25 Sep
2006
25 Sep
'06
6:16 p.m.
On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 08:22:24PM +0200, mik wrote:
the iriver h120. it's out of production but you
can find it very easily
on ebay. new, at half the original price (which, maybe, is still too
much...). also good for recording.
I've been happy with mine, except that the user interface is really
really horrible. Not graphically; I mean that every control is
overloaded with multiple meanings depending on context and after two
years I *still* find some simple operations hard to perform. My wife
occasionally borrows it, and I'm always afraid she's going to
throw it out the window in a fit of frustration.
I keep meaning to try loading it with Rockbox which AFAICT
now supports recording:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IriverRecording
but AFAICT there is not yet a declared stable release for the iriver?
Other than the crappy UI, it's great. Sound is very good; linux sees it
as standard USB storage device with a VFAT filesystem; it plays Ogg; the
built-in FM radio is occasionally handy; it's built pretty solidly; and
mine has crashed maybe once in the two years I've had it. (Powered it
off, no problem after that.)
The iripdb program ( http://www.fataltourist.com/iripdb/ ) is useful for
creating the tag database so you can browse by artist, title, etc.
If I was shopping again today, I don't know what I'd buy. AFAICT,
iriver has no replacement model with the same features :-( I *need* the
external mic input, and I now have so many OGGs that it'd be annoying to
switch to anything that doesn't play them.
--
Paul Winkler
http://www.slinkp.com