Customer Reviews

RipDrive MP3 Jukebox - 30 GB

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I like that everything gets converted to MP3 format. I also like having 30 GB to record mega hours of voice or music recordings. My first unit had troubles stopping when I was in the record mode. And I also had troubles with that unit hanging at the end of a recording and then having to hard reset and lose what was recorded. I got a replacement and have learned to use both thumbs on the stop button to stop a recording. One caveat: Do not use a computer mic on the unit, it can fry the line in jack.

The Pogo Ripdrive was my secong ever mp3 player. i bought it after much deliberation and research becasue in addition to playing mp3's it also

1. Has an FM tuner with 20 presets

2. Has a voice recorder

3. Has in-line recording

and I'm kinda anti-iPod, I KNOW that somewhere there is a machine that's just as good.

I bought this thing last spring and it started misbehaving in the fall. It would freeze constantly, couldn't listen to 2 songs without the machine freezing and needing to be soft-reset. I contacted the company and was told to send it back. I did and they sent it back after basicaly only wiping the harddrive.

3 days later it began to freexe again. I contacted the company again, again, though I'd just gotten it back, I had to resubmit my receipt and send the thing back again. this time it took a bit longer to get it back, I called their cust service and they said a new on was in the mail and that if IT didn't work, I might want to look at my files for viruses.

i got the unit back and turned it over, lo and behold, the new serial number was the same as the old! Hum... I hadn't gotten a new one after all. I was emailed a firmware upgrade and put that on and loaded my music and guess what? It froze again during EVERY song. I used MediaMonkey to load onto the unit and it turns out it wasn't compatible so I took it all off and loaded from Windows Explorer.

Same stuff, I wanted to scream. By this point I was ready to throw in the towel and contacted them and requested a refund. They said no, you can only get one when you buy directly from the company and within 30 days. But, you know, I bought it in the expectation that it would WORK! I organize so many of my electronic gadgets through my computer and scan for viruses so often, it is highly unlikely that I have a virus.

So, I sent it back a third time and DEMANDED a new one. I was offered a new one and charged $20 for a new screen because the one I'd sent back had scratches not covered by the warrantee. They sent it back with the back of my old machine on it because, apparently, it also had scratches on it, so, they said, the serial number would be the same, but it would be a different machine. (smells like a scam) Meanwhile, I can find no scratches.

Same problem, different machine. It is just a shabby machine. It is big and heavy and there are only 30 people in their office so you KNOW you can't have your money back. I may just resort to using my mini disk player (remember when 5 hours of music on one disk was alot?)

Pogo stinks, it ABSOLUTELY stinks. you try to give the mom and pop company a shake then you get locked in. It was a $300 lesson for me, but believe me, I have learned.

I bought this a couple months ago now. I haven't had any major problems with it. It has fell a couple of times and it still works. My only complaint is that sometimes it just freezes or turns off, it's probably because it's getting jumbled around in my pocket. It is a bit bulky, but hey, I have around 100 cds on here in 128 kb/s and it is only 13% full!

The sound quality is however good as the headphones you are using. I advise getting different ones that come with it. I got some 12 dollar Sony ear buds, they sound pretty nice. They actually have bass!

The five band equalizer on it is great. I love it. You can easily archive all of your music. I wouldn't say you can make playlists really fast...it's a slow and tedious process when using the RipDrive itself. The line-in jack works incredibly well and so does the microphone.

There may be better mp3 players out there, but absolutely not this cheap. I love this. Listen to it everyday during math class :) probably why I'm failing...

So...if you like music and care about how it sounds and what not, get this. If you care about what people think (people tend to make fun of this because it's big...haha) or just need something really little, still get it.

Hope I helped...I'm always bad with this review thing. But I tried!

While some customers unfotunately had ver bad luck with this product, mine suited my needs pretty well. I spent a long time looking at different players and reading reviews before I bought this one, which ironically, had only about 2 reviews when I bought it. The price was unbeatable. I was going to buy the 20-gigabyte player for about $200 (I don't remember the exact price), but then saw that the 30-gig was only $20 more! It lasted me almost 3 years, and I was thinking of replacing it with a higher-capacity player just a few days before it crashed on me. It had its flaws, of course, which I will get to, but overall, it worked rather well for me. I could fit practically my whole music collection on it and use the line-in jack for transferring LP's to MP3's. So basically, it did its job: storing my MP3 collection and letting me listen to them.

Now for the cons; there are several, but they are small ones:

1. Whenever you unhooked it from your PC after adding songs, you would have to reset settings such as the autoplay, your EQ, and a few other things such as the bitrate that it would record things at.

2. Now and then, it would sort of freeze; the music would be playing, but none of the buttons worked, and I would have to hold down the stop button to shut it off. Then I would have to turn it on and off maybe five or six times before it stopped freezing.

3. Shuffle mode was kind of crappy; if you were listening to one band in shuffle and turned the unit off, the next time you used it, no matter what song you started with, it would play the exact same order every time.

4. It was quite bulky. It would be uncomfortable in your pocket, and you would feel really stupid walking around with it clipped to your belt, because it was so big (although they were nice enough to include the carrying case with the unit).

