MP3 Reviews

It's refreshing to see Palm come out with a competing product to the Sony Clie's. Lots of cool stuff for the price point. My review is more critical of the flaws of the device. It's still a good PDA, but there are some quirks. The Zire 71 is meant to compete against the Sony Clies. In the effort to get a product quickly to market, there are some rough edges.

PRO: Lots of cool toys - MP3 player, web camera, SD slot, and a great color screen. There are plenty of positive reviews, so see them for more positives.

NEG: BATTERY LIFE: Color screen, digital camera, and MP3's eats up battery life like crazy. This becomes a problem if the battery dies before you can hotsyc. MP3 FUNCTIONALITY: You'll need 1) a separate SD card - from $60 to $100 AND 2) a SD card reader for transfering files to and from the SD card. I found that a 5 meg song took about 20 minutes using the serial interface. RealPlayer, which comes with the Palm, works ok, but it's a pretty lousy player/burner. Another irritation is that you can't "lock" the PDA when playing MP3 files. DESIGN: Seems that the engineers and the designers didn't talk with each other. It's too easy to accidently turn on the Palm. The Palm cases available can catch the "joystick" or allow the hot keys to be depressed. In addition, you can accidently turn on or off the PDA when you remove or replace the stylus.

Overall, if you can live with the shortcomings, then the Zire 71 is a buy.

OK, the people that designed this baby, should be fired, or given a crash course on not getting cheap with a product of this price.

I love this little baby; mp3, buttons, video fx, pictures (fair at best,). But, I have my distaste for certain things which may sound trivial, but are important to many of us.

1-Can't Palm supply this expensive device with a quality belt carrying case? I paid 20 bucks for mine at Staples, and the button is starting to become loose. A 4 dollar product for Palm, if they decided to buy them and including them with the product. Instead, they give you this piece of crap cover, which is the most impractical case you can see.

2-The blue paint on the side, peels like a banana. What the hell is that made of?

3-The power on button is awkward, somtimes turning on when the case touches it out of random motion. Couldn't have placed it on the bottom of the unit?

Apart from the aforementioned, the unit is pretty good. But why would Palm get so cheap, and not address these petty problems which could of been rectified with some practical designers?

Next time I buy a PDA, I will do my homework, and see if the competition can offer a solution to these petty problems.

Otherwise, I'm somewhat satisfied. I hope not to encounter the battery life nightmares that some people have. Not able to replace the battery, is like spending $$$ on a car, and not being able to replace its battery. Makes you wonder if Palm wants you to replace them every year.

Disposable Palm is what the message is conveying.

I've been using handhelds/PDAs for many years, and I've been a Palm OS user for the last 3 years. When my aging Handspring Visor recently started giving me troubles, I began to casually look around for a decent upgrade. A review of the Zire 71 in MacAddict caught my eye, and a couple of days later I went and bought one. To say the least, I am very satisfied with this purchase.

The Zire 71 has a beautiful display, which is very crisp and vibrant indoors. The color is a bit washed out when outdoors in bright sunlight, but it is still quite usable. Multimedia playback works nicely on the Zire, although movies don't play quite as smoothly as I would like. The need to purchase a memory card just to store MP3s is also a bit of a bummer. But then again, the device only comes with 16MB of RAM as it is, so you'd probably end up buying a memory card at some point anyway.

The Zire 71's camera takes good pictures, and is very handy for those moments when you don't have a regular camera with you. Granted, the photos are 640x480, there's no flash, no zoom, etc. This is obviously not going to replace a dedicated digital or film camera for serious picture taking. But sometimes you spontaneously need to take a picture or two, and if you carry your handheld with you everywhere (as I do), the Zire's built in camera will no doubt prove useful.

My only real complaint about the Zire is the little navigational stick. I like the stick itself, but the fact that pressing it turns on the handheld (to display the time) is troublesome. The included case is a tight fit, and it would always press the nav stick when I was putting the Zire inside. The last thing I need to worry about is bumping the stick while the handheld is in my pocket, and thus wasting battery power. Fortunately, there is a solution: a program called "Disable Buttons" that lets you disable the physical buttons when the handheld is off. You can disable the various buttons (date book, contacts, etc) or just the navigation stick if you want. Search for it on Google or PalmGear.com (it's freeware).

To sum up: The Zire 71 is a very capable little machine. It's certainly enough to organize the contacts and data in your life, and the multimedia capabilities are a nice touch. Definitely a worthy successor to my ol' Visor. Highly recommended.

