Whoops! I hit the send button by accident for the other message.
I just fired up my tiny Memorex MP3 player. It's going back for a
refund. Issues:
- No pause. You stop; you restart from the beginning.
- No belt clip: you drop it repeatedly until it's broken. This will
happen before the warranty expires.
- Crazy-making multifunction menu buttons.
Otherwise, the sound quality is decent. I tested the unit with a 1-hour
straight MP3 download from the program On The Media, which took about 6
minutes to load onto the hard disk. Then I copied it over to the player
with USB-1 -- it took even less time. To say that the Memorex
instructions are "stupid" is a generosity, but they may be having a
translation problem. The package says that it's USB-2, but I'm sure it's
USB-1; "battery included." Not! Memorex is American, huh? Wrong. The
parent company is an LLC incorporated in Bermuda, actually based in Hong
Kong. It's prez was busted for insider trading.
Now, these questions remain:
- Let's say that we've downloaded the whole Real stream of Car Talk
(taking one hour of either wideband or modem connection). What format do
we want to convert the audio to for the portable player? Option 1 is the
universal MP3. Option 2 is WMA, with possible digital rights management
hassles. Can we convert Car Talk directly from Real (in real time) to MP3?
- What will I replace this thing with? I need cheap, a belt clip, and
"pause." And the ability to hold one to two hours of audio. This is
getting complicated.
It sounds like non-proprietary is the way to go, always. It's in the
spirit of this board, after all. So, either Apple or WMA are probably
not cool. Right? San Disk is probably fine, since they're a memory
company, not trying to corner the music market. RCA is interesting,
since they're actually now a French company designing in Indiana -- I
see that they sometimes put some brainpower into their stuff, even if I
don't always like the results.
Richard