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Hands-on with Mattel's kiddie lineup
Mattel's booth had all sorts of goodies for the children and the childish, including their Kid-Tough FP3 Player, Hyper Scan console, Pixel Chix doodads, and Kid-Tough digital camera. The Hyper Scan console is an unabashed bid for the Pokemon set, mixing cheap 32-bit gaming CD-ROMs with RFID-based extortion collectable cards that extend the game functionality. The rest we've seen, but it all seemed to work as advertised. Peter was sort of digging on the FP3 player, but unfortunately Rhapsody sync is a no-go. Better luck next time, eh? To peep the rest of the pics, well, you know the drill: keep reading.
Archos 604 WiFi, in the flesh
We had a disappointing first turn at the Archos 604 WiFi, since the exhibition hall -- for a consumer tech gathering, mind you -- didn't have any WiFi internets to latch onto. So we didn't get to mess around in Opera or anything fun like that, but the player is still a plenty solid device, and the touch screen controls extend into the rest of the player's functionality quite well. Skipping around during live playback or skimming through a photo slideshow were both plenty responsive, and we didn't have much trouble getting at functions with our blunt finger tappings. As for the hardware itself, the unit has a definite heft, but were kind of liking the solid feel, and it really doesn't seem too bulky in comparison to its 4.3-inch, 480 x 272 screen. The model we played with wasn't quite a final version; Archos is going to add a bit to the bulge on the right side of the device for an improved antenna, and we're sure they'll have some other little tweaks before they're all ready to ship this out the door, but we're liking where this one is headed. Keep reading for the rest of the pics.