I bought my Archos on 3/24/04 from Amazon bc I was attracted by the price and the rebate offer at that time. However, my problems started when I got it. First off it was quite heavy and broad, not very portable IMO. Second, the player makes very strange noises when playing the music and it often lags a bit [I think from the harddrive reading]. While the Rockbox upgrade did help with the speed and functionality as other users mentioned, it couldnt fix what was inherently wrong with the machine itself.

Today is 7/6/04 and the player unexpectedly died. I did not use it heavily, maybe once a week at most for ~2 hours. It has never been dropped, thrown, hit, or abused in any other way, I handled it like it should be handled, delicately. I did not use it on bumpy roads or the like either. It just suddenly died and the green light keeps blinking.when I try to turn it on. When you buy a player that retails for $180 and treat it gently would you expect it to last you more than 4 months? I surely would. I am now debating what to do with it. Ive aldready written an email to tech support. Maybe I can sell it as defective, but I am overall extremely displeased with the whole experience. I think I'll get myself an iPod or maybe something a little less expensive but more durable.

Sorry for the long message, but I thought people should know before they buy this. I will update if I [ever] get a reply from tech support.

First off, if your buddy has an Ipod and you want to be cool like him/her then look elsewhere. The Archos is nearly twice as heavy, twice as thick and is a bit of an ugly duckling next to the Ipod.

With that said, it should also be mentioned that the Archos battery life is twice as long and you can get the same size capacity HD for less then half the price of the Ipod.

I have heard complaints about Archos quality, but I know plenty of people that have had theres for 2 years with out a bit of trouble. I have only had mine a few days, so I can not say how long term reliability is, but I will say that this unit is well constructed, although not the most ergonomic.

Very important is to replace the Archos OS with the free Rockbox OS. Just do a search and you will find it. Simply install the Rockbox OS to the HD like you would a song folder and the Archos will recognize it. With Rockbox installed, the Archos is very customizeable and the sound quality is superior to most postable MP3 players.

I would suggest this player to anyone who will pimarily use it in their car, sitting in their favorite chair, or hooked up to a Stereo system. I would not recomend this player to someone who plans on using it in "active" situations. Not that I feel the quality is not up to par, but because of the bulk.

At a higher price I would rate this unit as a 4 becuase the buttons feel a slightly cheap and the weight and size is above average. for the price it is 5 for 5!

UPDATE FEB 3, 2003
The more I use it the more I like it! Flashing rockbox to the Archos Rom decreases system turn on from about 12 seconds to 3 seconds. I really like the build quality and I have changed my mind about the buttons being "cheap". I think everything has a real solid feel and I think it is a great player. It is still bulky of course, but that is a tradeoff I am willing to take for the price. I would not except low quality and I have not had to with this player. GREAT!

I've had the older model of the Archos 20 GB jukebox for about three years now. Some reviewers do complain about the ruggedness of the jukebox, but I've found that it stands up to quite a beating. I usually end up using it during swim meets and on many occasions it has dropped onto a hard tile floor that has ruined an expensive CD player of mine. The little blue bumpers you see in the picture may not look too slick, but they do get the job done well. I'm sure the iPod is just as durable, but it can't even shake a stick at this babies price. I'm not saying you can throw the thing around and not expect it to break, there is a hard drive in there, but as for daily wear and tear and the occasional fall the Archos 20 GB is an extremely durable machine. 5 Stars for Durability (I can't say anything about Archos' support, I never had to deal with them. Amazon has an excellent return policy if you're still "iffy" on whether to buy one)

I purchased this dvd player from Amazon. It was perfectly satisfactory for about 7 months until it died. Wouldn't play more than a few seconds of a dvd, and would degenerate into a horrible screeching noise. Norcent agreed to replace it, as long as I paid the shipping costs, which were half the original cost of the dvd player. A month (and many dogged phone calls later) I received a replacement. What a joke. It had somebody else's rented dvd in it, and though it played the picture fine, there was a repetitive clicking noise, which was probably why the previous customer had returned it. But instead of fixing the problem, they just sent it to me. Norcent admitted the mistake and agreed to pay for the shipping costs to replace the replacement. Another month and a half and many irate phone calls later, I got my third dvd player. This last one (and it will most assuredly be my last) held out for about a month before emitting a sharp click and dying completely in the middle of a movie. Please, save yourself time, misery, and money. Get a real dvd player from a real company.

