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Portable Mini-CD MP3 Player / Burner
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Here is a neat new toy. It is an MP3/CD portable that not only plays music files, it burns them. Called the RipGO, it was just released by Imation and runs about $400. The article includes a photo of the player."
I haven't seen any mini CD-R media laying around but I would imagine that it costs more than regular sized CD-R media. At this point, you'd be better off buying a portable CD burner and getting a separate MP3 player. Neat concept though.
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Posts slamming Apple for releasing a $399US 5GB Firewire hard drive-based MP3 player that weighs 6 ounces...
Posts lauding a mini-CD-burning 160MB player that does... Oh, wait, that's all it does. For $400US...
I'll gladly take an iPod, thanks... And thanks to the Firewire Disk mode, I can write it off as capital equipment that I can use while consulting... Tax writeoff = free... Wait, I guess I could do that with this teeny CD burner, too... Or is it MP3 only?
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And their's is only $250.
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How long will the writer last if it is constantly being dropped, banged against your thigh when you walk/jog, or piled under a stack of books on a desk or a schoolbag? I mean, the mechanism to write cd's must be fairly delicate....
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the unit works on both Macintosh and Windows (except 95 and NT)
So, it only works on XP and WFW 3.11?
Do you guys think USB is too slow for stuff like this? I know USB 2.0 is quicker but I assume this is using USB 1.0.
It seems like devices like this would benefit a ton from firewire. USB 1.0 works great for mice and printers and other low bandwidth devices but in my experiences, it seems too slow for transferring large amounts of data.
That being said, I have noticed that my Sony PIII 650 MHz laptop running WinME is quicker than my Athlon at 550 MHz running Win2k, so maybe chipset or OS has more to do with it than anything.
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First thing, its a CDR drive. In my experience, CDR drives are fragile and flaky and prone to sudden death even while standing still (I'm on my 8th in 5 years). MP3 players are also fragile and flaky and prone to sudden death (scratch two PMP300s and two NJBs - my RioVolt shows up next week along with the replacement HD for my NJB).
:)
Second thing, related to the first. Who makes it? Assuming IMation has OEM'd the thing out, who did the fab? I would suspect the thing is far from durable.
Third thing, I have seen mini CDR media but no mini CDRW. Who wants to backup their stuff onto a 180MB mini CDR? I mean once in a while its cool, but if you can't use your CDR to back up CDs, whats the point? The mini media is nice, but a mini burner that wont take fullsize media at all is useless IMHO.
Fourth thing, its $400. That's enough for an NJB($220), a RioVolt 90 ($89, for when the NJB breaks) and an internal CDR for your computer ($89).
Based on point four - what advantage does this thing really have over the NJB+Riovolt+CDR-in-your-computer? And if you don't have room in your computer for a CDR, and you're gonna buy this contraption, could you not just buy a USB CDRW and a Riovolt for less? Of course you could. And that way you're not banging your CDR drive around.
Seems like a silly idea to me. Now if only it had restrictive rights management!
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I imagine that they disqualify 98 and NT because neither of those have USB support. Any Windows released after '98 should have the requisite USB support (that includes Windows 98 and Win2K).
Of course USB is dog slow for this kind of product. For the same amount of scratch you can get an iPod with a five gig capacity and FireWire connectivity. Just my $0.02.
This
Oh goody. Another over-priced MP3 player with too many bells and whistles. And a price that's way higher than it should be.
All I want is a decent MP3 player. I want one that supports some sort of smart media card, supports at least 128MB, and has USB. And most importantly, doesn't cost $400! Is that too much to ask? The Diamond Rio 500 came closest to that, but of course it's not made anymore (and cost too much anyway). Instead, SonicBlue produces the vastly inferior Rio 600 or the way over-priced 800. If I can buy a camcorder for $300, a freaking MP3 player oughta be under $100.
I don't need a built-in CD player (that's why I have MP3's fer crissakes!) I don't need a built-in hard drive. I don't need a goddamn built-in toaster oven. I just want a little MP3 player that holds more than 5 songs that I can stick in my pocket when I go for a walk. I certainly don't need to put my entire MP3 collection on it all at once.
Let's see a cheap MP3 player that does one thing exceptionally well, instead of an overpriced MP3 player that does half a dozen things poorly.
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I know, minidisc does it already, but minidisc players don't have digital output for PC post-production work and actually doesn't sound as good as plain old WAV files.
If this had a mic input, you could burn directly to MP3 and have 6 hours of digital recording - 6 times that of a minidisc.
If the iPod had a mic input, you could burn 10 hours of uncompressed audio or 100 hours of MP3s. Portable 2 track recording studio!