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Toshiba has announced a new hard drive-based digital music player that is both smaller and lighter than both its previous model and the competing IPod player from Apple Computer.

The Gigabeat MEG200J (G20) contains a 20GB hard drive, which is four times the capacity of that in Toshiba's previous model, the MEG50JS. It is enough space to store up to 332 hours of music, encoded at 128 kbps, or, put another way, around 5,000 songs, according to Toshiba. Formats supported are Windows Media Audio, MP3, or WAV.

Truly Tiny

In size the G20 is a good deal smaller than Toshiba's previous model. It measures 3.5 inches by 3.0 inches by .5 inches which means total volume is 5.3 cubic inches. That's less than half the volume of the MEG50JS, at 11.1 cubic inches, and also less than both the 15GB and 30GB versions of Apple's IPod, which have volumes of 6.1 and 7.3 cubic inches respectively.

In addition to its smaller size the player is also lighter. The G20 weighs 4.9 ounces compared to 8.3 ounces for the previous model and 5.9 ounces and 6.2 ounces for Apple's two players.

Part of the reduction is due to the hard drive becoming a solely internal drive on the new player. Toshiba's last player took PC Card hard drives, which had the advantage of being able to be connected directly into a notebook computer but the disadvantage of requiring more space.

On the front of the player is a small monochrome flat-panel display that is used for navigation and to display details of the current playing track.

For Windows Only

Battery life is estimated to be around 11 hours on a full charge and the player connects to a PC through a USB 2.0 interface. While it is both smaller and lighter than Apple's IPod, the Toshiba player can't compete with the IPod on all platforms. Its supporting software is only compatible with PCs running Windows 98 second edition and higher and won't work on a Mac.

Toshiba plans to put the G20 on sale in Japan in early October, where it will cost around $424. There are no concrete plans to put it on sale overseas but Toshiba says the company will consider international sales should it sell well in Japan. Like the previous model, the G20 can be switched between Japanese, English, French, German, and Spanish.

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