MP3 Reviews

This player SUCKS! OK, it does have a voice recorder and fm recorder (which record in the large, but non-propietary .WAV format) and an fm radio (who's reception is spotty at best), but aside from those "features" this thing is absolutely horrible. Oh yeah - It doesn't require any software. Windows sees it as a removable drive, which is good (and bad - see below). Also, it is very small and cute, which was a selling point for me, but that's not nearly enough to make up for it's shortcomings.

The first one I bought broke right away while I was transferring files (granted, I didn't read the manual first, but you really shouldn't need to - you should be able to plug in and go, especially considering there is no software to install). I had no problem with Win XP recognizing it as a removable drive, but I think what happened was that I tried dragging over a folder with-in another folder (the player only supports 1 level of folders, and I had mine set up //artist/album/file.mp3). Windows sees this as a drive, so as far as Windows is concerned there should be no problem in creating multiple folders. But, instead of giving an error, the transfer just crashed and the unit would not respond. Even after multiple attempts at removing the battery to reset it, it still would not respond. Not a good start.

So I returned it and got another. This time I made sure that my files were only one folder deep (aside: since this player does not "see" folders really, it treats them as playlists. for a unit that proudly displays it's drag-and-drop capabilities on it's package, it seems odd that it doesn't support a folder view. i haven't tried non-music files, given how easily it killed the system by just trying to create a third level of folders. also, just like first generation mp3 players, if you want your songs to play in a particular order, you had better name them that way, as the manual suggests, by add "001","002", etc to the begining of the file/folder.)

Figuring out how the navigation works was a chore. Much of my time was spent in trial-and-error trying to figure out how to navigate around this thing (again, should you really need to read a manual just to figure out how to play a song? this is ridiculous!) Which brings us to my biggest complaint:

THE SCREEN IS UPSIDE-DOWN!!!

Seriously. What I imagine happened was that they put it all together, and some tester said that the buttons should be on top of the unit instead of the bottom, so instead of redesigning it, they just flipped the screen. This is apparent because the buttons are BACKWARDS!! That doesn't make sense? OK, let me explain. Normally, being from an an engligh speaking/reading country, you assume that, given two buttons, the one one the left would be "back" and the one on the right would be "forward" (picture the navigation buttons on any vcr, tape player, dvd, cd... ok, pretty much anything that has navigation buttons). This is not the case with this unit. I constantly find myself going back when i want to go forward, lowering the volume when i want to raise it, etc. It's extremely frustrating and annoying. Another hint that they just flipped the screen is that the writing on the back of the unit is upside-down compared to the screen (but, if you turn the unit over, at least the buttons make sense. you just can't see what's going on on the screen).

Speaking of the screen. It's easy enough to read, but holds hardly any info on it. 4 lines with a max of 12 characters each (and that's one line for the name of the song, one line for the folder/playlist, one line for the timeframe, and the last line for system settings, like battery level, etc. so really it's just two lines with a max of twelve chars). It's also very low res compared to other current generation mp3 players i've used.

The voice recorder seemed to work well enough, but given how poorly designed everything on this unit is, I'm not even going to test that or any other feature any further. This is definitly not worth it, even at the fairly low price. iRiver, iRock, Rio, and a few others have similarly priced units that, although not perfect, are worlds ahead of this thing.

if this would have come out 4 years ago it would have been pretty good. but given it's current competition, this is about as bad as it gets.

I ordered the 60GB Ripdrive directly from Pogo. My music collection is ~47GB, so I chose the 60GB Ripdrive. My problems began soon after transferring my data to the unit. At first I experienced hangs at the initial screen that I could recover from if I hooked the RD back to my PC. These hangs happened on every other power cycle. I tried reformatting the drive, and that didn't help. I ended up sending it back to Pogo and they told me they fixed it by reformatting it. I was skeptical that this actually fixed the problem, since it didn't work when I reformatted the drive. They also told me that they hadn't tested with the quantity of music I had. So they shipped it back to me and as soon as I got it back I found it was still behaving flakey and found another major problem.

