With a little help
from manufacturing partner ZING, SanDisk on Monday unveiled the Sansa
Connect, which for all intents and purposes seems to be positioned by
the company as a direct competitor to the Microsoft Zune.
Designed for use in Wi-Fi hotspots (although it functions as a regular
MP3 player when there is no wireless signal to be found), the Connect
accesses online music services without a PC, and users can both stream
or download content. It has an internal speaker and the ability to
expand the internal 4 Gbytes of memory.
So can you send a song to a friend wirelessly, just like the Zune?
Well, because the Connect utilizes music services, the answer is yes.
If a customer is on the same music service as his buddy and wants to
send him the hottest new track, a Connect owner just needs to ping him
with the player, and the friend can rock out immediately to the new
song, SanDisk said. According to the company, a Connect is not even
required – Connect-to-PC connections are supported as well.
Furthermore, since it's within the confines of a music service, there
aren't any restrictions on how many times the track can be played.
There is also a photo playback feature, and the ability to download photos wirelessly as well.
What services can one use with Connect? That remains to be seen—SanDisk
representatives were very vague, probably indicating that legal issues
are still being worked out. which always means legal issues are still
being worked out. According to our own analysis, PC Magazine
predicts that the most likely candidates would be services SanDisk has
previously partnered with, including Rhapsody, MTV Urge, and Yahoo! And
yes, it'll work with Vista.
Article via Cnet
Pictures via Engadget
|
