Apple Reviews

I bought this on the recommendation of a friend. I should ask if she still has it and if it still works.

The first unit I bought lasted less than a week before the screen displayed "Hard Disk Error." Following the manual to recover from the error was useless. Luckily, I was able to exchange it at the store (Compusa) for the second unit.

The second unit lasted several months of on-again, off-again play before it also died the same way: in mid-song, no warning. I'm not going to bother a third time. If all MP3 players function like this, I'll buy whichever offers 2 hours of music for the least money so I don't feel the pain of throwing it away when it, too, crashes.

With both units, the nebulous Hard Disk Error showed up not long after I uploaded a group of songs (last time, 90 files using MusicMatch Jukebox's export feature). Also, I was playing the selected folder on random. After that error showed, nothing I did could revive the unit. It would start, but not go beyond the Jukebox Ver: 5.08 screen.

Now it's an attractive-looking high tech paperweight.

I used both units exclusively at my desk. That is, I did not take them out while running, and I kept moving them while they were playing to a minimum.

The design of the case makes exchanging the batteries insanely difficult, which is frustrating as the unit goes through batteries fast.

If you are going to purchase one of these units, do not pay full price. If you do, buy the "extended warranty" or "product protection plan" from the store. That way you can have them replace again and again for less money.

This is a great buy considers the amount of storage you get as a MP3 player and as a portable hard drive. The size of this unit is compact enough to fit in a pocket for easy carrying around. It produces high quality sound provided that you use a high quality set of head phones. You can manage your of collection of songs and data easily via your PC by using the familiar windows explorer. The USB interface setup is quite straightforward and I was able to get it up and running within a few minutes. There are quite a few things which I would consider as less than perfect. First of all, the user manuel is poorly written. Many valuable information is missing (most of it can be found, however, in the Archos support FAQ site). The battery compartment door is poorly designed. If you follow the manual's instructions to pry open the cover with a screw driver, chances are that you would damage the plastic surrounding it. However, you could easily open the battey compartment door by graping the 3 notches on the side of the cover with your fingers and lift it up. The control of the features on the MP3 player is mainly done by scrolling through an on-screen menu, which would be less convenient than having a separate dial control for the volume or for searching. However, there are many great features on the menus which allow you to control the sound quality and songs play back. The unit does not allow recording even though a line-in jack is provided. If you want to delete songs on the player, you would need to do it through the windows explorer on the PC. I have also tried to backup about 1.5 Gbyte of my work data. The unit ran into a few underrun problems and that not all files were backed up. I found out later that the problem was caused by low batteries voltage. You definitely should connect the charger to the unit for data backup. When you disconnect the jukebox from the PC, I strongly recommend that you use windows to eject the hardware (for windows 98, click on My Computer; right click on the drive icon; then click Eject) rather than simply unplugging the USB cable. I suspect that many people who complained about hard disk errors did not follow this procedure. Anyway, this unit deserves a 4-star for the convenience of being able to store thousands of MP3 songs in a box and being able to use it as a portable hard drive.

...

Now that thats out of the way..The Archos 20 player has many pros, and a few cons. Among all, is the ease of transfering your cd collection to the machine. Just load up the software provided, direct it do the new player (which will show up as a new harddrive on your pc) and press the record button. Within 4-5 minutes you have your cd already placed in its own folder ready for playing. Play-lists are easy, just use the software, its pretty simple. The sound is great, dont listen to people that say its bad, all you gotta do is play with the bass and treble. The controlls on the machine are a bit wierd, but within 5 min. I was flying around, navigating all my cds and the tracks within. I organize it by band name/cd/track/title. Lastly, dont mix and match and move things around alot, because just like a normal harddrive, it will get cluttered and errors will start to occur. And if you have a problem, also like a HD, just run scan disc and fix the errors. Thats all, e-mail at coolsk8two@aol.com for questions.

The only reason it does not get 5 stars, is i feel that unless you know alot about computers, how they work, and can figure gizmos out for your self (the instructions are worthless) than this might not be the player for you. But if you are all of the above, than I highly recomend the Archos JukeBox 20.

... I have used an original Nomad player, the Archos player, and the iPod. Of the three, I definitly like this one the best. It isnt even close.