This player is worth every dollar. I have owned this player for 6 months. I bought it because my $800 Sony DVD player stopped working after only 3 years of use. Overall, this player is actually better than my Sony was. Yes, you read correctly. This player is better than my Sony! It is better for many reasons. The Norcent can play DVDs, CDs, CDRs, and even Kodak picture cds. My Sony could NOT play CDRs or Kodak picture cds. Also, the Norcent barely pauses when the layers are changing. Most of the time I don't even notice the layer change at all! With the Sony the layer change was very noticable. It would take at least half a second to change layers in the middle of the movie. This was always very annoying. The Norcent is a nice silver color which makes it very classy looking. I did have a brief problem with the player one day. Everytime I put in a DVD the subtitles would automatically come on and I had to turn them off. Also, the DVD would stop and then refuse to play at all. I fixed these problems by simply unplugging the player for 1 minute and replugging it in again. By doing this I reset the players settings and I have not had these problems since. I guess it was a fluke event. I doubt it will ever happen again. My biggest complaint about the Norcent is that in very dark movie scenes I can notice a lot of distortion in the background. This is annoying if you are watching a horror movie. If it wasn't for this problem the player would be perfect. Most people will be very satisfied with buying this player. Unfortunatly, I am planning to buy a different player because I am picky about the distrotion. I will likly end up spending a $1000 or more for a high-end player. Few people would feel the need to do this. I just happen to be a very picky person. Overall, if you are an average consumer you can't go wrong with this player. BUY IT!

I had been looking for a 2nd DVD player that will do multi-format playback (DVD-VCD-SVCD-MP3). My Apex 5131 changer has served me well, but since it was the only player I'd had experience with, I figured to get another. While perusing the Nerdout.com forums on dvd players, I came across some good comments on the Norcent DP300, and the price seemed right, so I bought one. This single disc unit is small, but it's performance belies it's minimalist demeanor. It will play anything but soup can lids, as near as I can tell.
One of my gripes with the Apex unit was having to re-adjust my TV's video setting to make the picture viewable each time I watched a DVD in it. The Norcent was perfectly balanced right out of the box, PLUS it has built in brightness, contrast, & sharpness controls to boot! The only shortcomings I can see with it is not having a front display (no biggie, as the onscreen menu is well laid out and easy to use), and it not having an optical digital output (coax only).The build quality overall is quite adequate, although a little "delicate-seeming", perhaps. But heck, what do you expect at this pricepoint?
This unit was purchased to be used as a 2nd machine. Well ..guess what? The Apex was recently moved into the back bedroom.This little silver box is chock full of features at a price you can't beat.

This is great. Now I have two of them. I bought one of the original 5 GB models and thought at that time they were expensive, but soon found out that even the smaller model would keep as many songs as I would ever want for a business flight.

I realized the iPod was so much more when I had disk problems on my Macintosh. Luckily I had a backup copy of my OS on it and used it to boot my machine. I was back in the saddle in a minute, and in fact, I accidentally continued to use the iPod as the startup disk for that whole session while working on huge graphics files!

The iPod can be used to transfer files from work to home and vice versa. Contacts and calenders make it easy to keep track of things without a PDA (even though you can't add anything without using a PC/Mac). I have used both iPods with an old Pentium III PC and the music transfer is smooth as silk. I did a lot of shopping this time around and the other players out there just don't have what it takes. Either the controls are in goofy places or the software isn't intuitive. While you CAN learn to use anything, why should it be a pain?

I now have one of the 20 GB models and can store large presentations on it when I travel, and since they usually have a PC at the other end, I can leave my laptop at home and am much happier not having to lug that around.

PC and Mac users will benefit from this device, especially if you are innovative, or you happen to find innovative software which is widely available and cheap or free. One example is: Before my flight, I can download newsbites and sports scores and quickly transfer it to the iPod for a diversion at the airport or on the flight. For the person visiting family, you can bring along the latest digital pics, long lost recipes, etc. and transfer/print them when you get there. (My parents don't do email that well)

While the iPod isn't a PDA, it has many of those functions and is a lot more fun. Most importantly, the iPod is an AWESOME and versatile music player.

I bought my iPod a couple weeks ago and really love it. Some people complain about the touch controls, but I love them. They don't take any getting used to at all. I'm a Windows XP Pro user, and had no trouble getting anything hooked up or installed. The thing about it not coming with a USB cable... who cares? If you're anything like me you have thousands of these stupid cables laying around already. They're easy to find, and you can find them cheap. I use iTunes, and would recommend that, as it was obviously made for it. It works flawlessly, and so smoothly. I was up and running in five minutes tops, and I had three gigs of music on my hard drive!
Pros:
*easy to use
*easy to learn
*sound quality is fine, some complain, but I have no problems with it, and I'm a total music buff. If anything, the bass could use a little work.
*I love iTunes!
*organization within the iPod is smart and it's pretty customizable
*buy it from Apple and have your name engraved on the back, that's too cool!
*works great plugged into my home stereo, it sounds just like a CD playing in there
Cons:
*still worried about battery life, though I use it all day at work (8 hours) and it makes it all the way through. If you're real worried, but the AA battery pack and have it in your bag or whatever for long trips, just as a precaution. But for normal daily use you won't need it.
*wish it charged through the USB cable
*heavier than they claim (2 CDs), I think it's morethan that, but it's still light

I'm happy with it, and I was worried that I may not be after spending so much money. But I love it,and whe ni dont have it with me i always wish i did. It's a sweet little toy that is one powerful little jukebox!

