The Flipster looks like a cell phone and features a 2.5-in. screen and an expansion slot on the side for Secure Digital (SD) and MultiMedia Memory (MMC) cards. Running Windows CE, and slightly smaller than a deck of cards, this portable multimedia device is one of the coolest, smallest personal entertainment devices we have seen. Its video playback skills are impressive, although a bit limited in the quality of its display. It supports advanced audio codec (AAC) and Windows Media Audio (WMA) formats.
The Flipster displays still digital images (JPG, BMP, GIF formats), has strong MP3 playback capabilities and comes with in a few video games, making it a pretty cool gadget. And if you try to justify this purchase as a business expense, it also includes a voice memo capability that lets you record and listen to voice messages. Think of the possibilities for your commute.
Flipster connects to your PC via USB and comes with Motion-I software that provides an Explorer-like interface that lets you drag and drop files to be downloaded to the device. In my tests, I used Flipster to watch music videos.
There are some drawbacks. The Flipster's support of MPEG-4 is limited to Windows Media formats and not actual MP4 files. It does, however, include a copy of Microsoft Windows Media Encoder to covert your files into WMV files. The conversion process is a bit complicated, but doable. And then there's the price: The 64M-byte version will cost you $399, while the 128M-byte version runs at about $450.
