January 8th, 2007
CES: Move over Zune. SanDisk may have gotten the WiFi music player thing just right
When Microsoft's Zune music player came out, there were a lot of questions about its so-called "social features" that were enabled by its WiFi radio. To share music with others, another Zune with a WiFi radio had to be within "beaming" distance. The problem? With iPods virtually steamrolling the music player business, what are the odds that if you're in a room with a Zune, there will be someone else in the room with another Zune? Judging by the music player that SanDisk — the Sansa Connect — announced here at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, my sense is that SanDisk has figured out just how WiFi-based music sharing should be implemented (hint: it's a bit different than the approach that Microsoft took). SanDisk's WiFi player isn't the only new product that the company released. There was also an incredibly cool solid state memory-based 8 GB portable movie player. The company's spokesperson Carmella "Carm" Lyman explains (be sure to look for the $99 2GB microSD card!):
