pma430: Fri Jun 8 19:51:00 2007

Fri Jun 8 19:51:00 2007

For a trip in Europe where I really won't be working, and want to be camera-oriented and not laptop-anchored, I'm considering a travel "image tank" that isn't the Thinkpad.

My use cases are clearer than usual:

The backup case is, actually, covered by the market in a few ways:

The upload and caption cases are more special. The productized versions seem to amount to "hook the image-tank hard drive to a real computer and do everything there" where "real computer" might be something small like the Oqo, or the Kohjinsha SA100. The more hackerly approach is to notice that anything with USB Host (which is must have to talk to the camera) should also be able to talk to a USB Keyboard, and a USB wifi or bluetooth dongle... however, except for OpenPMA and the old Archos PMA430, none of the iPod hacks seem to be moving in this direction.

Another approach is to find a phone that can talk to the drive, and run code; none of the Nokias have USB host, in fact only the FIC1973 is even alleged to have (unpowered) USB host, and it'll probably be next year before I can actually use one of those... and the N770/N800 have a simliar port, and would provide wireless and bluetooth, but would still be a "third device" (lacking any real local storage and not being a phone.)

(Third device: I can totally justify wearing a phone. I can also (as a geek :-) justify wearing another device that provides different value, typically a PDA. A third device starts moving over the line into cumbersome, and needs a lot more justification, or needs to be very small...)

Footnotes: