Among the most fascinating new types of gadgets on the market are portable multimedia devices. These devices take advantage of computer technology in order to provide you with a complete entertainment experience that you can take with you just about anywhere. These devices are also called portable video devices and portable media devices. They allow you to listen to digital music, view digital photographs, and watch
video all on a built in color LCD screen or on a full sized TV screen if one is available. These devices include the video iPod from Apple, the Zune from Microsoft, and the PocketDish from Dish Network among other lesser known brands. Now there’s a new type of gadget of this ilk called the Archos 704 WiFi. Archos is a French company that has always produced innovative new portable media products, and this latest iteration definitely upholds that tradition. The Archos 704 WiFi is the size of a slim paperback book and dominated by a (relatively) huge LCD screen. This LCD screen produces rich colors and is sensitive to touch, which goes a long way toward offsetting the fact that the huge screen doesn’t leave room on the face of the unit for much in the way of buttons or other controls.
Like other models of these gadgets, the Archos 704 WiFi can play video, play digital music, and be used to view digital photos, but the inclusion of wireless capabilities (as the name implies) takes it far beyond those simple entertainment options. Because Archos has chosen to include that kind of connectivity the Archos 704 WiFi is also capable of surfing the Internet and checking email. This is made easier by the inclusion of the touch screen feature in order to perform both functions.
The fact that the unit contains a large 80 gigabyte hard drive allows it to hold plenty of media which can be downloaded easily from a computer. With the purchase of a docking station for an extra one hundred dollars the Archos 704 WiFi can also be used as a digital video recorder that can either play the recorded video back on your full sized TV set or on its own screen.
While a lot of video will fit on an 80 gigabyte hard drive, the Archos 704 WiFi can’t really do justice to all of that storage capacity because of the fact that its battery only supplies enough juice for about an hour of video. (Depending on how the video is stored eighty gigabytes of hard drive space should translate into at least seventy hours of video!) This limited battery life puts the Archos 704 WiFi at a major disadvantage when compared to other portable video devices which have batteries that will last several hours while playing video. In fact, greater battery life is one of the things that theoretically should give portable media devices an advantage over laptop computers which perform many of the same functions, albeit on a bigger screen and in a bulkier casing. But with plenty of laptop computers on the market that have greater battery lives for playing video, the Archos 704 WiFi definitely isn’t a better by than they are according to that standard.
Another advantage that portable media devices have had over laptop computers is price. Most portable media devices are significantly cheaper than laptop computers, but with a price tag of almost five hundred and fifty dollars, the Archos 704 WiFi definitely doesn’t fit into that category. Especially when you consider the fact that the docking station that allows digital video recording costs an extra one hundred dollars, and software that facilitates digital video recording will be included on just about any new laptop computer (that will cost around six hundred dollars) the Archos 704 WiFi really doesn’t look like a good deal by comparison.
These shortcomings and the high price largely negate a lot of the advantages of portable devices in general, but the Archos 704 WiFi still has the advantage of more compact size when compared to laptop computers.
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