Maybe this is crazy, but wouldn't it be great if Nullsoft would make a hardware version of WinAmp?? Preferably a player that would support the same input plug-ins that the software version does.

That should be technically possible, right? And then support for just about every format would be available in a hardware player. Seems too obvious of a solution so I guess there's some reason why it wouldn't work.

Seemed obvious to me a couple of years ago, too! The closest thing I ever got to an explanation of why it wouldn't work was that the internal processes of Winamp were tied to the Intel processor, and that most portable hardware devices used an Arm processor (or something other than Intel). However, by early next year this may be a moot point; an issue or two ago PC Magazine mentioned a scheduled pocket-sized PC which would use a 1 GHz PIII, have a 10 Gb hard-drive, and run the full Windows XP operating system. If it comes to fruition, this could easily be configured as a hardware Winamp player... which would even include video support. (Yes, I know Winamp 3 has this by default. The link is for a Winamp 2 plugin, which does better than any of the others I've seen. Everyone else may have already known about it, but I thought I'd include it for anyone who didn't.)

- M.

Seems I mis-remembered; the processor in the OQO Ultra-Personal Computer is a Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 (1 GHz), but it still runs the full version of Windows XP, and thus any applications which run on that system. Other than that, it has a 10 or 20 Gb HD, 256 Mb RAM, a 4-inch VGA touchscreen color display (a separate keyboard and monitor may be added), built-in 802.11b and Bluetooth, FireWire, USB, audio-out and microphone/line-in. All in a 9 ounce box that measures 4.1 x 2.9 x 0.9 inches, inclusive.

- M.

Yeah, I didn't think about the processor/OS issues. Still seems like they could write a "light-weight" WinAmp for some ARM processor that supports a similar plug-in interface. Oh well...

You're probably right, when the pocket PC's get small enough and cheap enough, those will serve the purpose.

"hardware winamp" would basically HAVE to be a PC running some sort of windows OS (or windows OS emulator) and software Winamp; Winamp v2.x "plugin interface" is completely tied to windows OS and available plugin binaries are only for x86 CPUs.