Gateway has now announced its own MP3 player with photo capabilities. The Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox (http://www.gateway.com/photojukebox) has a mere 4Gb of storage, and will street at US$249.99. The Photo Jukebox uses Windows Media Player 10 to synch up music and photos from a PC to the device, comes with a 1.6-inch vibrant color screen, and weighs 3.4 ounces.

Humorously, Gateway is also taking shots at Apple saying, "The new Gateway MP3 Photo Jukebox will make anyone currently on a waiting list for other mini-digital music players think twice". They're also boasting that the Photo Jukebox's battery can go for 8 hours and, more importantly, can be removed and recharged "unlike most other digital music players."

Gateway is only taking pre-orders right now, with shipments expected in mid-November.

Read more from the Gateway press release (http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-28-2004/0002315106&EDATE=).

Funny how they are all aiming to dethrone the iPod Mini. It seems like fishing for the Holy Grail.

Well while the photo add-in seems to be a good idea in theory, they haven't quite hit the cool aspects via connectivity: it only uses USB2.0. If you're serious about photos, you want to be able to use S-Video and rig it up to a TV. Otherwise, they may as well have put one of those crappy 1Megapixel cameras in it like a cellphone.

One thing you gotta give them props for is the battery though. Apple would never have done that.