A hot new Linux PXA

The coolest Linux product I saw at CES 2005 (the giant Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- for more, see Linux For Suits on Page X) was the new Archos PMA430 "Pocket Media Assistant". (Since you can stick just about any noun you want between "Personal" and "Assistant", let's call it a PXA.) It's less than an inch thick, 3.1 inches wide, 4.9 inches long and just under 10 ounces.

Since it's Linux, open source, and a member of nobody's media management silo, it's free to do all kinds of stuff that Apple, Sony and other CE handheld makers with lock-in agendas will never support on their own devices. For example, it will record digital audio as well as play it back (which it can do in .ogg as well as .mp3 and other formats). It will record and play back digital video (MPEG-4 SP on a 3.5" 320x240 screen). It's a full-featured PDA (using Qtopia software) and photo viewer with a 30GB hard drive that also serves as a peripheral storage volume through USB 2 or USB 1. It has 10 hours of battery live playing audio and about half that playing video. It runs games. It has built-in Wi-Fi and an Opera browser. Best of all, it's open to anything written for its Linux OS. To that end, the company plans to have an SDK (software development kit) released by the time you read this.

-- Doc Searls