First of all, have you seen that player? if you're into gaudy looking garbage with a lame cat logo, go ahead.

iTunes is light years ahead of the napster music browser. I forgot what it was using....music match or something like that.

the person that said the key ring is wrong.. well, if you want 64mb or 128mb, sure. but not 20gb to 40gb. plus, with the apple scroll wheel, you can control the iPod without even looking at it (from inside your pant pocket). try that with any other mp3 player. I dare you.

plus, tell me what other mp3 player has over 50 after market items for it. you can put fm wireless, media card reader, voice recorders, infrared, bluetooth is coming soon. yeah. plus, every other mp3 on the market only does USB. who the heck wants to take 20 hours just to upload about 20 CD's. firewire can do that in about 6 minutes. I uploaded 10GB in about 15 minutes. plus, it's compatible with iSync which means the iPod automatically syncs with my palm pilot, my address book, my calendar, my to do list, and it supports audio books, text notes, and pretty soon a limited GPS for maps.

There is no comparison. the windoze people are smoking cr@ck!!!! they just finally have something that even remotely resemble the iPod and they're trying to run with it.

I have purchased 3 different Archos MP3 Players and they all have 1 thing in common within a year they are broke. I like the features and the ease of handling with their product but the quality is just not there. The Studio 20 is a paperweight. The 2nd I gave away and the 3rd one Broke today. Their support is inferior and takes forever. The batteries constantly die out. Good product just bad engineering. Dont make the same mistake I did it will be a waste of money. I think I am going to get a IPOD

My Jukebox Recorder 20 is a wonderful product! I received it as a birthday gift, and it's become indispensable after just one day.

Here's a list of pros, in no particular order:
1) Works equally well with Windows 2000 (work) and Mac OSX (home).
*Note: this used to be the case, but now it only works with Windows and OS 9...not X. Don't know what happened, but Archos' tech support was not the slightest bit helpful.
2) The sound quality is great, and changing the sound settings adds a lot to the unit.
3) The drag-and-drop method is simple for anyone to use, which means...
4) Updating the firmware is a breeze.
5) Ability to record directly to the unit is a huge plus.
6) The buttons do exactly what you think they will do.
7) The storage capability: 20 gigs of music/files is great!
8) Definitely small enough to carry in a purse; I'll take mine everywhere.
9) The bundled MusicMatch software isn't a necessity for folks who'd rather use another program to create MP3s, but it is a very nice program.

The only reason I don't give the product 5 stars is because of little things:
1) The interface is not as elegant as the interface I've seen on the Apple iPod.
2) The manual is inadequate. However, the Archos website has a lot of helpful support information.
3) The headphones are not great quality, but they fold up pretty compactly (which is convenient) and you can always purchase your choice of headphones separately.

Overall, I would recommend this product to any music fan or anyone who needs to swap files from one computer to another.

I bought Archos recorder 20 with the primary intent of having a nice big HDD in a small, fast device. The MP3 side was a secondary feature (though I listen to the thing all day at work.) As a portable drive I could put in my pocket, it has saved me hours of headaches as I have to transfer hundreds of megabytes on an almost daily basis. It's very easy to use, easy to navigate and very fast. So-far it has proven to be very reliable too. The USB2 port is well worth any extra outlay for a USB2 card as the speed increase over 1.1 is amazing. I bought 2 USB2 cards, one for each (remote) machines I use so I could transfer files quickly using Windows Explorer drag and drop. Because USB2 is so much faster, your batteries last longer as the Archos sucks juice much quicker when acting as a standard USB HDD. File transfers are so quick with USB2 that it only needs to be connected for a couple of minutes.

As an MP3 player, I'm generally very happy with it. The supplied headphones are abysmal and need replacing immediately. The sound quality (when using better headphones) is very good overall. Menu navigation is easy so finding the song(s) you want to hear is a painless operation. One thing I don't like is trying to skip backwards through a song, it gets it's pants in a twist and ends up sounding like a stuck record. Going forward is fine though. There are also plenty of controls to adjust if you like tweaking, or you can just leave it as it comes. I notice little difference in sound quality between the Archos and my SB Audigy MP3 card played through my Sennheise HD580 headphones. It has copious output power and can drive even big cans very loud and clean.

I don't use playlists as I setup all my files manually in Explorer so can't say whether they work well or not. Besides, I don't really like using the supplied MusicMatch Jukebox software. I don't record mp3's straight to the Archos either so cannot comment on that function. The build quality isn't the greatest though it's perfectly functional. The casing just doesn't have that feeling of precision. I would imagine that the I-pod or whatever it's called feels much nicer... though slower and a much smaller drive for the cash. Battery life is good given the drive size and power output. Supplying two sets of batteries is a nice touch though, as is being able to using it while it's charging with the batteries in place. The USB cord is a pain as Archos opted to use an 'A-A' cord rather than the more standard 'A-B' connectors. This means that if you want a second cord, or a longer one, you'll have trouble finding one. Archos do sell cords but they are short and expensive. I still haven't tracked down anywhere that sells a 6" long A-A cord, just A-A extensions which are useless on the Archos.

In the end I wanted a big drive, good speed, good functionality and portability, the Archos Recorder 20 fitted the bill nicely. I have no regrets buying it or hesitation reccomending it as long as people are aware of the above points. I'm very happy with mine and if I had to choose over again, I think I'd still buy the recorder 20.

First, the good news: the Rio Cali has some excellent advantages over the other mp3 players I looked at. First, it's the only one rugged enough for sports (I take mine snowboarding and jogging), the yellow and black design intentionally recalling the old Sony Sportsman, I think. The arm band and belt clip give you a number of options for carrying it, and both work fine. Also, it's tiny and light and slips easily into your pocket.

The player is extremely easy to use with loads of great features. The simple joy stick; the language options; a fully adjustable graphic equalizer (a must for me); date, time, and radio options for Europe, Japan, and the US (I travel to all 3 a lot). The radio is a big selling point, with 8 presets. One surprise feature I love is an "adjustable" key guard lock: you can lock the power button and joystick, but keep the volume free for adjusting. This is just great! Add to that that the volume up/down buttons are different sizes and shape with a raised "plus" sign on the volume up, so you can feel which is which in your pocket. A lot of good thought went into the design.

The screen is big and easy to see with lots of nice information, and there're plenty of options for timing its illumination, and also a power-save auto-off feature.

The biggest selling point is its expandability: you can slip up to a 512K SD memory card in there to make room for a couple hundred more songs. Never mind that the card will cost more than the player.

The software it comes with is well organized, intuitive, and easy to use, or you can use Windows Media Player, take your pick.

Now the bad news: first, file organization is a little poor. A folder system would be nice. Instead, you get play lists (which, if you add a whole album to, the songs get alphabetized and thus out of order) or bookmarks. Bookmarks would be great, except you can't name them. You have to remember what was bookmark 1, 2, etc. Perhaps they can fix this with a firmware update (which is updatable from their website).

Lastly, and most importantly is the sound: there was a lot of "operational noise" when a song was playing - this had nothing to do with the quality of the sound file, but came from the player. The sound was also a bit flat and tinny - very disappointing. I took it back to the store and exchanged it for a new one, but had the same problem as the first. The other features made it nice enough for me to keep, but especially on quiet songs, I was annoyed. Then I tried some higher quality headphones to check if that was the problem, and indeed it was - with better headphones, the sound was crystal clear, the tones rich, and the equalizer even more effective without any tinniness.

SO. For the price it can't be beat, especially if you're using it for sports as it was intended, or for travel. But to get it up to snuff with the more expensive players out there, you're going to have to invest in better headphones for sure (good quality, say 50 bucks minimum) if you want to appreciate digital clarity in all its glory, and the SD card (another 150 for 512K) if you're lazy about swapping out songs. With the upgrade, I'm completely satisfied aside from the bookmarks/folder issue, which could conceivably be solved with software in the future. Still a delight to use straight out of the box if the little whine in the background on quiet songs doesn't bother you too much. Recommended.

PS It's been 4 months since I bought it, and I was wrong about the sound with new head phones: that back ground buzz is STILL there. Why has no one else complained about this? The sound was there on BOTH players I bought. You can really hear it when you play an MP3 with the volume all the way down. The buzzing is LOUD. So, I take it all back. The features are great, but in the end, it's the sound that counts.

I bought the Rio Cali 256 MB Sport MP3 Player for running. It doesn't skip and is extremely light. The arm band is great - keeps it place nicely.

The headphones are good, though they do not provide much in the way of adjustment and fit loosely on my ears. The headphones occasionally pop out of place in my ear, but have never fallen off (a minor annoyance that I attribute to using while running, but a tighter grip on the ear wrap would probably prevent it.)

