MobileMag have a review of the Archos GMini 220, a hard disk MP3 player that looks to be a credible competitor to the iPod. Not quite got the edge on style, admittedly, but it makes up for it in features.
Now my question is this. If it’s a hard disk in a (small) box, and it’s got a fast USB 2 connection, is it bootable? If it is, doesn’t this mean that I can carry an entire personally-configured PC around in my pocket – I just plug into the USB port of the ‘host’ PC and it boots up my software? Which would effectively eliminate the need for a laptop.
I’ve seen the same thing done using flash-based pen drives, but unfortunately my software requirements are a bit more bloated than the 16Mb that I’ve got on my pendrive. But 20Gb I could live with quite happily, and 40Gb would be more than enough for both music and software.
Which then leads to another thought. Isn’t there a convergence trend here? So I carry around my unfeasibly large personal hard disk, complete with my software and my data and my music and everything else. Effectively it’s a personal area network server, and it’s Bluetooth-enabled, so it can talk to all my client devices. It’s got a PDA-style interface (or a detachable one that’s even smaller and slimmer). There’s a GSM chipset embedded so it can act as a mobile by talking to my headset. Naturally it’s also a music player, and there’s probably a multi-megapixel camera thrown in as well. Because it’s wireless, it can sit in an inside pocket, so the “interface” devices that I actually have to handle can be as small as they can get while still being usable. When I need a large screen and keyboard, I just “dock” into a base unit – and because it’s a USB device and the software is all plug-and-prayplay, any old base unit will do.
The questions are, where can I buy this, and if I can’t buy it, why not? Why isn’t Nokia embedding iPod-like functionality into their mobiles? Why isn’t Apple embedding GSM-like technology into their iPods? You’d expect that if someone somewhere was working on this kind of device it would have made it’s way onto the wow-look-at-this-cool-new-gadget weblogs by now, so why isn’t the convergence taking place?
