Almost there..
Written: Nov 05 '00 (Updated Nov 08 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Sound quality is Excellent, Small, Upgradeable.
Cons: No Win2000 support, fragile, terrible support.
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| robt015's Full Review: Compaq iPAQ PA-1 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
I purchased the Compaq I-Paq about a week ago after comparing similar products from Diamond and Sony. I was looking for a digital payer because CD players are big and so are CD's. I wanted something unobtrusive to my daily routine.
What I liked about the Compaq was the memory capacity (64MB) and it's size. The Sony offerings were nice as well, but they use that damn memory stick, or were not upgradeable at all.
The Rio's are nice, but for one they're too big, and secondly way too big.
I got the box home, and experienced the same issues that everyone else has had; hermetically sealed package, and the door to the memory cards was half off.
Next was the installation. The manual is poor, but if you have a working USB port the process is strait-forward. Install the software, reboot, turn on the player, connect the cable. Windows will find the device and load the driver, which is installed at the same time the Rio Port software is.
The Rio Port software is clunky at best. Although it is functional. You have to format the memory cards for Rio port to work, but I'm not sure if that's a necessary for the player to work (more on that later). Load up some MP3s and then transfer them. One issue here is that the batteries take a huge hit when connected to the USB port, so only connect it when you're ready to transfer or delete songs on the I-Paq.
Being unsatisfied with the Rio Port software, I attempted to use Microsoft's Media Player 7. According to Microsoft, the I-Paq is supported, but I had a few issues. 1. WMP will only see 30MB of available RAM on the I-Paq (due to the TWO MMC cards) 2. WMP will not show any songs uploaded with Rio Port. With this in mind I'm not sure if you need to format the MMC cards for the Rio software, or for the device itself.
I already formatted mine, so it's hard to tell. Either way, WMP is not an option yet.
After using the I-Paq for about a week I can say this; it's small & light!, sound quality is EXCELLENT!, battery life is good when playing music, the LCD is adequate. But, the software is terrible, not sure if the device will support larger capacity MMC cards, Compaq support for this product is useless.
If you have some technical ability and are looking for the smallest, lightest digital audio player, this is it! If you're somewhat of a novice to the MP3 scene, stay away for now. Maybe if the software, support, and documentation get better I would recommend this device to everyone.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
robt015
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Member: Rob T
Location: Stamford, CT soon to be Chicago, IL
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
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