The player is easy to use (intuitive interface) and the display is very informative. I have not been able to get decent FM reception, but the FM tuner was a bonus for me, so I don't really care that it doesn't work. Other reviews correlate FM reception to the quality of the headphones. If you care about the FM reception, you may want to read the other reviews.

Battery life is fantastic compared to CD players (it only takes one AAA).

Compared to portable CD players, MP3 players, especially this variety (large storage volume, light, long lasting and easy to use) are terrific.

I bought this mp3 player 8 months ago after becoming frustrated with an RCA model that did not work with macs (despite packaging claims). I use it about four hours everyday: 2 listening to the radio and 2 listening to music. The radio reception is great. The stopwatch is very handy. It interacts very well with iTunes (make sure you have an updated version of iTunes before you try to upload to the player). The battery life is fabulous. I have dropped it and used it in the rain. The arm band is convenient. It has been the most reliable and user-friendly mp3 player I have owned.

First, the good news: the Rio Cali has some excellent advantages over the other mp3 players I looked at. First, it's the only one rugged enough for sports (I take mine snowboarding and jogging), the yellow and black design intentionally recalling the old Sony Sportsman, I think. The arm band and belt clip give you a number of options for carrying it, and both work fine. Also, it's tiny and light and slips easily into your pocket.

The player is extremely easy to use with loads of great features. The simple joy stick; the language options; a fully adjustable graphic equalizer (a must for me); date, time, and radio options for Europe, Japan, and the US (I travel to all 3 a lot). The radio is a big selling point, with 8 presets. One surprise feature I love is an "adjustable" key guard lock: you can lock the power button and joystick, but keep the volume free for adjusting. This is just great! Add to that that the volume up/down buttons are different sizes and shape with a raised "plus" sign on the volume up, so you can feel which is which in your pocket. A lot of good thought went into the design.

The screen is big and easy to see with lots of nice information, and there're plenty of options for timing its illumination, and also a power-save auto-off feature.

The biggest selling point is its expandability: you can slip up to a 512K SD memory card in there to make room for a couple hundred more songs. Never mind that the card will cost more than the player.

The software it comes with is well organized, intuitive, and easy to use, or you can use Windows Media Player, take your pick.

Now the bad news: first, file organization is a little poor. A folder system would be nice. Instead, you get play lists (which, if you add a whole album to, the songs get alphabetized and thus out of order) or bookmarks. Bookmarks would be great, except you can't name them. You have to remember what was bookmark 1, 2, etc. Perhaps they can fix this with a firmware update (which is updatable from their website).

Lastly, and most importantly is the sound: there was a lot of "operational noise" when a song was playing - this had nothing to do with the quality of the sound file, but came from the player. The sound was also a bit flat and tinny - very disappointing. I took it back to the store and exchanged it for a new one, but had the same problem as the first. The other features made it nice enough for me to keep, but especially on quiet songs, I was annoyed. Then I tried some higher quality headphones to check if that was the problem, and indeed it was - with better headphones, the sound was crystal clear, the tones rich, and the equalizer even more effective without any tinniness.

SO. For the price it can't be beat, especially if you're using it for sports as it was intended, or for travel. But to get it up to snuff with the more expensive players out there, you're going to have to invest in better headphones for sure (good quality, say 50 bucks minimum) if you want to appreciate digital clarity in all its glory, and the SD card (another 150 for 512K) if you're lazy about swapping out songs. With the upgrade, I'm completely satisfied aside from the bookmarks/folder issue, which could conceivably be solved with software in the future. Still a delight to use straight out of the box if the little whine in the background on quiet songs doesn't bother you too much. Recommended.

PS It's been 4 months since I bought it, and I was wrong about the sound with new head phones: that back ground buzz is STILL there. Why has no one else complained about this? The sound was there on BOTH players I bought. You can really hear it when you play an MP3 with the volume all the way down. The buzzing is LOUD. So, I take it all back. The features are great, but in the end, it's the sound that counts.

I bought the Rio Cali 256 MB Sport MP3 Player for running. It doesn't skip and is extremely light. The arm band is great - keeps it place nicely.

The headphones are good, though they do not provide much in the way of adjustment and fit loosely on my ears. The headphones occasionally pop out of place in my ear, but have never fallen off (a minor annoyance that I attribute to using while running, but a tighter grip on the ear wrap would probably prevent it.)

The player is easy to use (intuitive interface) and the display is very informative. I have not been able to get decent FM reception, but the FM tuner was a bonus for me, so I don't really care that it doesn't work. Other reviews correlate FM reception to the quality of the headphones. If you care about the FM reception, you may want to read the other reviews.