After a certain directory in my collection, all folders would show up with no files in them when the Ripdrive was in stand-alone mode. If I hooked it to my PC, all my files showed up in explorer. So I was thinking it was a firmware problem. Again, I worked with Pogo's technical support and ended up sending my RD back to them. They contacted me later and said that they came to the conclusion that basically you can't play more than 9999 files on the Ripdrive. (9999 * ~4MB/song ~= 40GB). I find this to be a severe flaw in the Ripdrive. Why would you offer a 60 and 80GB product when you can't play more than 40GB of music on it? They told me they were looking into it, but that you can still store other files on it and use it as a portable hard drive.

I was able to get a full refund, but I feel like this product was not ready to be on the market yet. I was not a beta tester, yet I was finding problems that should have been discovered in a max configuation testcase. I also found that the Ripdrive truncates your playlists after 100 songs. It seems like all of these issues are firmware related, but they weren't able to fix them for me. I have checked their website and don't see any mention of this limitation yet on the 60 and 80GB Ripdrives. If you have more than 40GB of music, do not buy a Ripdrive at this time. The average consumer probably won't run into these problems, so I would recommend the smaller varieties of the Ripdrive. The sound quality was excellent, the price was good, technical support was quick to respond, and the features of the RipDrive were great. It's just too bad that the 60GB version still has so many bugs and limitations.

I recently ordered this product from Amazon.com and I was shocked at the poor quality. For instance it does not fit well in the case. It is hard to get it in it and when I finally got it in the case it did not look like it fit in the case. Also, the case has only one velcro strip ( About 1.5X.5 inch) to hold it to the belt. They advertise this for outside activities like jogging and rollerskating but I am scared of just walking with it because I am afraid of it falling and breaking. I bought my lyra player for almost 200.00 dollars and I don't want to break it. Overall this is very poor in quality and I am shocked because RCA usually makes great products.

I tried this item, it is practically useless. It can barely clean the air in a closet much less a 200 square foot area. Yes safe levels of ozone, that means it is so underpowered it is useless. It made no difference im my home. There is also evidence these items burst into flames and burn up!
(...)

Stay away from this clunker!

From what I can read about this product it sounds good, but there is no picture. I will not buy anything that I can't see what it looks like. I'd love to try it but I need to see it so I will know if it is what I'm looking for. Thank You.

I bought a Buslink Mp3 player in a Datavision Store in NY (Datavision is a big reseller, listed in Buslink page).
The unit sound volume is weak, but this is not the problem. After just 3 months of use the unit wont play mp3 anymore, the screen went crazy every time I start it, and then froze. I contacted Buslink to got a replacement but I got THE WORST SUPPORT, INDIFERENCE AND BAD ATTENTION from they, particulary from Ivan Smith, customer support. Walk away from Buslink. They cannot replace the unit without the invoice from Datavision, they do not honor your waste , confidence nor preference. Stay away from Buslink, a unit that lasted only 3 months and they wont replace. I REPEAT, THE WORST QUALITY AND SUPPORT I GOT IN TONS OF PURCHASES. DONT BUY ANYTHING FROM BUSLINK.

To potential owners of the Vianix SASO,
I have recently reached the end of my rope with both the SASO and the Vianix corporation and it was a very long rope. The first 2 SASOs I received were immediately defective right out of the box. The first had horrible playback and the second wouldn't record at all. The third SASO I receive had defects that showed up later in transferring data from the SASO to my PC and the FOURTH SASO I received was defective with horrible playback. I spoke directly to Ed Prokop of the Vianix Corporation and after he gave me the run around for many months and broke many promises and verbal agreements he still provided NO COMPENSATION for his miscommunication. The SASO itself is very lacking. The one unit I had that partially worked was not very impressive. It is slow. The software is choppy. The supposed "high quality" recordings were never what you might expect from high quality. The battery life is not very long. The mic jack only works with powered microphones. It is in NO WAY RELIABLE AS AN MP3 player. The only time I could get it to play MP3s was when I reduced the quality of the MP3 to 128kbps. The names for any of the files can't be more than 9 characters long (aprox.) and you cannot put spaces in (so, if you try to transfer an MP3 with a full name it will call it "corrupted" and it will delete the file). The transfer rate from the unit to the computer is done through a SERIAL cable and is extremely slow. It's decent, at best, for the highly condensed voice files but it takes upwards of 15 minutes for a single MP3. Deleting files from the unit also takes an exceedingly long time. I would discourage any one from buying the SASO and I would also discourage anyone from dealing with the Vianix Corporation or any product that carries the Vianix name.