By Justin Silverton

From a recent article

“Japan’s Turbolinux will begin selling its Wizpy Linux-based multimedia player in February. As a bonus, the device can also be used to boot a PC into the Linux OS, allowing users to access their files in their own working environment on almost any PC.,

The Wizpy will be available first to customers in Japan via the company’s home page on February 23 and then in shops in March. It will come in two models: a 2GB version will cost $245 and a 4GB version will cost $281.”

Some cool features

• A 1.7-inch organic light-emitting diode color screen
• plays music in Ogg, MP3, and Windows Media Audio formats
• plays XviD and MPEG4 movies and displays JPEG images
• records straight to MP3 files, displays text files, and has an FM radio built-in

Aside from the features above, what sets it apart from other players is the fact that you don’t have to have an operationg system installed on your system. To the computer, the Wizpy looks like a bootable USB CD-ROM or hard drive, which means most computers will boot the Linux OS directly (turbolinux).

The Operating System+software takes up around 1GB of memory, so that leaves either 1GB or 3GB left for storing files or multimedia, depending on the model. It will also be able to connect to a network through the host PC and also access connected peripherals.

The official site can be found here