Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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76 of 76 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Start Fisher Price, But The Music Downloading is a PAIN, November 1, 2006
I bought this for my three year-old son and here is what I think of it.
The pros:
1. The volume maximum is not so loud that it will hurt their ears if they turn it up all the way.
2. The construction is sturdy, good for rough and tumble pre-schoolers who like to drop and throw things.
3. The large buttons and icon navigation are very easy for a 3 year-old to understand.
4. The "create your own icon" feature is a nice touch for odd songs.
5. The ability to choose stories or song from the get go is a nice option.
6. The headphones actually fit little heads unlike the ones that come with those cheap portable cd players you might have purchased for your little one in the past.
7. The Fisher Price web site is filled with reasonably priced music and stories appropriate for the pre-school age group.
The cons:
That being said, there is one large flaw: importing MP3s! I spoke with the customer support staff at Fisher Price and they said it was a legal issue with the owners of the MP3 format. I don't care!! Work it! To import the music and stories you already have on your computer, this is what you will have to do:
1. Burn all of the music and stories you would like to import onto a cd.
2. Copy the songs/stories from the cd to the Fisher Price FP3 software.
3. Transfer each song/story to the FP3 player.
4. Type in title and artist information for each song/story.
5. Choose an icon, or create an icon from scratch.
6. Assign the icon to the story/song.
This is a huge pain! Just filling my son's FP3 player took over 3 hours.
A word of advice to those of you buying the FP3 player as a gift, burn all of the music/stories onto a cd ahead of time! Block out a few hours to program the FP3 player Christmas morning or after the birthday party, or better yet, do it all ahead of time so that you give the gift ready to go out of the gift box to avoid a tantrum (yours & theirs).
Kudos Fisher Price on developing a nice portable digital music system for pre-schoolers. I blow a raspberry at you for the painful process you make parents go through.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Maybe it's Kid Tough, but it's not User Friendly, December 27, 2006
Having had this player for less than a week, this review is based on limited use but seems to be consistent with some of the other comments I have read.
Pros:
The only thing I can really come up with is that it is simple enough for a 3 year old to use. As for its toughness, read below.
Cons:
1) Same complaint as others regarding the foam on the headphones coming off. It took about 3 minutes to notice that one.
2) What is the purpose of forcing us to use the "FP3" file format? Maybe it's some attempt to cut down on piracy. But the flaw in that is that you can still burn whatever MP3 tunes you want into regular CDs and then re-rip them into FP3......it's just very annoying. So again I ask what is the purpose of this?!!
3) It goes through batteries very quickly. Not a big deal if you have rechargeable batteries, but it seems like a lot of power is being used by such a simple device.
4) To me this one is HUGE and has been noted by others - - You can't search for a song! Granted, I don't expect a 3 year old to be able to read and find Hot Potatoes and then navigate over to find Ski Patrol to the Rescue after that. But I would expect Fisher Price to build that feature in so that the 3 year old's parents....who will constantly be asked to find specific songs on a regular basis.......have that ability. What good is giving us the flexibility to upgrade to 1GB of storage, and therefore place hundreds of songs on the player, if you have to push fast forward (see #5 below) hundreds of times to get to the song your kid wants?
5) On it's 2nd full day of use yesterday it locked up when my wife was trying to fast forward through a bunch of songs to get to one that the boy wanted to hear. I don't know if it is related to pushing FF a bunch of times, but either way it froze up and I had to remove the batteries to shut it down.
Considering the price of this item, it seems a bit lacking in basic and necessary features. I would think that Fisher Price could somehow address this with a software update, but I may not be patient or trusting enough to wait and find out. I'm not sure any 3 year old really needs an MP3 player; however, I may seriously have to consider returning this player and getting him a cheap, basic, "grown up" player from Creative, Sandisk, etc. Even if they're not "kid tough", you can buy a couple for the price of this so-so player. Besides....what are the odds that the kid will lose it before they break it anyway?
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dad's Perspective, January 31, 2008
Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars Educational:4.0 out of 5 stars
Dad's Perspective:
This product has been absolutely miserable. They have made the DRM so difficult that it does not allow you to back up the songs or stories although they say they do but you can never get it restored. Since you can't do a back up, if you lose your Hard Drive the only recourse is to purchase the songs again. Fisher Price support is worthless, they could care less about their customers and their goal is to cause you to spend more money replacing the songs that you have already purchased and couldn't backup. They are so concerned about the DRM that they have caused a good product to become an absolutely miserable product to deal will. I will never again purchase this type of product from Fisher Price. While the FP store is limited on Songs and stories, it has all that one will need, and the child will be quite happy with it. The player uses AA batteries which must be replaced often and is a real pain; FP should have included rechargeable battery system. This product is quite a bit worse than IPOD in forcing the user to purchase its songs and stories and then not allowing any type of protection for the song or story in order to do a restore if necessary, so there is no investment security. If you lose it, you either buy it again or do without. I have had to re-purchase a few songs and stories because of a HD failure and FP customer support said "The only thing you can do is purchase them again" what a scam.
Child's Perspective:
This is a great product, it is quite easy for the child to use, my 5 year old loves it. I can download songs from Fisher Price quite easily. They say that you can import MP3's which you can but they make it so difficult to include any Icons' that you will eventually give up and purchase the song from FP so that you can get a nice Icon for the child. It is very rugged, my child left it outside for two days, it was snowed on and then rained on and believe it or not it still worked. When he was 4 he was able to get to the songs he wanted and to the stories quite easily. I have the speaker set for him so he would put it on speaker and he and his friends would listen to the stories. This is quite a nice product for kids if you can deal with the restrictions that FP places on it, it is quite a shame for Fisher Price to do such a thing.
Other Restrictions.
One time software, if you lose the disk the only way to get it again is to purchase it from FP, another scam. But if you already have the hardware what are you going to do? Purchase it again this is another location where FP has you by the gonads. Also, of this time the player and software does not support VISTA so I have to keep an XP box just to maintain this player. But since I purchased this product under an XP environment, if I want to upgrade at some point in the future I am sure FP will demand more money but right now I can't even upgrade (is VISTA an upgrade?)
Final Thoughts:
If you can deal with the overwhelming DRM restrictions from FP and their self-righteous attitude like they are doing the consumer a favor. Then by all means purchase this product the child will love it, after all ... it's all about the kids, and that is what Fisher Price is banking on. If I had to do it over again knowing what I know now, most likely I would purchase it again only because I can't see anything else on the market that provides this type of player (easy and well constructed) for the children. Then deal with all the FP garbage for a few years until the child is ready for something else. This is not a professional review but just a review from a Dad attempting to use a very difficult and costly product so that his 5 year old son can enjoy some stories and some music. I have had the player for two years now.
A Dad in Maryland,
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