Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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84 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Incredible features, an extraordinary value, March 12, 2004
I think this must be the best MP3 player on the market, but it's clearly not for everyone. If you have a huge music collection, if you use both PCs and Macs, if you record voice and sounds, and/or you like to frequently back up all your stuff, this is the one to buy. Amazon has the best price, especially with free super saver shipping. I've found the sound to be excellent, both from downloaded MP3s and tracks copied directly from CDs, across the spectrum of music: opera, jazz, rap, spoken word, and punk. The advanced features of this device are nothing short of amazing, too many to list here. I am thrilled by the FM radio and the internal and external microphone recording capabilities as well as being able to read text files. (These options alone add over [$$$] to the cost of an iPod!) You can hear the whirring of the hard drive only if you are sitting a silent room and put the player up to your ear, something which you probably will never do. Transfer time between Mac and iRiver is great. Mac OS 9 users take note: Although Apple doesn't care about you, because the iRiver is an external hard drive you can easily download your CDs to it directly via iTunes. You can even manage your Mac's MP3 collection and your iRiver's collection through iTunes without much difficulty. I dumped over 1000 songs (about 4 GB) in one swift move onto the iHP-140. The battery life is fantastic, very important if you take long airplane trips. The clip-on remote control is great. I like the black color of the iHP-140 and remote control. It looks like a very expensive cell phone. Too bad the brown clip-on carrying case is definitely not as sexy. I very much admire iRiver's technical service department: I got a super-intelligent techie on the phone in under 20 seconds who very smartly answered several detailed technical questions. (In contrast, it took me four calls to finally get a live human at Apple, who ultimately refused to answer a simple technical question, to refer me to someone else, or to get back to me.) What is ultimately so incredibly cool about this player: you can easily attach it to almost any PC or Mac and transfer files...not just music, but pictures, documents and other files...because it's a hard drive. However, if you don't need any of these features or you are technologically challenged, this player is not for you. My only complaints: If you're a Mac user, forget about your iTunes playlists. Especially if you've got 2000+ songs, instead spend the time to make ten or twenty major lists and subcategories within those lists directly on the IHP100 hard drive. Also, it's too bad the instruction manual is not so good. But this is quite a complex and technically advanced MP3 player, and it's worth the low cost and high value to spend the time figuring out how to use it.
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248 of 264 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why do people still buy an iPod?, March 18, 2004
You see them everywhere: iPod users. Those tell-tale white headphones give them away as soon as you see them. I used to envy them, with their slick little box of tricks pumping music through their heads for up to ten hours at a time. I wanted one, too, but I thought they were way too expensive for what they were. For one thing, they could only handle a single codec, namely MP3. When, oh when would someone bite the bullet and produce a decent, high capacity OGG-based player for the rest of us?Alternatives to the iPod have come and gone, but none has really stuck. Apple really cornered the market with what was arguably the first good-looking and well-performing player. Nevertheless, its shortcomings were painfully evident. What the market has been missing ever since is a player that does all that the iPod can, whilst providing features absolutely essential in a truly high-end player, such as an integrated FM radio, voice recorder, support for multiple codecs, and longer battery life. Such a player seemed like it was still some time away, until iRiver recently came out with the iHP-140. At last, we are offered a 40 Gb player that can handle the MP3, OGG, ASF and WMA codecs, has an FM radio tunable to the band of whichever continent you happen to be on, a voice recorder that works with either the internal or an external microphone, and a respectable 16 hour battery (assuming 128 Kbps MP3 listening at normal volume and no flashy EQ settings). The battery is also Lithium Ion, so there are no battery memory issues to worry about. After a couple of weeks with my iHP-140, I have to say that it has lived up to the hours of review reading and research I did before purchasing it. As a Linux user, I needed a player that did not depend on my computer operating system. I should not need any proprietary software to index the files, transfer them to the device, flash the firmware or manage the device in any other way. The iRiver caters to all of those demands and more. The unit supports the USB mass storage standard, so connect it to your computer and a 40 Gb drive immediately appears on the system. Use standard utilities to copy your music files over, dump some playlists via XMMS or a few quickly hacked together Ruby or Perl scripts and away you go. Flashing the firmware is as simple as dumping a file in the root of the unit's file-system and selecting the relevant option from its menu. The sound quality is excellent, although you'll probably want to replace the supplied ear-buds with something better. The Sony MDREX71SL ear-buds are providing me with adequate service during my bicycle commute to the office. The remote control is very handy for safe control of the device while biking. Just clip it to your T-shirt and lift a hand off the handlebars to change songs or flip to the next directory full of music. You never have to take your eyes off the road. The FM receiver is of high quality and voice recordings work well, even with the internal microphone. iPod users at work peruse this device with some suspicion. How could it be better than an iPod, when they haven't even heard of it? Besides, it's a lot cheaper than an iPod, so it must be inferior, right? Think again. The personal jukebox is finally mature. Whether or not iRiver has the clout to go up against the Apple marketing machine and win the PR battle remains to be seen, but if you're a technically-minded person who wants the most fully featured player on the market today, there's really no contest. Do I have anything bad to say about it? Yeah, the brown case. What were they thinking? Still, like I said, I'll take features over something that superficial every time.
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63 of 63 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best in class, September 9, 2004
I couldn't be more delighted with this player. Upon receiving it, I opened the package, connected the AC Adapter, and connected the included USB 2.0 cable.
WindowsXP immediately recognized the player as an external drive. I flashed the BIOS, and then started copying files. About 20 minutes later, my 15GB MP3 library was on the player. I immediately started listening to music, and I was bowled over by the sound quality.
Since I wanted to be able to choose music by genre or album title, I downloaded the "Moodlogic" software from the iRiver website; and a few minutes later my music library was sorted and categorized in the iRiver's database. The set-up couldn't have been easier, and the manual is excellent.
With just a few taps on either the wired remote (which has a bright LCD with all of the functions of the main unit) or the navigation button, I can be listening to a random selection of all of my "Folk Rock" songs; or listening to my favorite Van Morrison album. Build quality, design, and feature set are all top notch; and I've yet to find something that I want it to do that it can't. Although I rarely use it, the FM tuner also works very well.
In addition, it's a great way to back-up your PC. The iHP-140 works flawlessly as an external drive.
This is one of the few cases where you actually get more than you pay for. Highly recommended.
As an added note, the Moodlogic software and BIOS updates are here: http://www.iriveramerica.com/support/H100.aspx
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