So today I'm telling you (albeit briefly) about the GP2X Caanoo - the most recent version of their 'cover-all' hand-held device. The Caanoo, which can be purchased from ThinkGeek (amongst other places, I'm certain, but I got mine from ThinkGeek, because I'm a well-behaved nerdling...) costs about $150 US and, given the features that it boasts, I think it's well worth it.
The Caanoo is marketed as a handheld console that runs on Linux. And is open source. Yup, that's what they sell it as...Everything perfectly legit. Okay, not really. Yes, technically the Caanoo is an open source hand-held that runs Linux, but as if that's going to pull the big crowds. No - the draw card that they use on you is that it is capable of running an emulator for virtually any console in existence before the N64. That means that you can now play Sega Master System games (Hello Alex Kidd...), SNES games (Hi There, Link To The Past), or MAME games (Why Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I almost didn't notice you...) amongst a swathe of others. That is where the console really comes to power.
As far as retro gaming goes, the Caanoo is (in my opinion, of course) just brilliant. I mean, sure, it can't yet (yet) run Nintendo 64 games, but really I think that's more a limitation of the dev community than anything else (okay, yes, you'll have to overclock it and do a really good job of optimising everything, but still, I think it should be do-able...I mean, they've gotten PSX games working on an overclocked Caanoo...) The emulators that you can download for it (no, it doesn't come with them pre-installed, but it's not like they cost any money...) run smoothly and I've yet to experience any real hiccups with them. I did have to configure the SNES emulator to allow transparency so that I could actually see the game I was playing, and also to allow me to save properly, but that's a community developed software problem, as opposed to a hardware issue.
The graphics are, for me, clear as liquid crystal, and the touchscreen is reactive and hard to damage. The sound quality is pretty decent, considering the speakers that it is coming from, however I do have the issue that the speakers are back-facing, instead of pointing towards the player. Still, if you're not using headphones to play then you're probably not too worried about sound quality.
The battery is advertised to last about 4 hours, which (in my experience with the handheld) is accurate. This is long enough for, say, a small car trip, or use at work, however given that it only charges via USB, it probably won't suffice for a return train trip to Sydney (3 hours each way, give or take 30 minutes.) Still, given that it knocks off a full direction of travel if fully charged, it's much better than nothing.
The other nice thing about the Caanoo is that it has a host of third-party applications developed for it (although you admittedly have to pay for most of them.) Included on the device itself is a media player (which handles both audio and video), an eBook reader, and various other nice little extras.Oh, and you can play multi-player via Wireless, as well...
So basically, if you've got some disposable income, and you are a fan of retro-gaming on the move (instead of at your PC) then I'd recommend the Caanoo to you. It doesn't have many down-sides other than the price. Oh. And, I suppose, the fact that well-known games won't really keep being released for it. But then, I guess that's what the developer community is for...
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