Just because this device works great for me doesn't mean it will work for everyone. I think the iPod serves a different nitch in the market so you want to pick the player that will fit your needs the best. I think the primary advantages for the iPod is the speed of the file transfers, and the size of the device.

If you need a player that will fit into your shirt pocket and transfer your CDs extremely quickly, then go with the iPod. For me I went with the Riot instead because:

1. I like the display for the Riot 100x more then the iPod. The iPod display is pretty good, but it doesn't have enough information or enough real estate for me. The Riot's interface makes it much easier for me to find my CDs, and see my play list as I go.

2. I like the ability to remove files and manage my play lists in the player itself. I travel alot, and 90% of the time when I am listening to the player I am away from my computer. Being able to remove that song from that CD you just hate is a great bonus, and whipping together an "80s Playlist" is a big advantage to me. I do have a couple of issues with the play list and que, but overall I like this feature enough that it overrides the rest.

3. The size of the hard drive. Lets face it, for most of us 20 Gigs is going to cover our entire collection, I have 150 CDs, and I ripped them all at 192 rate for better quality and loaded them all into the Riot and still have 9 gigs of space remaining. With only 5 gigs of space (or even 10 with the iPod that will come out soon), I just can't say that. To me I would rather take longer to transfer all of my music then have fast transfers where I got to pick and choose a portion of my music. For someone who is around their computer more often, or where 5 gigs is more then enough for your music collection now and in the future then this may not be a big issue.

4. Size to me just wasn't a big issue. The player is about half the size of a CD player, and with the carrying case it is easy enough to carry along. I have to walk every day to the train and back, and I have no problem with the size of the player on the way. I think the size of the iPod is an advantage, but to me I wanted the larger hard drive and bigger display rather then the smaller size. The player easily fits in my coat pocket, and when I don't have one on, the carrying case works well enough for my needs. I wish they had included a portable plug instead of the standard one, but it isnt that big a deal.

5. And last but FAR from least is the FM tuner. It is great when I get bored with my own music to turn on the FM tuner and listen to some music. It is also nice to get the news or traffic updates while listening to the player. I would have prefered an AM/FM tuner so I can listen to my sports and news shows as well, but it is a minor quibble.

6. I have noticed a number of people complaining about the battery life on this device, and I must point out that I simply have not had these problems with the device. I generally charge my Riot over night then play it all day at work and in my car, and under this usage I have yet to run out of battery power during the day.

Overall, I find this player to be perfect for myself. It can hold all my music, has a great interface and allows me to control my music while away from my computer. I think if you dont HAVE to have a player which will fit into your shirt pocket then I would go with the Riot over the iPod.

I don't understand the negative reviews written about this product posted here in early May. Regarding the Real Jukebox software, yes, this is old software. But we're not stuck with it by ANY means. Just upgrade the software to the RealOne Player. The RealOne Player has one of the nicest interfaces I've ever seen. It takes some getting used to navigating at first, but like anything else, once you use it a little, you'll get the hang of it. Much nicer than the old Jukebox software that comes with the Riot.

As far as poor music quality, here's what I learned VERY QUICKLY. When ripping your own CDs, you can't do ANYTHING else while your computer is ripping the music. Turn off your screen saver and close all programs. As soon as you start ripping, don't even touch the mouse! Just leave it be.

When transferring music to the Riot, RealOne Player does lock up now and then during transfers. It just seems to have problems with certain tracks. Unplug the Riot's USB cable, rip the track again, plug the Riot back in, delete the track from the transfer list and, finally, include the track in the transfer list again. It's been my experience RealOne Player successfully transfers the track the second time around.

This is cutting edge technology, not perfected. In my opinion, the shortfalls are far outweighed by the many rewards reaped once the entire collection is correctly ripped then transferred :)

Hope this helped.

I don't understand the negative reviews written about this product posted here in early May. Regarding the Real Jukebox
software, yes, this is old software. But we're not stuck with it by ANY means. Just upgrade the software to the RealOne
Player. The RealOne Player has one of the nicest interfaces I've ever seen. It takes some getting used to navigating at first, but
like anything else, once you use it a little, you'll get the hang of it. Much nicer than the old Jukebox software that comes with the
Riot.

As far as poor music quality, here's what I learned VERY QUICKLY. When ripping your own CDs, you can't do
ANYTHING else while your computer is ripping the music. Turn off your screen saver and close all programs. As soon as you
start ripping, don't even touch the mouse! Just leave it be.

