Philips makes life better for the joggers
One of the main problems with hard disk music players is that you can’t run with them (well, that’s not actually a problem for us, but it is for sporty types who prefer jogging to blogging). The solution to this has traditionally been to use the Flash memory-based players instead. But their problem is that they’ve usually only got enough memory to get you round the park once, obliging you to update the tracklist constantly, or put up with the same songs day in day out. Well, now Philips reckons it’s come up with a solution to both these problems. Instead of relying on Flash-based systems, the company is working on a hard disk player that won’t jump. Todd Selwyn, market manager for Philips audio, explains: “it will work by using a buffer system. The player will sample an hour’s worth of music and store it in the buffer.” The actual hard disk itself will then shut down and stop spinning, which means it won’t be able to jump.
Although there’s no definite details on when will be available, Philips has indicated that it’s likely to be sometime next year. We’re guessing it will be around 2-5GB rather than a larger 20GB player. Philips has already shown its concern for the jogging section of society by teaming up with Nike to make a Bluetooth MP3 Pedometer (pictured), and it looks as though the hard drive player will be in conjunction with Nike as well.
