This MP3 player is really plugged in
WALTER S. MOSSBERG, The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, August 28, 2002
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(08-28) 06:43 PDT (AP) --
The big problem with portable digital devices, like MP3 music players and digital cameras, is getting the data into and out of them. You either have to juggle clumsy cables that link the devices to a PC or Mac, or you have to buy some sort of add-on gizmo for your computer that can read the particular type of flash memory card your music player or camera uses to store its stuff.
A few laptops have slots for one of the four common but incompatible types of memory cards, though no popular desktop PCs have them. In most cases you need to buy an adapter. It's a mess.
But what if someone designed a portable device with an easily removable memory module that could be plugged into a port found on every modern computer, and instantly used to move files back and forth, without the aid of any cables, adapters or special gadgets?
Well, somebody has. Creative Technology, the Singapore-based audio hardware company that makes Sound Blaster sound cards and Nomad music players, has just brought out a revolutionary MP3 player, the Nomad MuVo. It's the first music or photo device I've seen that makes it a piece of cake to exchange data with a computer.
The $129.99 MuVo is the size of a cigarette lighter but has remarkable sound quality for its size. It holds 64 megabytes of music, or 15 to 20 songs recorded at decent quality, and runs for about 12 hours on a single AAA battery. But what makes the MuVo (which stands for Musical Voyage) special is the way its memory works.
The bottom half of the MuVo, which simply slides out of the unit, is in reality a so-called keychain or thumb drive -- a new kind of solid-state memory that has a convenient, universal USB connector on the end. These small storage devices are taking off in the marketplace.
You just slide this memory module out of the MuVo, plug it into any USB port on any modern PC, and it shows up on the computer as a small disk drive. You can then use your mouse to drag music files into the memory unit, then unplug it, pop it back into the player's housing, and listen to the music.
No music-transfer program or jukebox software is needed, and you don't even need to install any drivers if you're using the latest operating systems, Windows XP or Mac OS X. It also works without drivers on Windows 2000 and Windows Me, but for Windows 98 you need a driver, which is included with the MuVo. We tested it on several computers, both Windows and Macs, and the file transfers worked perfectly with no software installation at all, no cables and no card readers.
Not only that, but like stand-alone keychain drives, the memory unit built into the MuVo can also be used to store nonmusic files of any type, for backup or transfer among PCs. All in all, this is a great idea that could be applied to other music players, and even digital cameras.
Other 64MB keychain drives are sold for around $60 or $70. But Creative's drive is much more elaborate than those. The company built in all the MP3 decoding hardware, audio circuitry, and volume and play buttons the MuVo uses. The rest of the little player, the housing, is designed to contain just the battery. You can't slip a plain thumb drive into the housing and expect it to play.
We did discover one annoying flaw in the MuVo, which has nothing to do with its unique memory design. If the MP3s you transfer to MuVo contain much embedded data, like album art, the player chokes and can't seek backward through the files. We're presuming this happens because MuVo can't figure out where the musical data begin. Creative is looking into the issue. Most people don't embed lots of "metadata" in their MP3 files, but it's a standard capability of MP3 files, and MuVo should know how to handle it.
The MuVo doesn't have a shuffle button, but it does have the ability to repeat entire songs or portions of them. There are only six tiny buttons, and you can scroll ahead or back to select songs, though MuVo lacks an LCD screen to tell you what track you're on.
The player is small enough to wear around your neck, and Creative even supplies a lanyard for that. It doesn't yet have a clip for runners, who could use the MuVo since its solid-state memory doesn't skip, but Creative will introduce an arm band and belt clip together for $29.99 in September. A 128MB version will be on the shelves in September, and will cost $169.99.
I hope the MuVo's refreshingly simple and smart memory design is the start of a trend that banishes the jungle of incompatible memory cards and clumsy cables from the lives of consumers.
AI
