Sexy and Stupid

Kenwood have officially unveiled their latest DAP in the form of the Kenwood MG-F500 which is very much an entry level digital audio player which will impress few with its somewhat limited audio file format support and its lack of video playback capabilities (then again, this is a DAP as opposed to a PMP so video should hardly be expected).

The Kenwood MG-F500 comes with a 2” color TFT display and, whilst the internal storage capacities on offer are pretty paltry – the MG-F500 will be offered up in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB models only – its saving grace, in this respect at least, is that it also comes with an onboard microSD/SDHC slot allowing you to add additional capacity on and over the limited capacity on offer.

In terms of audio file support, however, the Kenwood MG-F500 fails to impress as you’re looking at the device supporting MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV audio file formats only – no OGG, no AAC no FLAC or APE. That’s said, where the Kenwood MG-F500 does manage to impress is in terms of its endurance as it’ll purportedly run for a fairly impressive 50 hours on a single charge.

Kenwood have not offered any indication concerning the MG-F500’s pricing for any of the three variants to be offered at this juncture but, with the above in mind, its reasonable to assume that we’re looking at it coming in at especially budget-friendly price points (possibly sub $100?).

Whilst details at this stage are fairly thin on the ground, we do, at least, have some details confirmed regarding the 2011 Intel Atom CPU, which is set to succeed the up and coming Pine Trail Atom, which offers a tantalising insight as to where the future of Intel’s highly successful Atom processor, which is under the hood of just about every netbook and nettop currently available, is headed.

The new 2011 Intel Atom, which, is codenamed “Cedarview” whilst, as a platform, goes by the codename “Cedar Trail”, is reported to be based on a 32 nanometer manufacturing process and is said to be set to support DirectX 10 3D graphics processing as well as offering HD video output whilst additionally offering up dual digital output that’s see both DisplayPort and HDMI, as well as older formats, suitably catered for.

Further highlights will include a new memory controller offering DDR3 memory support (specifically DDR3 1066 – as catered for by Intel’s Core i7 CPU).
The new Atom Cedar Trail platform is expected to hit in 2011 though its already set to be replaced by the next iteration, which is set to utilise a 22 nanometer manufacturing process, sometime in 2013 – but, as yet, there’s no specific details as to what that’ll bring to the table.