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http://www.macnn.com/articles/02/10/21/sony.debuts/

Sony debuts new portable Combo drive

updated 08:55 am EDT, Mon October 21, 2002

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Sony today debuted a portable, battery-operated CD-RW and DVD-ROM drive that doubles as a stand-alone CD, MP3 and WAV player. The lightweight drive incorporates a Memory Stick media slot, a USB 2.0 interface, a 24x/10x/24x CD-RW mechanism, support for 8x DVD-ROM playback, an 8MB buffer, MP3 and WAV audio format decoding, a wired remote control with a backlit LCD display, and a software bundle (Retrospect Express, B's Recorder Gold burning software, ArcSoft's PhotoBase and PhotoStudio). It is due in November for under $300.

by MacNN Staff

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10/21, 09:09am | report spam | close Reply |
Hmmm.

Well, I suppose it is Mac news, although with a USB2 only interface, it will go very slooooooooow if I try to use it, and I can't imagine USB1.1 works for DVD viewing.

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10/21, 09:20am | report spam | close Reply |
FireWire

I'm truly confused as to why they did not put FireWire (i.Link) on this thing? Afterall, they stuck their lousy Memory Stick in it why not something else they have invested in.

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10/21, 09:52am | report spam | close Reply |
usb2.0

USB 2.0 is not slow, as to why they didn't add firewire to it, perhaps the number of actual computers worldwide with firefire isn't as much as with USB 2.0, or the potential of USB 2.0 is greater because it is used in more and more pc's everyday, which is a MUCH MUCH larger marketshare, therefore they are catering to the larger audience this way.

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10/21, 10:13am | report spam | close Reply |
re: USB 2.0

I was not meaning that USB2 is slow, just that I'm suprised they didn't put FW on it. They put the Memory Stick in it, which to me and probably many others is completely useless. I'd be curious to know as to how many people out there that have the Memory Stick and how many people have FW... and use them. I'd bet ya that FW out numbers them.

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10/21, 10:15am | report spam | close Reply |
once again...

the fruit has missed the boat. Face it, as technically wqonderful as FW is, it IS going to prove to be the Beta (as is vs. VHS) of computer interconnects. USB 2 is now going on just about all peripherals, and slowly but surely FW will disappear. Stuff that used to come with FW interfaces are a) going away, or b) going to be priced 20-50 dollars more than the same device w/USB 2. Digital video cameras will probably remain as FW devices for a while, but I suspect eventually those will go away as well. Face it, FW on digital cameras was mostly because Sony put them on them back when there just weren't much that you COULD hook them to. Obviousl;y, even Sony sees the hand-writing on the wall. Apple has the old blinders on.

The real point is that Cupertino is shunning USB2.. we'll probably have to wait long after they are commonly, by default included on ALL peecees. This is how Apple is "innovating" it's way out of the financial doldrums????

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10/21, 10:32am | report spam | close Reply |
RE: once again

man stfu, if I had half the stuff you are smoking maybe I could see your delusion as well.

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10/21, 11:08am | report spam | close Reply |
what a load of c***

firewire isnt going anywhere. get over it troll. usb2.0 may start to take over burners, but firewire still owns the high performance digital video arena.

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10/21, 12:49pm | report spam | close Reply |
DVD Playback

Does Apple's DVD Player support external drives (either FW or USB2 or 1.1)?

I thought it would only recognize an internal (built-in) drive.

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10/21, 03:42pm | report spam | close Reply |
???

why don't we have a firewire USB 1 & 2
conversion tool yet ?

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10/21, 03:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: DVD Playback

Apple's DVD Player will work with an external DVD drive *if* you are on a Mac that has a (supported) internal DVD drive.

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10/21, 07:16pm | report spam | close Reply |
Usb and processors

Doesn't usb leach on the processor where firewire doesn't; just the info your sending. Doesn't intel own or make usb chips. And finally M$ is scared of firewire because it would prove Apple does make inroads into something they can't own, so they will force it out.

