Want a hard drive based, wi-fi enabled Mp3 player but, would sooner sell your mortal soul than buy a Zune from that Bill Gates guy? All hope is not lost.This new player comes from an unlikely source, AOL (parent company of this blog) and combines iPod-esque looks (well, kinda.. 'cept, what's up with those buttons?) with a 30GB hard drive, PlaysForSure playback, Wi-fi, bluetooth headphone support and the ability to listen to streaming music while in range of an 802.11g network.
The device also plays MPG4 and WMV video files, and, get this, is Linux based. Sure, you might not spend long nights writing new widgets and figuring out better things you can do with the built in Wi-fi but, someone will.. and when they're done, they'll probably release the source code. No word yet on how easy or hard software tinkering is on the device.
You'll have to wait though. The device won't be available until Q2 or even Q3 of this year, and no pricing information is available as of yet.
1. yay first comment u probably will have to use horrible crapware to get music onto it it probably will not work well with xp the battery life will suck who needs wifi get an iriver the are much better longer lasting player can play flash video pics txt mp3 drmed wmas asf ogg and fm has mike line record tuner they play everything you need and cost lees than an ipod or zune
you should be talking about iriver they have all this in the works to but their players arnt crippled like these will be consider apple no wma microsoft sune nowma aol AOL
Posted at 12:32PM on Jan 11th 2007 by ben graff