I have the Squeezebox V2 and I agree with Mitch that the beautiful VFD screen is really enough. I could not justify upgrading basically just to see the album art and a few more lines of info. Regarding setup, I had no trouble with the wireless connection or using Internet radio, but I did have trouble getting the server to work, which is what you need to stream your own mp3s. Turned out it was my Windows network, not the Squeezebox. But it did take quite a bit of effort to finally get it working. Overall, I love this gadget. And i don't agree that it's not useful for one user/one room. The UI is very intuitive, the menus can be reconfigured via a web interface, and the remote makes browsing your music library or radio stations simple and efficient, which is just what you want when sitting in a comfy chair on the other side of the room. And BTW, the Squeezebox uses very high quality DACs, much better than an ipod or other mp3 player, so the sound quality is excellent.
No optical zoom? What about auto-focos? Kinda' mandatory for moving pictures, don't you think? Sanyo Xacti might be a better choice for low-cost hd vid cam.
I seriously doubt that any one person or company can create a universal robot cognition engine that's particularly useful. The state-of-the-art research is going on all over the world. What some enterprising organization ought to do is seek out best-of-bread solutions from all the various research institutions and put them together in a common software framework. Licensing might prove to be complicated, but at least you'd have a decent starting point for developing our robot overlords of the future.
The MX400 is actually a pretty nice MP3 player, though it's a bit dated. (Perhaps that's why they added the VoIP feature, to snazz it up.) PROS: very nice flash-basd GUI. CONS: maxes out at 2GB flash (pretty measely by today's standards; 4GB should be the min). And, while it does have an SD card slot, if you notice in the picture, it STICKS OUT the top--that's right, the card doesn't actually go all the way inside the unit. Very strange design.
"I am trying to configure out a really dumbed down and intuitive PC for my grandmother. She recently had a stroke and while she is under my care I would like to repurpose a laptop for her to surf and email her children. Anyone have any experience with what input devices and UI's are really understandable for the over 80 crowd?"
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