Battery life is fantastic compared to CD players (it only takes one AAA).

Compared to portable CD players, MP3 players, especially this variety (large storage volume, light, long lasting and easy to use) are terrific.

I bought this mp3 player 8 months ago after becoming frustrated with an RCA model that did not work with macs (despite packaging claims). I use it about four hours everyday: 2 listening to the radio and 2 listening to music. The radio reception is great. The stopwatch is very handy. It interacts very well with iTunes (make sure you have an updated version of iTunes before you try to upload to the player). The battery life is fabulous. I have dropped it and used it in the rain. The arm band is convenient. It has been the most reliable and user-friendly mp3 player I have owned.

The handheld itself is great. I upgraded from a Palm m100. The color screen is beautiful and the bundled software is a nice feature. My only complaint with the device is that it seems to transfer data to the SD slot slowly. I've tried transferring some MP3s to the card and it takes FOREVER! The sync typically fails if I try to sync more than two songs at a time. With a 128MB card, the idea of synching up 20 times to fill up the card with music doesn't appeal to me.

For adventures in customer support with Palm, read on. Bottom line, limited technical support from Palm has made me regret my purchase of the Tungsten E.

I purchased my Tungsten E from Amazon in October, 2003. No problems there. In January of 2004, the handheld kept turning itself on for no apparent reason. To my intense displeasure, I found out that Palm cuts of telephone support for the Tungsten E at 90 days. After that, you have to pay about $25 US per call.

Obviously, if you're buying an E, you're concerned about your budget. As a result, there is no way that I'm going to pay 1/8th of the cost of the handheld to call them when their product malfunctions. After three email exchanges with Palm Support, my issue still hasn't been resolved. I've had to perform a few hard resets (hold down the power button and hit the reset button in the back to perform a hard reset) to no avail.

I think this product has great memory!!! It works Great, but the first day i got it it it didnt make a anouying beep( which I don't think it should) and then in a couple days, it started making this wierd sound. But other than that it works great!! I totally recemend this!!!

one of palm's newest PDAs is the tungsten E. in my opinion, this palm is the sweet spot in palm's latest releases. for the price, it's an impressive package.

pros:
- bright, transflective 320x320 display is easy to read even in daylight.
- 126-MHz CPU and 32MB of RAM (28MB are available to the user).
- MP3 and multimedia support.
- small and light at 4.5 by 3.1 by 0.5" and 4.6oz.
- strong software bundle - now includes the new Contacts and Calendar applications (with Contacts, you can finally store multiple addresses for each contact)
- USB support.
- expansion slot supports SD, SDIO, MMC.
- impressive value - at this price point, no other PDA brings the complete package the tungsten E has.

cons:
- no built-in Wi-Fi (although you can use the expansion slot for an add-in).
- battery not replaceable.

this is a solid PDA and an incredible value. as mentioned above, you can use the expansion slot to install a Wi-Fi add-in so there's a work-around for this limitation. if you MUST have built-in Wi-Fi, consider the tungsten C. another upgrade is the tungsten T3 if you want a bigger, hi-res screen and bluetooth.

i hope this helps you in your buying decision. peace.

Stay away from creative - far away. They only want your money. The unit itself - a creative zen 20 gb - has a few quirks but operated sufficiently. However, it did not hold up well and each time a repair was made, we were charged $100 minimum. Now, just over a year later, the headphone jack no longer makes contact. We were told "This unit is no longer supported" but we were offered a REFURBISHED unit (now, where did that come from?) for a price more expensive than a brand new 30 gb unit. I thinks its time to get an iPOD.
Consider me a disgusted, former customer of Creative. I will never buy their products again. I expect a several hundred dollar item to last longer than a year and to be supported as well.

I got this back in March when Creative themselves were running a big sale on their site. I had most of my CDs already ripped on my PC in WMA and this player supported them fine. Most people compare this to the iPod though it really it is like the Dell Jukebox just slightly cheaper (the sizes are almost identical). The iRiver could also be compared to this.

Pros
Almost half the price of the iPod of the same capacity. Sound quality much better than the iPod. Controls on the side mean you don't have to take it out to change tracks. They are not totally intuitive but when you get use to them you can navigate very fast. Battery life great (I'm getting about 14+ hours out of it.) USB2 transfer does about a track in under a second.

Cons
Only currently supports MP3 and WMA, though Real seem to have an update on their site but I have not tried it. It requires drivers installed on any machine you want to dock with. Software is not great. Although much better than previous Creative outtings it still has limitations. For example you can't have two tracks on an album with the same title. Doesn't link to WindowsMedia library correctly if you rip in WM9 (you have to import the tracks - using the watch facility doesn't get the tags). Slightly larger than the iPod. I also have a strange issue on Nomadworld where there is an autoupdate facility for the firmware. Whenever I use it my system reboots!

