Dead Camcorder

It is with much sadness that I announce the passing of my Archos Gmini 402.  This little work horse of a camcorder brought me the entirety of the videos for Robot Portraits save for a couple fill ins.

It was originally purchased as a portable hard drive since at the time it boasted 20gb AND had the capability to take pictures, photos, play music and games.  It was a multimedia bonanza in the early days of portable all in one devices.

Sadly, it no longer works with Windows, or any copy of Windows I can find.  I'm not sure what happened, either XP updated beyond the ability to coexist with it or the USB ports failed.  The device still technically works, but without being able to connect to a computer, it's as good as dead.  I'm doing some last ditch efforts to get it working again, but I think it may be too late to save it.

The sad part is, I have one video left on it that I needed to turn into a movie for YouTube.  Moving forward I'll use my phone to take the videos and the quality may be crap, but it'll be something.  I just upped the prices for drawings too and now I feel if I don't offer movies I'll have to lower them again.  I'll be doing some tests to find out if my Blackberry can handle it.

Truth be told, I've had two orders this year.  It isn't worth it to me to order a new camcorder.  If there were dozens of orders a week then yes, I could even save up and quickly replace it.  But this is why the Archos had to last so long; the infrequency of the job at hand.  It's a testament to all those aging geeks out there who are constantly trying to remain relevant in an ever changing techopolis.