Summary
One reviewer of the Olympus M:Robe, a combination digital music player and digital camera, is less than impressed with this little gizmo. The interface is clunky, the digital camera is almost useless and the touch-screen interface is often difficult to navigate, he explains. On top of that, there is no way to carry it comfortably, since it only comes with a drawstring bag. Designed to be sold to hipsters, it leaves a lot to be desired.
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http://news.com.com/Camera+adds+a+music+player+and+a+riddle/2100-1041_3-5582943.html
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Olympus must think its latest electronic gadget is going to be big, really big.
The company gave it a cryptic, hyper-hip name (M:Robe).
It gave the product its own Web site (olympusgroove.com), something it doesn't ordinarily do for an individual product.
And most startling of all, the company spent $4.8 million to show two M:Robe TV ads during the Super Bowl.
What pocket gizmo could possibly justify all of that fuss?
The M:Robe 500i is a hard-drive-based music player like Apple Computer's iPod.
The twist is that it's also a digital camera.
Olympus seems to be the first company to get it through its head that the iPod owes a huge part of its success to its elegant, sleek looks.
Its back panel is shiny white plastic like the iPod's front; its front panel features shiny metal like the iPod's chrome back--and it's just as easily marred by fingerprints.
Olympus seems to be aiming the M:Robe series at young, hip urban kids with spiky gelled hair.
As a result, there's an awful lot of wannabe hipness to the M:Robe's design, right down to the terminology.
If you had to break down the M:Robe's price, you'd probably find that $350 of it pays for the electronics, $50 is for the cool quotient and the rest goes to the Super Bowl ads.
For almost half-a-grand, you also might expect that the M:Robe would at least match its less expensive rivals in music player features--but no.
You can't create new playlists on the M:Robe, can't drag
music or photos onto it from a Microsoft Windows desktop and can't recharge the battery from a computer's USB connector.
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Sunday, February 27, 2005
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