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squeezing an electronic dictionary

squeezing an electronic dictionary
Fanny More  |  by www.engadget.com. All rights reserved. 6.11 | 20:41

Good old Sharp. They just can't be happy with themselves if they're not squeezing an electronic dictionary or other such educational tool into otherwise perfectly good portable media devices. Their latest efforts center around the new SP700, which sports a 4.

3-inch touchscreen, T-DMB receiver and SD card slot, and supports various forms of audio and video playback. There are also options for a 30GB HDD and GPS navigation, but with all of this education breathing down our necks, we wouldn't want to get close enough to find out how well it all holds together. Price?

Availability? You must be kidding!.

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  • [1]

Yeah, we also looked at that image and thought, 1) that handheld is hotastic, and 2) is that the freakish Hello Kitty fembot on the loose? For sure, that's the latest Linux-powered, Sharp Zaurus electronic dictionary in her/its hands which are so popular in countries like Korea and Japan. The CMP2000R features a 3.

5-inch touchscreen LCD, 1.3 megapixel camera, and SD/MMC slot allowing the device to function as an ebook reader and MP3 player when not helping you translate or learn another language. Unfortunately, the Sharp is only available in Korea for 341,000 won (about $360), and the fembot, well, she's yours for 5 days at a time you sick bastages.

[Via Akihabara News]...

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Chances are good that if you're reading this publication you already have a pretty decent grasp of English (probably better than ours, in fact), but for the native Japanese speaker looking to brush up on his/her foreign language skills, we can't think of a device better suited for the task than NHC's rather awkwardly-named Magic-Talker Color Personal Multi-lingual Assistant. Like previous offerings we've seen from Sharp, iRiver, and Franklin, the USB 2.

0-compatible Magic-Talker contains numerous dictionaries along with incorporating MP3 and WMA music playback functionality, but those goodies are just the tip of the iceberg. You're also getting tons of conversation tutorials -- complete with animated representations on the full color QVGA display -- and several practice tests for acing the TOEIC exam and impressing business colleagues with your copious English skillz. But that's not all, as this 256MB device (upgradable by 2GB with an SD card) also supports DivX and MPEG-4 video playback (with a TV out for.

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These vaguely defined "dictionary" devices never really caught on here in the States, but they're quite the thing in Japan, and it's not hard to figure out why with the specs on display in this Papyrus ASV Pocket Dictionary PW-N8100 from Sharp. The "ASV" stands for Advanced Super View, and refers to the 5.4-inch 480 x 272 color LCD.

The device of course does the dictionary thing and can help with English, Chinese and Korean, but the real fun comes with the audio and video playback. There's also a "brain age" game, the Nintendo version of which seems to have moved quite a few DS units. The dictionary also comes in a PW-A8410 monochrome version, but where's the fun in that?

[Via Akihabara]...

There was once a time when Sharp was a cutting-edge producer of PDAs, and the company's Zaurus was a marketleader. But as the market has matured (and declined), the Zaurusline has devolved into little more than a pocket dictionary, giving it something of a second life in countries likeJapan and Korea, where such products are still popular, but continuing to marginalize it as a portable computer.

Still,the latest Zaurus, the SL-C3200, does have a few nice features, including a 6GB hard drive, SD slot and 3.7-inch VGAtouchscreen display. But unless you need to practice for your TOEIC test, you probably won't exactly see this as amust-have device (though we hear that it runs Linux, so there's some hope for it).

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Sharpis floating another one of their half dictionary, half encyclopedia, all we don't know what to do with it becausewe aren't Japanese units, the Papyrus PW-9920. It doesn't have a color screen like its PW-N8000 brother, but the5.

4-inch QVGA screen seems plenty readable, and should make for some decent battery life. The 9920's claim to fame liesin the health and diet info Sharp has managed to squeeze in there, but we think we'll just keep on calling our motherfor that sort of info.[Via Tech Japan].

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Sharpcontinues to innundate the Korean market with electronicdictionaries, all the while adding more features borrowed from the world of PDAs, cellphones and PCs. The latest,the RD-CMP1000, includes an MP3 player, touchscreen display, 1.3 megapixel still/video camera, FM tuner and voicerecorder to the usual range of translation features, and ability to display English, Chinese, Japanese and Koreantext.

At about $365, it still seems a little steep for a glorified Websters, but at least you can still groove to BoAwhile you're hunting down some translations (such as lame pop music still knows no borders ).[Via Akihabara News]..

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Posted Dec 27th 2005 12:50PM by
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We're going totry hard not to rag on Sharp too much for continuing to pump out electronic dictionaries; weget that these are destined mainly for Asian markets, where customers (and language schools that charge extortionaryfees) still have some interest in dedicated devices, rather than PDAs or smartphones that can handle dictionarysoftware and a whole lot more.

So, we have to give Sharp at least some props for adding MP3 playback functions to itsFD-7000MP, SD-S90, and SD-M50 e-dictionaries, which are apparently targeted at the Korean market. The three models havethe usual dictionary functions, including the ability to hold up to 31 different dictionaries at once, and the high-endFD-7000MP also includes an e-book reader. But the most important feature built into all three is the ability to playback MP3s while using the dictionary.

So, now it's possible for users to listen to, say, Korean singer BoA, whilelooking up the translation of lame pop music knows no borders. ..

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style about the same time PDA memory capacities went above 128K, but apparently they're still big sellers in Japan, which is why Sharp is showing off the Papyrus PW-N8000, a dictionary that sports a 480x272 color display, an embedded version of the Encyclopedia Britannica and an SD card for viewing photos or loading additional data.

We're sure someone's going to buy this, but we'll stick to doing research online or slapping a card into our Treo if we really need something that works when we're offline (last time we checked, the Concise Britannica was about $30 on SD). We admit that we're impressed with the Sharp PW-C8000 dictionary's massive info access, using 71 different dictionaries and publications, including the Encyclopedia Britannica, which Sharp claims is the largest collection of data for a handheld electronic dictionary (hey, they said it, we're just blindly repeating it). But we can really do a TV to display data and pictures.

Do we really need to see dictionary data on the telly? Well, certainly not when Surreal Life's on. A new documentary series.


Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

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Experience the documentary first-hand.

Read more on by www.engadget.com. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Magic Talker, Encyclopedia Britannica, Papyrus Pw, Pocket Dictionary, Pw N8000, Akihabara News
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