mylo: My Life Online
No, I'm not talking about MY life online, this is SONY's latest and greatest geek gadget, mylo (My Life Online). This is the device that many of us wanted Apple to announce at yesterday's WWDC Keynote, yet it took Sony to actually give us what we wanted. This device has the potential to be another iPod with todays digital generation, but it's not quite there yet.
The mylo is a wireless broadband personal communicator. Unlike it's closest messaging competitor, the T-Mobile Sidekick, this device works on WiFi rather than a cell providers signal. That's good and bad. Good, you can do things like instant message your buddies, surf the web, and even make phone calls via Skype for free. The bad news, you can ONLY do it on WiFi. No WiFi and you are out of luck. From the initial looks of it, the mylo only supports messaging via Skype, Google Talk or Yahoo. So where's the AIM support? Got me, but you'd think that they would support one of the largest messaging networks on the planet. They also seem to have forgotten about MSN (both chat and email). That in itself is a major product-killer.
The mylo is also attempting to jump into the iPod space by providing you the ability to load up your music, photos and video. Unfortunately it falls WAY short of the iPod in these areas. The screen is smaller, it only plays a few music formats (Apple's AAC isn't one of them), and probably the single biggest drawback is Sony's insistence on utilizing their memory stick format, rather than a hard drive in the device. By using the memory sticks, they once again fail to provide adequate storage space for things like music and video, which is one of the biggest downfalls of the PSP. When will Sony learn? And to add insult to injury, if you want to take full advantage of being able to xfer video to your device, you need to pay more money for Sony's Image Converter 2 software. That's just about the most retarded move I have seen yet.
Another feature that just seems like a "Duh?" feature that is missing is a camera. They went this far, why stop by failing to provide camera and video chat support? The whole mylo concept seems great, and something that many of us would certainly want. Unfortunately, it seems as if the product has been rushed to market. It's missing apps and features that I think are essential to giving users that über geek device we are all seeking. I think that with a little more thought and some feature and application enhancements, Sony could have a real winner on their hands. If Sony's intent is to compete with the iPod, then they have some serious problems to overcome, formats and storage capacity for starters. If Sony wants this to be taken seriously as a video device, they need to also think about bumping that screen size to at least PSP levels, and empowering users to do this by providing the software tools in the box.
Am I being a little harsh on Sony? You betcha. As an early-adopter and super geek, this is what I want. I already have the iPod, a Treo, PSP and a Laptop. How much more crap do you think I am going to carry Sony? If you can develop the ultimate device that can replace the iPod, Treo and PSP and give me all of that in one device, you have hit the jackpot. Combine these features into a UX-180 with a phat hard drive, and you hit total geek nirvana. Until then, I guess we are all stuck wishing for the non-existant. For a more opinions and a first look video, check out Gizmodo and Engadget.
Technorati Tags: Cool Gear, Mobility, Portable Audio, Portable Devices
