News

Thanks to the vagaries of retail versus wholesale, you can now have a 4 GB CompactFlash microdrive for under $200. The normal retail price of this little gem is a whopping $500.

Go to Buy.com and search for Muvo2 4GB to find the Creative Muvo 4 GB MP3 player, priced at $198.82. You can disassemble the player by unscrewing the casing and extract a 4 GB Hitachi CompactFlash Type 2 Microdrive from inside. You may have to format the drive in your PocketPC with a utility like StorageTools or FlashFormat before it is usable.

Buy.com

Using a new, denser laying process for producing computer chips, Toshiba intends to begin offering portable electronics manufacturers customized chips that combine up to nine seperate functions into a single package. Combining the functions of several chips into one simplifies design and reduces the amount of space needed. Toshiba is offering developers a sample chip combining 48 MB flash memory, 16 MB RAM, 1 MB static-RAM, and 16 MB NAND ROM.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,114413,pg,1,00.asp

Siemens PocketPC Phone for $99 with AT&T contract

AT&T Wireless is offering a Siemens-branded SX56 PocketPC Phone for $99 with a two-year contract. Remember that this is after an instant rebate, not the put-it-in-the-mail-and-wait-two-months kind, so the PPC phone is $99 out the door. The SX56 is comparatively rather old and limited, but the price is hard to argue with.

http://www.attwireless.com/personal/products/phonedetails.jhtml?id=400158&titleNumber=8

TotalRemote 2.0 from Griffin

Griffin software's TotalRemote, a universal infrared remote contol for PocketPC, has hit version 2.0. Now included is support for CCF remote templates.

http://www.griffintechnology.com/software/software_totalremote.html