When transferring music to the Riot, RealOne Player does lock up now and then during transfers. It just seems to have
problems with certain tracks. Unplug the Riot's USB cable, rip the track again, plug the Riot back in, delete the track from the
transfer list and, finally, include the track in the transfer list again. It's been my experience RealOne Player successfully transfers
the track the second time around.

This is cutting edge technology, not perfected. In my opinion, the shortfalls are far outweighed by the many rewards reaped
once the entire collection is correctly ripped then transferred :)

Hope this helped.

Well-I was happy with the printer, the fax-and i thought the scanner-but overtime just as another reviewer reported the ribbon cable starts to leave a smear on the bottom of glass. Don't buy this printer for scanning

I bought this printer for my home/office to work on weekends and spare time, plus an occasional home need. Of course I wanted an all around equipment that could scan - copy - and print. Didn't need it to fax since I can do it directly from my computer (scan to fax).
Given these dedmands and the low budget, I think this printer is great.

++ The output quality surpassed my expectations.
++ The speed is acceptable (It's not an office printer). Depending on the quality of the output, in draft for instance, the printer is really fast.
++ I can change the quality of the output either on the printer on the properties dialog box.
++ It has a very useful HP Control Panel software, that is quick to put up on your screen, from where you can decide to print, scan or copy on the click of a button.

-- The one drawback I found is that the drivers are not included in any OS, hence, you must be very careful during installation to install the software in the bundled CD first, before hooking up the printer. But then again, this only a one time thing. Overall, I am quite happy with this equipment after 6 months of use.

When my XEROX Workcenter 250 and ink cartridges were discontinued, I was forced to look for a new FAX and copy machine, which is what I was primarily using the XEROX for. After spending about a week researching products, I chose this machine, for the following reasons: 1. The price was great for the vast functionality provided, 2. I wanted an inkjet because I liked it in the XEROX for FAX/copy quality, and 3. I liked the small footprint of this capable machine.

The set-up was extremely easy and installed flawlessly on my laptop running XP-home OS. (You need to buy USB A-B printer cable). I tried every function on this machine - here's a short review:

1. Flatbed Scanner - Clear, sharp color scans. The included software allows you to scan the image and then manipulate it such as rotating, etc.

2. Printing - clear, sharp color printing. I would say it's not as good as my HP LaswerJet 5L for plain documents, but the print is of professional standards. I printed a number of color photos from JPG files, onto plain paper (5 x 7), and they printed wonderfully - nice colors, no borders.

3. Copying/FAXing - The flatbed scanner is used for copying and FAXing. You have to scan each page individually (up to 50) before copying. There isn't a way to auto-feed multiple pages, which means you have to be present to scan and copy or fax. You have the choice of making color or B&W copies or FAXes. Scanning is very fast, though, so this compensates for having to be present to scan in individual pages.

4. Accepting photo memory cards - this is an unbelievable feature. You insert a photo memory card (it accepts any type) into a slot in the front of the machine, and it prints a proof sheet with "selection options" that you specify by circling which photos you want, what size, type of border etc. You place the completed proof sheet (indicated by circles on your options) back on the scanner and your photos are printed per your direction. This is done directly from the machine without the need for your computer.

I am very pleased with my choice, and the research was well worth the effort. The technology and capabilities you are getting with this multifunction unit is terrific, and the price for the quality and features you are getting is unbeatable.

I purchased this for my son when this was a new item. There had been nothing but trouble with this ever since. The unit shuts itself down before the battery is dead and then the unit doesn't turn itself off! Finally, it has the equivalent of hard drive crashes once every 5 times you use it. Save your money and buy something else. Finally, like some other reviewers stated, they do not own up to their warranty.

