Quickie: Gamepark Holdings new machine, The GP2x Wiz

News from Skeezix:

I've been meaning to do a writeup about the development versions of the Wiz that I've been fiddling with, but alas time has been short (darn those Christmas revelries!) .. but I must say something.

This is not a review, just a quickie.

Suffice to say that the Wiz is the evolution of the mighty GP2x device, hence their keeping of the GP2x monicker in the new device's name. It is not directly compatible with software for the regular GP2x, but thats okay. It is however an improvement on pretty much every aspect of the existing devices. Porting applications targetting the GP2x to the Wiz is pretty easy overall (with the only difficulty being that which we devs added ourselves by going right to the hardware of the previous devices.)

While the GP2x proper is a good size, the Wiz is smaller (which may be a risk to some people) and lighter, and fits well in the hand. Very pocketable and fairly durable, like a GBA Micro (just with no protection for the screen or case shine so keep your keys away.) I've got RSI or something the doctors cannot easily identify in my wrists so weight is something I'm very much aware of nowadays and this is a good fealing unit. The screen is bright and intense (OLED which some worry will dull after a few years, but I doubt by much) and the touchscreen is vastly superior in accuracy to the current F200 model. The CPU is a great deal faster than the current units. The button layout seems good (the original dev unit had a goofy button layout, but they've remedied it as they near actual release day.) It uses an internal battery and charge cable like most gadgets nowadays, not the AA battery approach previous machines used. I don't have final firmware candidates so can't speak for the interface or menus, but they're of little consequence anyway.. you spend most of your time in applications or games, and can replace a lot of the OS anyway with third party Linux distributions (such as Open2x, kudos guys!) Porting is as easy as ever, and the GPH fellows are making an effort to help the developers more than ever.

If you want a open source homebrew friendly platform, then the Wiz is really going to be a great machine when it arrives pretty soon. It ought to be a decent media player as well.

Disclosure: I've been handed both an early and a late model dev unit for the Wiz, but I do try to be fair in my benchmarks and comments. I can back this up. I am spending most of my time right now on Pandora development, but I expect to dive into some Wiz work soon, and I think the machine is targetted to go on sale end of Feb or begin of March.

Aside: _The Wire_ is some of the very best television I've ever seen. I've only just found out about it, as its wrapped up. Just as well because it seems like its 5 seasons are so utterly good as to be life destroying. Don't sit down to catch episode 1 when youi're about to go on a trip or have exams coming or crunch time at work .. you'll be fired. The Wire is _that good_. Buy it on DVD now, and watch out for Omar.

http://www.codejedi.com/cgi-bin/blog...090108wiz.blog