Toshiba Corp. announced on June 17 that it would begin selling the GIGABEAT, a portable MP3 player with a 5GB hard disk drive (HDD).

Its HDD is a PC-card type, and is detachable from the player itself or can be inserted into the PC card slot (Type II) of the notebook PC. It can record about 100 music titles. It is equipped with a 480Mpbs USB2.0 terminal, and can also be connected through the existing USB 1.1 interface. It will be released on June 22, and its retail price is expected to be around 50,000 yen. (124.55 yen = US$1)

It is capable of playing music compressed in the MP3, WMA and WAV formats. It can transfer music data via a USB cable or a PC card slot by using the associated software. It also allows users to use it as an external HDD of a PC by connecting the player to the USB port of a PC as well as to use it for recording music data.

The size of GIGABEAT is 72.5mm wide by 112mm long by 22.3mm high. It weighs 180g. It works on Windows 98/98SE/Me/2000/XP Home Edition/XP Professional.