I purchased the D-Link Roq-it two months ago. It worked flawlessly until I found the screen flickering and the unit unable to work properly. After sending back the product D-Link replaced my battery and I have had no problems since. While I have heard of other problems, this is a very functional unit: using a 10 GB IBM Travelstar 2.5" laptop hard drive and 2 MB buffer it plays thousands of tracks without skipping. The player has an IR remote (like your TV) for home use and a 5 hour Li-ion battery for portable use. The unit has both line out and headphone jacks and fast USB 1.1 800 k/s transfer. The unit has a bright, large LCD to display ID3 track information and can be used as a portable hard drive. Unfortunately it is as large as a CD player and has good sound quality but poor bass response. This player, however, beats all on the market as of 4/1/02. Here is why:

Archos players: Ni-cd batteries, no true line out, small LCD.
Creative players: Ni-cd batteries, poorly designed, no hard drive functionality.
Ipod: less memory, Mac compatible only.
Treo: no hard drive functionality, dim backlight, no ID3 support.
XP3: same as Treo

You be the judge. You'll find smaller players, but none as functional as the D-Link Roq-it 10 GB.

I bought this unit about two months ago. For the most part, it has lived up to my expectations. The user interface is a little bland, but it works efficient. The OS is a little slow to respond at times. It is very easy to download/upload songs or files from the device. For WinXP and Win2000, there is no need to install any drivers. Just plug the device in and it is instantly recognized. Even though others have stated that play-lists are not supported, I have no problem using them. Although it is a portable device, it may be too cumbersome for jogging (about the same as portable CD player w/o the skipping.) Some of the firmware needs to be updated (maybe they should have a patch) as I have gotten it to lock up on several occasions. The buttons are sensitive so the can be inadvertently pressed when in the travel case. The sound quality out of the line out is excellent, but the headphone out lacks bass even with good headphones. As a portable hard drive, it is excellent. Given reviews of other devices, I would still pick this one over the other hard drive based MP3 Jukeboxes.

The Wireless Intellimouse Explorer is a very interesting mouse. It has the _basis_ of a pretty good mouse, but loses majorly in the details.
First, it is advertised as being ergonomic. That is is--it fits the hand very well. Unfortunately, holding it comfortably places the scroll button below the knuckle of the middle finger--far away from the fingertip used to scroll it. So in order to actually use the mouse, you can't hold it comfortably. Also, the heel of your hand rests on the mousing surface. It is difficult to describe. In short, the ergonomics are very annoying after a few hours of use. Lefties need not apply, this is a right-hand-only item.
The second issue is the major problem. The other, "wired" Microsoft Optical mice have two LED modes: bright and dim. When the mouse is moved, the sensor enters bright mode, and remains there until a few seconds after nothing happens. The Logitech wireless optical behaves likewise. For wireless mice, this results in relatively poor battery life--the Logitech wireless optical is reported to have a very short battery life. Microsoft thought this could be improved on, so this model has an elaborite powersaving system. It has some sort of hand presence sensor (electric, I guess--yes, it actually detects your hand), and turns off when it doesn't think anything's happening. Yes, off. If you're holding the mouse and it's not moving, it strobes at a frequency of about 1s. If you move or click, it turns all the way on. Sounds simple? It's not. For desktop use (that is, relatively low accuracy requirements), it works fine. Move the mouse, the cursor moves. However, for anything that requires more accuracy, i.e. games, major problems arise. It turns out that the mouse has some sort of minimum sensitivity--if you move less than a certain distance, nothing happens. So if you're sniping, for instance, and need to move a pixel left... you can't. This gets very annoying, very fast. I can't comment on battery life, since I've not been using it long enough.
There are other issues, also. I've had problems with this mouse in various DirectX games in Windows XP. The mouse noticably lags in Unreal Tournament, when other pointing devices don't. This might be solvable, I've not put enough effort into it.
The wireless system works well, and is usable to almost exactly six feet without breaking up.
Microsoft advertises an "accelerated scroll wheel". I think this is just part of the drivers, but it does in fact work well. Scrolling in IE is much easier.
To summarize a long and disorganized review, the Wireless Explorer can be pretty good if a) you like the ergonomics, a very polarized issue, b) you don't ever, ever play games, and c) you have no problem changing batteries periodically. Personally, I'm replacing my Microsoft with the Logitech wireless optical. Now if only Logitech made that insane Dual Optical in a wireless version.... mhmmm, power hog.

