one when I was growing up. I would gladly have paid $365 for a device that could store five gigabytes of Tic-Tac-Toe games.
Packard-Bell, where were you back then?
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| DJ-LC |
8/13/04, 12:01 AM EDT |
K, that actually DID make since...
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| itsamac |
8/13/04, 12:47 AM EDT |
i like the ads on that site more then half of them are for the iPod
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| moiety5 |
8/13/04, 1:33 AM EDT |
Hey, 2 Guys beat Mac Daily news to the punch on this story.
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| Mozfan |
8/13/04, 1:46 AM EDT |
Hey Jonahan,
That's really funny. I laughed so hard. Thanks for the joke. Seems like a lot of work to make a web page for the link and all, but well worth the extra effort. For a minute I almost thought PB was stupid enough to throw that ugly expensive thing at the mini.
For a minute...
~M
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| Pete |
8/13/04, 11:05 AM EDT |
I thought Packard Bell was out of business. I owned one of their Winblows PC's a long time ago...what a piece of junk. I would never buy anything with the Packard Bell name on it ever again. The iPod rules. I've owned several other players and they pale in comparison.
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| A. Nonymous |
8/13/04, 11:06 AM EDT |
The price comparision might not be valid because it's not clear if the UK price includes VAT (Value Added Tax) or not, and that's on the order of 17.5 percent.
Better to compare the iPod mini's UK price with the PB player (but probably not worth the effort).
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| Jonahan |
8/13/04, 11:11 AM EDT |
Mmmm.... good point ... looks like it's £179 at the apple store ... but that's too much math for me right now, I think I blew a gasket yesterday ;)
Mozfan - thanks!
iKen - that totally made sense. You only don't make sense when you think you're making sense - does that make sense?
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| sweetjimmyhugs |
8/13/04, 1:13 PM EDT |
At least it's better looking than the girl that was hitting on me last Friday... No wait, it's not.
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| Xander |
8/14/04, 9:33 AM EDT |
You people here are BEYOND foolish. The writers that is.
Rather than thinking the howle world reovlves around you country, which it doesn't, think of the others places.
You know, the iPod Mini is ~£180 in the UK. And for only £20 more you can get 5gigs.
Now THINK before you write. This is normally a good site as well
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| WindozeBloze |
8/15/04, 8:42 AM EDT |
Wow! That Packard Bell display looks VERY legible! What a FUGLY looking design! It just confirms for me that the overwhelming majority of designers at these other companies are BRAIN DEAD! They also don't seem to understand why the iPods don't include an FM tuner. Why provide an avenue for potentially poor sound (due to the vagaries of FM reception) when you can have virtually perfect sound all of the time (limited only by what you upload to it) with an iPod? And... is that an asinine name or what? Pocket M@estro... really rolls of the tongue! BARF!
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| Angry Mob |
8/15/04, 10:03 PM EDT |
I don't mean to kick a Brit in the mouth but I think you should think before YOU write, Xander.
First off, the WHOLE world does revolve around us. The quicker you learn that, the better.
Secondly, that... thing looks like an old television remote circa 1950. If you want to spend your hard earned British Pounds on a piece of crap that won't even work with THE MOST POPULAR MUSIC DOWNLOAD SERVICE that's your problem.
Finally, learn to spell. Your country invented the language, the least you could do is learn how to spell simple words like "whole" and "revolves.
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| Jonahan |
8/16/04, 2:55 PM EDT |
W00t w00t, I gots ta give it up for the angry Mob that's got my back, yo.
But seriously, I just checked my math again (which really harshes my melon) and it's right. Yes, £20 more for the M@estro (or about US$38) gets you 1 more GB, some extra buttons, and whoollllllle buncha uglyness. but whatever monetary amount you would be saving by getting the iPod mini, it seems to me to be the way to go.
I will be prepared to eat crow the minute there is a PocketM@estro user group and/or fan site.
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