Has anyone actually used it?

[pepsi_max2k]

Seeing a lot of positive reviews and just watching Stuff continualy say it's better than the iThing, but has anyone actually used the new Archos models much?

I ask because it's all very well having great specs but useability can completely kill these things (see Cowon Q5/W), and Stuff keep making a big deal about the screen res and flash compatibility but... The only flash movie I saw in the recent vid (mock the week via iplayer) was so horribly slow it'd almost be better if it weren't there at all. The web navigation also seemed kinda weird with them having to move the screen around to view the left/right hand side of pages. Now that's no different from the iphone, but the iphone does it very well - it's quick, zooming's easy, redrawing pages is fast, the movement is smooth and funky... If the Archos isn't as smooth then it may be no better regardless of res. Ditto for every other feature. So has anyone actually used one for much time so far?

[bioman]

I fully agree, and I think that we can expect the first proper & critical reviews to appear during next week. Then after mid-September it is still good to keep reading this forum for the "real" user-reviews. Slowly we should get an impression of the strong & weak points of the Archos 5.

(off-topic: what a confusion & stupid name. They had a year to think about a good name for their new model, and all they could come up with is "5"... )

[MarkT]

(off-topic: what a confusion & stupid name. They had a year to think about a good name for their new model, and all they could come up with is "5"... )

I can't wait to see what they call the next models in the series, 5.1 and 7.1 perhaps

[bmar29]

has charbax used one? yeah i would take a review by a normal person over a tech website anyday...thats just me

[Charles]

Charbax will be able to test the new Archos MITs at IFA 2008. He will surely give his first impressions about the device but for a big test, you will need to wait mid september.

[Charbax]

BBC iPlayer might not be real flash video, but rather somekind of weird flash script making somekind of live video being shown. I don't know, I cannot test BBC iPlayer, it is limited to the UK.

For real flash video, I'm quite sure it is totally smooth, smoother then any other device out there. Cause I wouldn't imagine the Archos 5 being in anyways slower then the Archos 605 WiFi which already plays any Flash 7 and Flash 9 videos perfectly smoothly.

Some websites just are not doing real flash video, but instead doing all kinds of weird actionscripting and stuff cause they want to have fancy looking player controls instead of using standard flash video tools. Those might not work, but may work better now since the ARM is 4 times faster.

Real flash video version 7, 9 or using On2 codec, all those are using the DSP chip in the Archos to playback smoothly. While weird flash stuff has to use the ARM part to be played so they are less smooth. Until Adobe releases better Flash support on ARM processors, which they could, but nobody else then Adobe can provide that.

Anyways, I will definitely test that if I get the chance at IFA, tell me a bunch of weird Flash websites that don't work on the Archos 605 WiFi and I will try to test them.

[Charles]

I think the flash compatibility will not be improved in the Archos MITs. For the websites that use weird actionscripts like you say, I think the Archos processor is still not enough powerful. I mean some flash websites don't even run smoothly on an old P4 with 512mb / 1gb of ram. On my old P3 800MHz I could hardly load dailymotion videos and let's not talk about the HD feature :P

[Crlrhxphn]

I think the flash compatibility will not be improved in the Archos MITs. For the websites that use weird actionscripts like you say, I think the Archos processor is still not enough powerful. I mean some flash websites don't even run smoothly on an old P4 with 512mb / 1gb of ram. On my old P3 800MHz I could hardly load dailymotion videos and let's not talk about the HD feature :P

You cant compare processors that way. MHz isnt as important as what a processor can do during the clock rate. That is why an AMD 2Mhz processor was better than a 3Mhz P4. It did more in each cycle. But don't believe me (I wouldn't) look it up for your self

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megahertz_Myth

MHz is the equivalent of the Genesis's BLAST PROCESSING. A marketing gimmick for the most part to sell systems.

[fischju]

BBC's Iplayer DOES work, I saw it being demonstrated in a Stuff.tv video

[Charbax]

I think the flash compatibility will not be improved in the Archos MITs. For the websites that use weird actionscripts like you say, I think the Archos processor is still not enough powerful.

I think flash support has definitely improved cause the ARM processor is 4 times more powerful this time, ArchosLounge can confirm this. I will test that to be sure tomorrow.

[fischju]

I think the flash compatibility will not be improved in the Archos MITs. For the websites that use weird actionscripts like you say, I think the Archos processor is still not enough powerful.

I think flash support has definitely improved cause the ARM processor is 4 times more powerful this time, ArchosLounge can confirm this. I will test that to be sure tomorrow.

Hey, can you put opera:about into the address bar? It works in all versions of Opera, and tells the OS and Opera versions.

[ebby]

Does it actually play flash 9 like hulu now? i was told the 605 would but then it didn' work at all so i didn't upgrade the firmware

[bioman]

has charbax used one? yeah i would take a review by a normal person over a tech website anyday...thats just me

Is Charbax a "normal person" ??

[Charles]

Yeah Charbax, the processor may be able to handle all the "all flash" applications / websites. But for the informations I got I think the compatibility is the same as on the 605 ! But let's wait and see...

[RonanC]

I think the flash compatibility will not be improved in the Archos MITs. For the websites that use weird actionscripts like you say, I think the Archos processor is still not enough powerful.

I think flash support has definitely improved cause the ARM processor is 4 times more powerful this time, ArchosLounge can confirm this. I will test that to be sure tomorrow.

Its got nothing to do with the hardware; so long as the flash is the same version as is in the 605, it wouldnt matter if there was a Core 2 Duo in the Archos 5, its still not going to play the websites that the 605 couldnt play. The 605 didnt struggle with performance on the sites it couldnt play; they simply wouldnt recognise the version of flash installed on the 605.

You are right tho about the processor in that, in theory anyway, the sites that do work should work better because of the increase in horsepower, but to be honest, I never really had any problem with the flash sites that work on the 605 anyway. YT is sluggish to load, but once the video is playing it is perfectly smooth, more so that my pc at times.