Microsoft to take on i-pod and PSP Simultaneously

Jason Phelan

It has been thought by many that productivity features should be built into high end hand held media players and game platforms. Project Argo, a code name with in Microsoft that refers to the ship from the Greek myth Jason and the Argonauts, will do all that and more. The wireless capable, game platform, mpeg player, PDA, internet terminal, communications device has already attracted hundreds of millions of dollars spent on R&D and marketing and rumors put this device on shelves by Christmas 06 in the US, probably more like Easter by the time it hits Australian shelves.

The devices video capability, divx no doubt, will offer Microsoft the opportunity to establish an ‘entertainment gateway’ similar to Apple and Sony. Argo will ‘default’ to services like ‘Urge’, Microsoft’s collaboration with MTV for music and will probably use Reuters pre-existing streaming service currently utilized in Windows Media Edition for news and current affairs. News portals like NineMSN and Seven Y will simply have to offer an alternative or cease to remain competitive, these type of services will now have to spend some of the fortune they make on those rather dubious 1900 number ‘Viewer Polls’ on infrastructure to support these new technologies.

Other benefits of the release of this type of computer for end users are numerous. Other manufacturers will have to create more competitive products : Apple may want to create the Newton II, a ‘Quicktime’ capable palmtop. Creative, and many other corporations could only profit my making these sort of devices. Benefits exist for ‘peripheral’ manufacturers also : these devices will support a whole new generation of micro devices: wi-fi transmitters, single chip modems, ‘low profile’ GPS and even chip based GPRS GSM cellular phones. Who knows what nix users will develop these devices into, but I’m sure it will be creative and elegant.
These new generation devices are a natural evolution of the PDA devices that we have seen for many years now. It would be a safe bet to predict most manufactures of these Mobile OS ready devices will either supersede their existing line with Argo OS capable versions, or add them to their range. This depends largely on Microsoft’s marketing . Don’t panic though, if you use one of these devices as the new generation of ‘Vista’ compliant devices are fully backwards compatible. In actual fact, Vista on the microcomputer evolutionary scale is so close to XP its almost laughable, some new ‘features’, inbuilt ‘DRMs’ and a new GUI does not a new operating system make.