5. They sent me a firmware upgrade, but it didn't change a single thing, at least nothing that I noticed.

So the unit had quite a few flaws, but I was willing to put up with them and the unit lasted me nearly 3 years before crashing, and now I've switched over to the Toshiba Gigabeat which also has a few small flaws (or rather things I would change), but every problem that I had with the Pogo Drive is nowhere to be found on this one and the price was just about as reasonable, plus it's much smaller and lighter.

With last years Christmas rapidly approaching, my dad as always asked "So, what do you want this year?" You see, my dad is the purchaser of the `big gift' each year. Most of the time, I've got one particular item in mind, but this past year I didn't have a clue.

I scoured the Internet looking for a reasonably priced gadget... Ideas ranged from an Airport Express for mp3s to play music anywhere around our new abode to a Mac Mini just for the sake of having a Mac with OSX to play with. Finally I decided that I'd love to have an iPod.

Being the bargain shopper my dad is and realizing that you definitely pay a premium for Apple products, he began his search for an MP3 player that would fit my needs, coming across a device called the PoGo! Ripdrive. For $200, you'd get a 30gb player with FM tuner and Voice recording abilities. The specs sounded decent, but of course I was hesitant in the fact that well... Who the hell has ever heard of PoGo! Products before?

He was excited about it as it really did seem almost too good to be true. The price was right and the features were there. After doing a bit of research on my own and finding very little in the way of reviews, I apprehensively told him that I didn't trust them but I couldn't find any negative reviews so he ordered it and I received it on Christmas.

For about 2 months, everything was splendid. The RipDrive functioned as advertised and was just big enough to hold my entire collection. My few complaints were that it was a bit bulky and not that nice to look at, and it had frozen up a few times. No big deal because now I could listen and record soundclips from Howard Stern's morning show with the FM tuner from work.

One afternoon on my way out the door from the job, I disconnected the player and put it in my jacket pocket. After getting behind the wheel, I removed the RipDrive from my pocket to hook it into my car stereo like normal... only this time it was completely off. I turned it back on attributing it to just a glitch, and drove home listening to MP3s from my car stereo.

Getting out of the car in my garage, I placed the device back in my pocket to go inside only to find, yet again that it had turned itself off. Now I was getting irritated. It had crossed my mind that perhaps there was something metal in my pocket and it was shorting out somehow but that wasn't the case.

Over the next week, I kept a close eye on it's activity. It would continue to play and work fine when sitting still on my desk but anytime I would walk with it, off it went. Eventually, the hard drive would occasionally click as well so I could only deduce that it was the drive failing. I contacted PoGo's tech support to which I received an automated reply, basically telling me just to update the Firmware. Firmware updates do not make a device stop clicking, nor do they effect how the player performs due to physical orientation, but I decided to go through their process anyways and updated the firmware with no improvement.

Replying to the firmware email, I told `them' (I say `them' because I'm pretty sure it's like 3 guys working in an office in California) that I updated the firmware and was still having the issues to which I received yet another automated email asking me to update the firmware... so I called them up. I informed the tech person I spoke with that I had updated the firmware of my device and was still having issues, to which he asked what was the firmware version number. I told him and he said "Oh, that's the one that's on our website, email us and we'll send you the non-released firmware." At this point, I informed him that I was pretty sure it was a hardware issue when he informed me that if it doesnt work this time, we'll RMA it. Fine, whatever.

I updated to the super-ultra-secret firmware and got some pretty new menus and options but it still crashed consistently. We went through the RMA process and I sent back the drive to them, paying for it out of my own pocket, with a note as to what was wrong on their RMA form.

At this point, it was about 3 months that I had owned this piece of doody. After two and a half weeks, I received an automated notification email letting me know that it had shipped back to me. No explanation as to what was wrong, so I contacted the same person who I got the RMA number from asking what was wrong. No reply... not even an automated one.

A few days later, I got a brown box on my stoop from PoGo. Opening it up revealed a RipDrive encased in bubble wrap with no invoice, shipping information, explanation. or anything else for that matter. Hopeful, I loaded it up with some MP3s and enjoyed a full month of error free bliss.

Yep, only a month this time... so, out of the 5 months dealing with PoGo products, about 1/2 the time I had a working device. This time though, the drive was clearly not spinning up properly as I could feel the vibrations and it was clicking regularly. After the long ten minute boot process, the menus showed 2 of my 250 folders.

I was fed up and wrote them another email telling them yet again what had happened... only to receive a non-automated "did you update the firmware?" email. I immediately replied saying I wanted a refund and how infuriated I was. The reply came a day later telling me that because the device had been purchased last year, I could only receive warrantee assistance... In other words, I'd have to RMA it again, on my own dime.

After that, I informed them I would be slamming their name throughout the Internet and be contacting the Better Business Bureau, only to receive no reply... at least I didn't get a message asking me to update my firmware.

If you notice today, the PoGo Ripdrive is no longer available for purchase, which leads me to believe that my issues were not uncommon. They released a piece of garbage product via the Internet for a low price and collected their money.