Computer Learning

[occams_razor]

Napster mp3 player - some jumbled thoughts.

I bought a YP-910GS Samsung Napster Digital Audio Player. I bought it at a Best Buy for $299 because I might want to return it and I can't stand getting RMA numbers and shipping info for returning online purchased stuff. If you want to buy it online, it's about $270. The thing is cool enough and it has at least one feature that beats the ipod 20Gb which is the inline mp3 recording. The other tricks it does that the ipod doesn't are FM receiver and transmitter. The receiver is so so, about the same as a 40 dollar AM/FM portable CD player. The transmitter is so weak it is a novelty only.

That said, there are option to easily connect it to a car or home stereo that cost only a few bucks. As for the player, the controls are non intuitive but easy to get used to. I think this one area that Apple has it over Samsung/Napster. The manual says to fully charge the battery and hook it up to your USB PC port only after loading the driver. They are not Kidding.

The Napster music browser comes with it on CD and you have to sign up for a free acount at least. More about that later. You need this software to transfer music to your mp3 player.

Neat things

This is a real 20GB harddrive with 128MB flash buffer. Windows Explorer sees it as a drive and you can use it for file backup and transfer. That's a lot of ZIP disks! You can also copy the music files to another PC via drag and drop (after you turn on hidden file viewing). The blue led backlighting and Napster Cat! Leather case is nice. I would have preferred black over white.

The inline recorder is the only feature that is a clear cpmpetitive advantage. Any audio source can be mp3'ed - old records, FM radio, etc. If you are buying this for kids, it's a very piracy friendly feature.

Aggravations

Non intuitive controls. Playlist creation and editing - you can't edit your playlists once they are the player. Weakly backlit LCD screen but always usable imo.

Music Browsers/Rippers and Burners

Napster - You need this but the good news is that it is just terrific. Unless you're a big Metallica fan, you can find most popular rock, classical, etc titles. AND YOU CAN LISTEN TO ALMOST ALL OF IT FOR FREE! FOREVER! This is for the $9.95 a month service which is well worth it. It's easy to use annd fast! It's also addictive.

For getting your CD's into the player, the mp3/wma ripper that comes with Napster is SLOOOOOOOOWWWWW. I don't know if this is because the notebook I was using has a DVD ROM drive which isn't as fast as a CD_ROM drive. It was unusable on this machine. Fortunately musicmatch's FREE browser is excellent at this and quick.

You get a credit for 20 free songs and additional songs are 99 cents each. Almost all songs are 100% listenable. There are a few here and there that have 30 seconds clips only.

Music Match

I like this but need more time to try out all the features. It rules as a CD burner/ripper. Haven't downloaded any mp3's from them yet. They claim to support the napster player and you can transfer your files to the player, but you can't play them. You need to import them into the Napster library.

The CD ripper (CD to mp3 or wma) is much faster than Napster's. Easy file conversion. The pro upgrade claims to be about 8 times faster for ripping and burning and it is worth the ten bucks to get rid of the "do you want to upgrade" dialogue boxes that pop up when you exit the app.

itunes

Wanted to see what they had. During reading the licensing agreement, itunes said they would disable all other music software from file transfering. And after all Steve Jobs pious railing against microsoft. Canclled the installation. Will never look there again.

walmart

88 cents vs 99 cents a song. Haven't tried them but I will.


Conclusions:

Technophiles - this is your player. There are no Apple technophiles, lol.

Technophobes - get the ipod.

Practically minded people - you can get an mp3 player from rio that is around a hundred dollars and
holds a couple of hundred songs.