Saturday, October 30, 2004

Gateway is joining the band of computer makers selling hard-drive-based digital audio players, but its riff adds miniaturization and a color screen for displaying photos.

The company on Thursday announced its $249.99 Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox player, which has a 4GB capacity, a 1.6-inch display and a rechargeable battery that can be replaced.

The player can connect to PCs and directly to digital cameras over a USB 2.0 port. Photos can be viewed individually or in a slide show.

Gateway is taking preorders and will begin selling the device in mid-November. The MP3 Photo Jukebox could be in retail stores as soon as the first quarter of 2005, Gateway said.

The new iPod Photo is bigger than Gateway's device but also have much higher storage capacities--40GB and 60GB--as well as [much] higher prices, $499 and $599.

The Photo Jukebox uses Microsoft's "Plays for sure" standard and is compatible with Media Player 10 ... Gateway's player can be used with other music services, such as MusicMatch, but it comes with a prepaid month with access to the Napster To Go music service ... The support for Napster's subscription service will be one of the early implementations of Microsoft's new "Janus" digital rights management technology, which allows subscribers to all-you-can-eat monthly services take music to portable devices.