SmartDisk Rover 128 MB MP3 Player & USB Flash Drive

by SmartDisk

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00008POK5
• Item model number: ROV128
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #258,902 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A bargain but some problems, May 7, 2003

By 

robert cropf (st. louis, mo USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: SmartDisk Rover 128 MB MP3 Player & USB Flash Drive (Electronics)

This is a real bargain ... It plugs directly into your pc using the usb port and behaves like another hard dive. No need to mess with software or wires. It's a real snap to drag and drop files from your pc to the Rover. It holds a lot of music files at 128 mb, especially if you rip 'em using mp3pro or wma. All this in a device the size of a cigarette lighter.
Downside: its design is too simple. Volume control and reverse/forward are on the same dial. The dial is hard to turn. When you want to skip a song you might just end up turning it up to earsplitting volumes or turning it off. This is something the manufacturer has to fix. Otherwise, a nifty little gadget.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Workout Player, July 18, 2003

By 

David C. Veeneman (Southern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: SmartDisk Rover 128 MB MP3 Player & USB Flash Drive (Electronics)

Thisunit is excellent for use while jogging or working out. Finally--no skipping, and no static or commercials! The unit is the size of my wife's lipstick case, and clips easily onto a pair of jogging shorts.

Sound quality is great--better than I was getting on my CD walkman. The included earbud headphones work fine for me, although others may prefer over-the-head phones.

Using Windows XP, copying songs to the unit is a simple drag-and-drop operation. The Rover doesn't come with CD-ripping software, but the free version of MusicMatch Jukebox (available on the Web) works just fine for this purpose.

One thing to be aware of--there is only one control, a multi-function switch that looks like a volume control. You use it to skip forward or backward a tune, and to raise or lower volume. But that's all the unit does. Since I bought it for use while jogging, the limited functions are no problem. But if you like more controls, you might be unhappy.

Overall, I strongly recommend this unit as a workout player. I don't think I would recommend it for a general purpose MP3 player, though. A unit like Apple's iPod would probably be better.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Way Terrific Product, July 11, 2003

By 

Anya (Denver, CO USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: SmartDisk Rover 128 MB MP3 Player & USB Flash Drive (Electronics)

The SmartDisk Rover works great with RedHat Linux. It comes formatted as a vfat filesystem, so all you have to do in Linux is, as root, plug it in to the USB port, create a directory called /mnt/rover or something, find out what your system recognizes is as (mine is sda1), then enter: mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/rover and there it is. You can drag files into it, or just use the command line cp command. When you are done, just umount /mnt/rover then unplug it. You can also add a line to /etc/fstab and then any user can mount and umount it.

Some things that for some strange reason neither the vendor or the specs tell you are that: 1) When you turn it off, it remembers where you are so when you turn it back on it starts right where you left off; 2) I don't like the ear-bud type headset, so I just plugged my favorite Sennheiser headset into it, and it works great - I presume that about any headset will work; and 3) When you change the battery, the memory does NOT erase, it keeps all the files intact.

I have no problems with the single control knob, it works fine for on/off, volume, and skip ahead/back.

An excellent product, highly recommended, and I understand it works with Windows as well.