Intel gets musical on yo' ass

FOR A COMPANY fabled for being about as hip as Douglas Bader, Intel occasionally contrives to surprise - nay, amaze. There's the cute microscope; the wacky Sound Morpher; USB cameras; and now a portable MP3 player. Although available in the US a few months ago, the rest of the world has had to wait until now to get their paws on one.

What's remarkable about Intel's first foray into Sony and Diamond territory is that the Pocket Concert Audio Player is right up there with the best of them, and is one of the first MP3 players to come with 128Mb of memory as standard - Intel reckoning no one would bother to fork out for a costly memory upgrade even if one were available. It obviously helps that Intel makes the StrataFlash memory used in the player, so doesn't have to pay through the nose for it.

The player can store up to four hours of music (MP3 at 64K) and also supports the Windows Media Audio (WMA) format that arguably produces better quality at a given sampling rate than MP3. This means you can either enjoy the same amount of music but at a higher quality, or pack maybe six hours of top tunes at OK quality into the player. On top of that, the Pocket Concert also incorporates an FM radio capable of storing up to 10 preset stations.

The widget comes in a snazzy brushed aluminium case and weighs in at less than four ounces. Two AAA batteries provide about 10 hours of continuous playback. The amplifier is more powerful than your average player, providing 11mW with THD distortion of just 0.04 percent at 1 kHz. In laypersons' terms, it's loud and clean. Because the firmware is programmable, future music formats such as the upcoming improved MP3 standard can also be supported.

Controls feature a scroll wheel enabling fast scanning through tracks and can 17 levels of bass and treble equalization are available, along with repeat and shuffle features.

Software supplied includes Intel Audio Manager which provides a quick and easy (and commendably fast) way to access and transfer audio files from the PC to the player and MusicMatch Jukebox Plus for managing files and burning CDs. The Pocket Concert isn't yet on the supported players list for Windows Media Player and it's a bit of a pain having two media managers in the same machine, although I found the best solution was to remove MusicMatch entirely - all the player functionality is handled by the Intel software. A choice of whether or not to install MusicMatch would be an improvement - no choices are offered by the install program as it stands.

There's a $59.99 optional accessory kit, currently available only in the US, which includes rechargeable batteries, a desk dock and a car cassette player adaptor. Intel says it's evaluating whether or not this will be made available worldwide, but connecting the player to a PC using the supplied USB cable is so simple that the accessories are a bit redundant - the player is powered through the USB connection when the PC is on, saving battery power.

The player retails at £299 in the UK although you may find it cheaper. It's a tad cynical of Intel to simply change the dollar sign for a pound symbol before shipping the thing across the pond.

Trouble is, the thing's so cute, works so well (we tried it under Win ME and Win XP) and sounds so good, that it's hard to fault. And 299 (with dollar or pound sign) seems to be the going rate for a high-end MP3 player, so it isn't priced out of the market.

Of course, the reason Intel comes up with all these tasty little gizmos is to promote the sales of PCs and thus sell more chips. But if the gizmos are this good, who cares?

Even if you're the most rabid Intel-hater, you'll want one. µ