This is the first wireless mouse that I have bought. I was considering the Logitech MX700 but chose this one instead because it was a bit cheaper when I bought it, and also because it made a perfect duo with my microsoft natural multimedia keyboard.
I'll start mentioning features. This mouse is great to be cordless. It's fast, precise, and rarely does it lag. I play a lot of games that require fast movement and this does the job. The keys on the side are very useful because it allows the user to move "back" and "forward" in many applications that support this feature, including internet explorer and windows explorer. On the top there are 3 other buttons, the left, middle and right, while the middle operates as the scrolling wheel.
The mouse can operate as far as 6 feet from the receiver, and I think that's pretty cool. It is a bit heavy, but I do not think of that as bad; it feels very solid. The mouse drags a little bit depending on the mousepad or the surface where you have it. One thing I dislike is that the batteries don't last very much -- about 2-3 weeks with 8-10 hour use. I still don't think it's bad, but it can be a bit expensive to buy batteries every two weeks. I wish it came with rechargable ones, but nothing is perfect.
I do, however, recommend it to any casual user & gamer.

When I first purchased the regular IntelliMouse Explorer I was impressed how comfortable it fit in my hand and how accurate the laser was. When I saw Microsoft released one that was wireless I had to purchase it since I liked the one with the wire so much. The mouse is really amazing how accuate it is. It can be used from as far as 6 ft away from the receiver and it doesn't need to be directly in front of it. I even tried using it on my chest and still worked!

---(. . .) I also had this problem with the RF noise right after I started using it. It made this loud squeely noise whenever I moved it. It went away about 2 days later. Then about 2 weeks later it said my batteries were running low so I changed them. It made the noise again but went away in 5 minutes.

When I first experienced the noise problem I considered sending the mouse back. Then I figured its so much easier being able to have my arm in any position without having the wire so I decided to keep it. I'm so glad I made that decision because now the noise is gone!

This is IMHO one of Microsoft's products yet! I just wished the batteries lasted longer.

This printer is a joke! Sure, it prints good pictures - but the print head gets clogged so often that most of the ink in your ink cartridges is drained before you can do much! If you let this printer sit for a week, you will need to run the head cleaning utility - which drains a visible amount of ink on the ink monitor . Subsequently, you run out oif ink in less than two months without doing much printing at all! It's ridiculous!

I bought ink cartridges three weeks ago, have printed nothing but a few resumes (no color) and now they are both halfway drained. Tell me, is this reasonable?

I think not.

This is the second epson I have owed. One thing I can tell you about this brand is they are LOUD, put on some headphones when you are printing things out, oh and the desk better be secure because they rock back and forth, I though mine was going to walk off the table! The print, its ok but also expect the paper to jam a lot on thicker card stock. Oh and make sure you order some head cleaner from www.maxpatch.com. The heads constantly get dirty and they sell a fluid that will clean them. with HP or Lexmark every time you buy a new cartridge you get a new head, not so with epson. When I am making greating cards, mine likes to leave nice black track marks. I have cleaned the rollers and it still does it, guess its a gift from epson. If you want a good printer buy HP or Lexmark, yes you pay more for ink, but the photo quality prints are just as good and they are super quite. My printer is in my bedroom and when I print in the morning the noise is enough to wake up my girlfriend. stay away from epson

Okay, here is how it is: This is the best photo printer this side of your local photo lab, but it doesn't come without some disadvantages. This printer does not use the Epson DuraBrite ink, which the Epson C82 does. It does use a five ink system, but it is housed in a single cartridge. That is pretty lousy because the ink tank is rather small. You must understand though, if you have a decent digital camera, you will not know the difference between this and a professional development.

The digital film readers that are included in the unit are pretty cool as they are pretty expensive when they are not in the Epson box. The little read out screen for picture selecting is a bit difficult to get used to, as it is definitely no LCD screen. But, for the price, who would expect a monitor. If running without a computer is a must, then the selection screen is sufficient. If at all possible, use your computer and import that way, it is much easier. There is also a reel on the back for 4x6 paper rolls.

Overall, the printer is rather affordable for the output. The pictures are top shelf and text is almost laser quality. It is well worth the money and puts out better pictures than any machine I have ever encountered. This replaces the Epson C82 as my favorite photo printer on the market.

epc

Even when it was brand new I had about a 75% success rate with this burner. After wasting many hours and blank CDs, that rate, 10 months later, is 0%. You'll easily make up the savings of this inexpensive burner if you spend a few dollars more and get a better burner--I've shelled out $50 in discarded CD-Rs since I got this.