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10/21, 08:45pm | report spam | close Reply |
FireWire rules

Once a technology makes it to the consumer world (Home entertainment devices) it has made it and is here to stay. If there is a Firewire choice, that's the one I'm buying. I have zero problems with firewire devices. USB, lets see... it's not working again, oh well, unplug it and plug it in again... There, that's better...

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10/21, 08:49pm | report spam | close Reply |
Sony SUCKS

Here they go again. They and you may call it innovation, but I call it taking what someone else invents and combining it with something else.

Oh look, a refrigerator toaster! A catsup bottle Cheese grater! A CD MP3 Wav DVD burner player thingy!

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10/22, 04:37am | report spam | close Reply |
Baaaaaah...

thats sound of sheep. The PC manufacturers/Intel will push USB2 off on the ignorant masses as the fastest standard. The basically ignorant general public will follow in spite of the fact that FW is a totally superior in every way shape and form. It's gonna happen and is already happening.

Apples marketing/promoting/consumer education on the benifits of FW over USB2 is basically non-existant, heck 90% of the sheep i mention it to don't even known what FIREWIRE is, some know what iLink is from reading it on the Sony boxes, but most all of them don't even know that you can get all types of devices equiped with it beyond camcorders, let alone why it's better than usb in theory and in reality.

So get ready, here comes the flock. And all in all it's going to be Apples fault that it happens.

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10/22, 08:43am | report spam | close Reply |
this is quite a shame

ok, sony didn't use fw wihich they helped invent and promote in the early days. now they bring out a device which is designated to have fw and what do they do? chicken out. that is why sony is NOT an inovator as people always mention. and it is also why they are a striving business - they smell that usb2 will be dominating pretty soon in this area.

why should usb2 dominate? why shouldn't they use usb2?

well, usb2 is not slow. however, it is also not fast at everything. it has high bursts, but that's it. exactly for this kind of content (streaming video, high-bandwidth, low system hit) fw will beat it out of the testing lab like h***. fw was optimized for this kind of content whereas usb2 is a much more general peripheral bus which evolved from a by far inferior design. usb2 also puts a load on the cpu where fw doesn't. remember when dma was new and people were talking about busses supporting dma disks? well, here we are again. go figure.

on the other hand i believe usb2 will slowly but surely make its way and finally put fw into a niche market (like digital video cams). why this? well, it's cheap, it's from intel and it gets massive support from ms. the exact same reasons that nowadays everybody works on x86 running windows instead of ppc running *nix/macosx
it doesn't matter if fw is better at dv than usb2. usb2 will make its way because the manufacturers of the 95% hardware base want it to. i'm not saying that fw will go away - not at all. the mac is still here, right? but, it could well be that less and less peripherals have fw instead using usb2, that fw stuff costs more and that fw stuff always will come out later.

yeah, it sucks. and yes i don't like it all - even more when i know that from a technical point of view it's wrong. i guess we should just try to get used to the fact that good solution promoted by apple don't always make it and start to be happy others did (like the gui os, laser printer, cdrom, death of floppies, risc for the desktop cpu, etc...).

i challenge you to debate and prove me wrong. ;)

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Sony debuts new portable Combo drive

updated 08:55 am EDT, Mon October 21, 2002

Hmmm.

FireWire

usb2.0

re: USB 2.0

once again...

RE: once again

what a load of c***

DVD Playback

???

Re: DVD Playback

Usb and processors

FireWire rules

Sony SUCKS

Baaaaaah...

this is quite a shame

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Sony debuts new portable Combo drive

updated 08:55 am EDT, Mon October 21, 2002

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Hmmm.

FireWire

usb2.0

re: USB 2.0

once again...

RE: once again

what a load of c***

DVD Playback

???

Re: DVD Playback

Usb and processors

FireWire rules

Sony SUCKS

Baaaaaah...

this is quite a shame

Login Here

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