In all I can live with the limitations because of the huge price difference and significantly better sound quality. By the way if you register your player you get a discount on their site for a select set of their other products.

i got this for christmas. i was going to get a 10GB ipod, but after looking at the 10 DAY WARRANTY FOR IPOD AND WWW.IPODSDIRTYSECRET.COM (BATTERY LASTS 18 MONTHS ; IT costs like 200 dollars to replace - now you mail it off to get the battery replaced for like 99 ... what a big improvement ... lol) and the fact that lots of people have had problems with iPODs on windows computers, i realized this is a much better buy. Not only is it more affordable, but its a better player for windows, which is what i have. anyway, on with the review.
so far i've only had it since christmas, so i cant tell you much about the battery life. it hasnt gone below the second notch (i charge mine whenever i'm at home and not using it), so the battery life seems fine (so far).

SOFTWARE: for the people who complain about software, please, stop complaining. once you hook the thing up to the computer (via the USB cable), the machine instantly recognizes the fact that it's there & installs the drivers. from there, you transfer files from your computer to the mp3 player (with the help of the media sniffer...read the manual). my only complaint would be that you need id3 tags & that takes a while to do if your mp3 files don't have them. if you're copying CDs with windows media, its really simple to give your songs id3 tags, so thats what i do. oh...and file transfers are fast & easy.

THE PLAYER: it's silver. a little weighty (9 ounces ... no biggie), but otherwise fine. people complain about the scroll wheel, but its not a big deal at all (though it is just a LITTLE annoying at times). it's easy. the buttons are easy to use, and its easy to navigate. the big backlight makes things easy to see, and the writing is big enough for people to see. my favorite thing about the nomad is the EAX feature. you can customize bass, etc. like usual, but also you can customize the sound of the player (like how it would sound in a concert hall, jazz club, etc). its really cool. sound quality is AMAZING. i was expecting worse, but its really good (especially if your files have good sound quality). you can also slow a song down & speed it up, which is cool too. BUT THE EAR BUDS SUCK! BUY NEW ONES ASAP. every time you move your face or something they pop out. for a 250 dollar player, they could have thrown in nice headphones. a remote would have been cool too ... but lets not push it. oh... one more thing. i forgot, the case doesn't fit. my case doesnt close...maybe mine was just faulty, but the case isnt that great.

so far the player froze on me once (i started pushing buttons before it loaded) but since is hard drive based - you have to expect that. so all you do is stick a pin or something small in the reset button & you're golden.

also, you can store data on it, which is a plus. for all you people who want to buy an iPOD just to say you have an iPOD, don't bother, this is a MUCH better buy. HOPE I HELPED !

At first this seemed like a decent CD player. The headphones that come with it are pretty lame but fortunately I had another pair of my own. It's somewhat ugly and bulky but not unbearable. The search feature is very handy, especially when you've got MP3 CDs with 100+ tracks; it was very easy to find the song I wanted.

However the skip protection was disappointing from the beginning. Walking caused several skips per song and it would sometimes skip in the car. Don't even think about doing anything more than that with this player; it'll skip like crazy and drive you crazy. The worst thing, though, was that a few months after I started listening to it frequently it broke to the point where it now skips every few seconds when it's just sitting on my desk (with both regular and mp3 CDs). This happened after I had taken it on a few plane rides, so maybe that had something to do with it, although I'm not really sure how. Whatever happened, it's too annoying to listen to now.

Despite the nifty search function, I wouldn't recommend this CD player. It's got a lot of flaws and you can probably find something much better.

For the price that I got (under $40) it was a very nice unit. I've had the unit for over six months now and so far, only some skipping occur, but not much at all. The skippings usually seem quite random, and doesn't happen because th eunit is being moved or anything like that. The unit I have contians the suffix A sticker.

The car kit that came with mine, though, is a little weird. At times the volume will be too soft for no reason, but mostly they all worked great.

The only things I really don't like about this unit are 1) the display LCD isn't backlit, making reading practically impossible at night, and 2) the search option is not very user friendly, and the unit doesn't seem to respond too well to it.

Over all, I give it 4 stars, for its price, and that it hadn't died on me yet.

This player is one of the best on the market for the money. It is rugged and plays regular CD's, CD-R's, and MP3's!! I get over 100 mp3s on one CD. I like to put it on shuffle play...it's like having your own jukebox with all your own favorite songs. Get one!!