I was freaked out when reading all these reviews - it seems that people either love a product or hate it. I bought this burner for use with my HP Pavillion PC, and I have had no problems whatsoever with it. It is really easy to set up, the software is easy to install and intuitive to use, and it is very quiet. It is not as fast as some burners out there, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to burn an 80 minute CD. However, unless you are burning CDs for commercial applications, I doubt you will miss the speed. There is built in CD and jewel-box label design software, but they seem to be extremely cheesy and I would recommend buying a real design program if you want to put together really nice labels...

Now, I'm sure I'll get a rash of unhelpful votes for this, but sometimes I wonder if when people complain about problematic, inconsistent hardware and software, the actual problem is human error.

Then again, I really don't understand how anybody could screw up installing and using this drive. Having read many of the comments on this page before buying it with some trepidation over a month ago, I went through the documentation on Iomega's site throughly. After a few hours of reading I realised that I should have just plugged in the drive, connected the USB, and turned on the computer and installed the sugessted software. It's that simple, despite what some would have you believe.

The drive has worked well for me so far, writing more than a dozen CDs in both audio and data format at the 4x max, and while this is rather slow, I'm using it primarilly for back-up and for the price (this drive is now available cheap as a refurbished product on Amazon) it was well worth it. Also, no coasters yet. Some have suggested using only quality media for burning, though I did try a no name disc and it burned without a problem. Mostly I've used HP media.

Some people have pointed out compatability problems with Toshiba notebooks, so if that's your system, beware, but for someone looking for a cheep external it's really rather hard to beat this product

The print quality may be great, but as soon as you go a few weeks without printing or eventually end up having to change ink cartridges, this printer has major problems with the print heads clogging up with dried ink that can't be remedied by the print head cleaning utility and requires getting in there with a syringe.

Stay far, far away.

I purchased the C82 in March of 2003, thinking it was one of the better choices on the market at the time. Now I know better. June 2004 rolls around and I need to buy a set of ink cartridges, little did I know three out of four heads would never work again. I blew $68 on ink and even after running all the tests, can only print magenta, which I had replaced a week before the cyan, yellow and black cartridges. The magenta even took four days to start cranking out ink. I have to print color brochures and newsletters, so I will be buying a different brand printer this week. I did get more than a year of flawless, satisfying printouts from this machine, but it just isn't worth $200 American dollars (plus $68 on never-used ink)only to have it quit working right after the warranty expiration. I have heard about Epson's bad consumer support and will be looking for brands with better consumer ratings. The C82 turned into a shameful waste of money, I am disappointed in Epson.

This is one of the finest printers for photography on the market today. This piece is inexpensive to buy and relatively inexpensive to own. Each color is in a separate ink tank. They are affordably priced. The best feature is the new Epson ink that is used in this printer. It uses a pigment ink instead of a dye. Pigment inks adhere to the top of the paper as opposed to sinking in to the paper. The new ink is virtually waterproof. I witnessed an Epson representative pull a page out of a printer and submerge it in water. . . like a minute after the printer was finished. . .It was amazing. The paper was waterlogged, but the ink was unharmed. On photo paper, the ink is supposed to last 75 years!

You will never see a pixel on a photo when the picture is of high enough quality. Epson photo paper is probably the best out there. This is a great printer for the price. This would be a great printer for twice the price.

The MFC work right out of the box is a good point. No problem, but the quality is not acceptable, I have to run clean printhead 4 times with-in 1 month of take owner-ship of the machine. Take 4 minutes to print 1 page color superfine mode with picture, and the quality not superfine at all. Faxing and PC-Fax are good, fast. Scan is find, I run it with Win98sec. The machine already print 400 pages so far with 4 times clean printhead I think that to much compare to My old HP for 4 year never have one time clean printhead beside when you replace ink. I love flatbed and ADF as well, Had no paper jam so far. I need on/off swith.

I had this machine for 2 years. It worked fine, ink cartridges went quickly though. It's on it's 2 year anniversary and the head is broken. It costs $300 to replace. Out with this and in with a new one. I will buy extra warranty on my next one.

I recieved the MFC-5100C this afternoon, with some trepidation about MacOS X support. I'm happy to report that it works without a hitch in OS X, both for printing and scanning. No USB cable in the box, but that seems to have become standard practice for printer manufacturers.

