Archos 705 WiFi media player up for pre-ordering
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 6th 2007 6:57AM
posted Nov 6th 2007 6:57AM
[Via PlayerBites]
Read - Archos 705 WiFi (80GB)
Read - Archos 705 WiFi (160GB)
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Caption for the pic:
"Do you see any Apple fanboys?"
"No. But I think I see some Zune fanboys over there."
:)
Ain't going anywhere near that thing until it supports 720p x264/AC3 MKVs.
Who uses that format other then the japanese? Seriously, I have to install player classic or VLC just to watch that junk, and for my money it doesn't look any better then a high bitrate divx or MP4 file.
Wait - you mean you CAN actually make a touch screen PMP with a hard drive and still have decent battery life? Apple lied to us! Noooooo!
I have both the Archos 605 Wifi and the iPod Touch - I dont think the Archos has come out of the cradle in 4 weeks, but I use the Touch almost daily.
Although the resolution is lower (and at these screen sizes 800 vs 480 is negligible), the iPod Touch is far more portable and the screen and colors are much brighter and it is much more watchable on the train.
The Archos has playback battery life on par with the touch but it does not *hold* a charge anywhere near as well - my Touch has never gone dead on me, but many times I have found my Archos dead.
None of the Archos content portal content is of any interest to me, the Wifi is *VERY* weak and flaky with remembering APs and passwords, the system and clumsy web browser takes a long time to start and the interface is slow and clumsy switching between apps compared to the Touch, which is effortless.
On paper the Archos looks good because of its storage and resolution, which is why I bought it, but for me its been one of those cases where you need to own both to determine whether its right for you.
Apple caught lying? Not the first time.
I think this is a case of "RTFM"
The Archos will go to sleep if it's on and you simply hit the power button. Sleep means that the OS is still loaded in to RAM and it's still using the battery. If you have it undocked for several days and it's sleeping, it'll die... just like any other device that sleeps.
To turn the device completely off you have to click on Settings > Power > "Power Device Completely Off." It's 3 quick taps from the main screen.
Reading the manual takes less time than complaining.
well they were caught lying as soon as they lied
the 604WiFi with the touchscreen released way back in 2006
I just picked up an Archos 605 Wifi 160GB and I LOVE it. The battery life for video is longer than an iPod touch, and the battery life for audio is SLIGHTLY shorter... Sound quality is heads and tails above all of the iPods I've owned as well (3G, 4G, 5G, 5.5G, and even a 30GB Zune)
It has a full version of Opera so I can rock Gmail and YouTube/Break/Google Video/etc. and that type of stuff with it. Resolution is 2X that of the iPod touch (800x480) so I can browse web pages without having to zoom in and pan all over. I REALLY like that. The two finger zoom trick on the touch is pretty slick, but panning all over to read text heavy sites really sucks. I'd rather have the resolution.
It supports DivX out of the box, which is awesome. WMA/WMV is a bonus too. (I'm an Ubuntu user, but some of the web shows I like are in WMA.)
There's a "Widgets" icon on the main screen that pops up a message saying that they're going to implement third party widget type applets some time this fall... like news, weather, stocks, and whatever else. I'm sure there will be some cool things released for that. Hopefully they open it up to third parties, as the devices run Linux so I'm sure it'd be easy to develop for.
Best portable player I've ever owned, easily. I would like to see a 705 in real life. The bigger screen would be great, but I can fit the 605 in my pocket.
keep the 605, the 705 is the same resolution but lower colors
like the Touch the 705 has only 262,000 colors, the 605 has 16.7 million
I saw this on sale in Best Buy, Canada like more than a week ago..
As much as I like this for the storage/price I couldn't imagine going bigger than my zen vision:w
I have a zen vision w but i think i am going to buy an archos 605/705 for the wifi/content portal
Not sure where you got the screen res. info but in speaking to Archos directly the res. is the same for the 605 and the 705 only difference is screen size.
I want to register with you so i can get one of your great offers and be able to injoy'em
Accept my thank words
Bilal Guedri