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