Print quality is decent. Not on par with the latest/best inkjets, but they cost more than this machine, and don't have scanner/fax capabilities. And inkjet printing has come so far in the last few years that this 'ok' modern printer is far better than the standard a few years ago.

Scan quality (via the TWAIN driver) is good as well. Again, not as good as more expensive scanners, but quite acceptable for an economical multifunction machine. Scanning speed is good as well. Minor gripe, that may not be Brother's fault - i can scan with no problems into Adobe Photoshop and some other apps, but Image Capture.app goes haywire with this TWAIN driver. Might be Apple's fault though, since the driver works fine with other apps.

So far my only concern is that the scanner light stays on permanently, and there is no on/off switch for the unit. So the unit is presumably sucking power and wearing out the scanner light 24 hours a day. :(

-robin

I bought this to use an ipod in the car. I live in the fifth largest market in the country (Dallas-Fort Worth) and the only station that consistently gives a signal without crosstalk from other stations is the very first one - 87.9. So the one positive is that it does actually work.

There are lots of negatives:

The setup is difficult. The Griffin web site tells you that you need to manually install the station 'song' files if using itunes. Once you have them synced to your ipod, then you play just the first half of the station 'song' you want, then press pause. If you pause to early or late, too bad - it doesn't work.

The signal is very weak. On accustic songs, I often hear an irritating *splat* sound whenever the performer sings a long 's' sound. This is no matter what the sound level is set to. Static and signal loss are common.

The battery life is a killer. On a recent road trip, we got just under 4 hours of playing time before the battery died.

It's cheaper than getting custom inputs installed in the dash, but I don't think its much better than a cassette adaptor.

Well I had a Bad iTrip. The thing was a knobathon to get going in the car while driving (and that was with my CoPilot) and when i 'luckily' found a station almost by accident, it sounded terrible. Like an MP3 thru an FM channel or an FM station thru a tin can.

it has been returned - up for auction it goes.
(++ on the plus side the design and concept were way too cool - it hooked me. It might take 2-5 years to perfect the technology maybe then i'll try again...but for now it definitely sucks.)

I bought this product in June 2004. I have a second generation ipod and was looking for a way to connect it to my car stereo. My brother had suggested sending RCA cables up behind the dash into the auxiliary input of the stereo. This sounded like it would be a pain, though, so I thought I'd give Griffin Technologies' ITrip a chance. When I received the item, I was delighted to find that the sound quality was actually quite good. I had read some people giving it poor ratings due to sound quality. Maybe it's because the city I live in (St. Louis) isn't packed from one end of the dial to the other with FM stations. Maybe it's because of the radio I was transmitting the signal to. Whatever the case, I found the item to be very nice. It comes with some software which is easily installed. You just put the cd in and it automatically adds an FM "playlist" for each frequency on the dial (every other .1 KHz, i.e. 89.7, 89.9, 90.1, etc.) to your music program (for me it was MusicMatch Jukebox, I'm sure it does the same for ITunes or WinAmp). As soon all the station playlists have been added to the program, one simply needs to connect the Ipod to the computer to synchronize it with the computer, and then you're ready to go! It took me a matter of minutes to figure out how to use it. All you do is connect it to the top of the Ipod unit via the headphone jack, a little blue light comes on, and then you go into "playlists," choose a frequency, then press pause. This sets the ITrip to transmit to that particular frequency. If you want to try a different one, you simply go back to your ITrip playlist, choose another, and press pause. The blue light flashes several times once the chosen frequency has been locked. I chose 101.7, which is in between two large stations in St. Louis...101.1 and 102.5. I figured that frequency would have a fairly large buffer between it and either one of the high strength stations adjacent to it and thus a clear signal. I was right, and the sound quality was really good! The most important thing I found was positioning of the unit. I think it has to be positioned a certain way for best sound quality. The Ipod volume also has to be at an optimum setting for the best sound quality. Most of the volume control is done through the radio volume control anyways, not through the Ipod. Also nice is the fact that the unit does not require batteries! All in all, this is a great little item if you plan on taking your Ipod with you on the go. The only thing I'm not sure of is taking it on long roadtrips. It might require changing the ITrip's frequency many times because while a particular frequency may be unoccupied in one part of the country, it may house a very strong signal conglomerate radio station in another part. Regardless, I'd strongly recommend the item to anyone interested. It's affordable and it does its job as advertised.