GW-88

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J@pan Inc Magazine Presents:
G A D G E T W A T C H
The Hottest Gadgets and Gizmos from Japan
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Issue No. 88
Monday, January 27, 2003

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Name: Creative CNJBZ40F
Category: Portable Audio
Price: Open (but CNJBZ40F approx 53,800 yen, CNJBZ20U 43,800 yen)
Release date in Japan: end January 2003

The Gist: Another week, another batch of portable audio players. There
must be a pretty big market out there for these things, as Creative,
one of the foremost producers of the things, has just announced the
release of two new models of its "Nomad Jukebox Zen" player. The 40GB
version, the CNJBZ40F, has both USB and Firewire (sorry, IEEE1394)
sockets and, thanks to that huge capacity, can store and play up to
8,000 MP3, WMA and WAV files.

There's also a new 20-gig model available for around 10,000 yen less.
It doesn't have a firewire port but, in consolation, uses USB 2.0,
which is apparently up to 10 times faster than USB 1.1. Both players
are compatible with Windows 98 SE, Me, 2000 and XP, but the 40-gig
player is a limited edition, so if you want one, you'll have to be
quick.

More info: http://japan.creative.com/company/press/2003/030117-zen.asp

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Name: Seagrand CardRec RM-300M
Category: Portable Audio
Price: Open (but from approx. 23,000 yen)
Release date in Japan: January 31, 2003

The Gist: Now the market for portable audio players is getting kinda
fat -- and I don't mean phat -- with so many different machines out
there and not much to choose between them. Success, Seagrand reckons,
is to do things a little differently in order to make a mark, so cue
the snappily named "CardRec RM-300M," which strikes out for fame and
glory by being not just portable, but really, really portable. A
credit-card sized portable audio player, the RM-300M is the latest in
the "Rave Metal" series of players from the company whose previous
models in the line included one that looks just like a tape cassette
but can, cunningly, be connected to a PC, have your MP3 files
downloaded to it, then slotted straight into your car's tape player
for instant aural delight, thereby removing the need to upgrade the
stereo in your car. That's genius, but then so is the slim 300M,
because, with dimensions of 77ﾗ54ﾗ9.8mm, this little baby will slip
right into your pocketbook. How's that for convenience? The player's
MP3 encoder is based on the one found in that tape-cassette-shaped
forerunner, the RAVEMETAL RM200M, and will handle MP3, WMA and ADP
audio files.

The new credit-card player is available in three capacities: 128, 192
and 256MB flash-RAM-wise (users should get four hours of tunes onto
the largest of these) and is compatible with all flavors of Windows on
your PC. It has a line out socket so you can hook it up to an external
device (like a compatible CD player or hi-fi) and USB 1.1 for the
computer. And there's even a backlit LCD display on the thing --
usually the first feature to go as stuff like this is miniaturized.

More info: http://www.seagrand.co.jp/

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STAFF
Written by: Max Everingham (max@everingham.net)
Edited by: J@pan Inc editors (editors@japaninc.com)

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