MP3 & MP4 Players.
I bought some MP3 and MP4 players through ebay. It hasn't worked out very well.
First I got a little, nearly thumb-drive size unit with 256Mbusing an AA battery and small LED display. That one works fine, just has limited capacity and no FM. I bought it direct from China, along with an SD card and SD card reader that looks and works like a thumb drive. Those are good too.
Then I saw a couple of MPIO K2Audio MP3 players, a 1MB and a 2MB. These also use an AA cell. The 1MB unit was a model KF100 and the other was listed as something else but also turned out to be another KF100. This one was in a new, sealed package. But it didn't work right - it kept restarting as though it had been turned off and then back on. That happened especially when I bumped the unit or pressed any buttons. I finally opened it up and then tested it again. The metal frame holding the LED display in place could move slightly and when it did, it caused the player to reboot. I wedged the frame firmly in place with a small piece of wood toothpick and now the player works fine. Except both players had another problem - when I would turn them on, they would just blink the display backlight and never start up the operating system. Reloading the firmware cured that problem. Fortunately the new one came with its CD which has the firmware and loading program on it.
Then I bought a really neat MP4 player with 1.5 inch display, rechargeable battery and 512MB from Pacific Ocean International's ebay auction. Having an MP4 player with its larger display screen made it possible for me to select what album I wanted to listen to, because the operating system can bring up a menu of directory folders to play from. It lasted several months before losing its firmware.
Then I got another MP4 player, this time with 1GB and 2 tiny speakers from an ebay seller named Colordrives. It's a nice player with convenient controls, but after 4 or 5 hours of use it joined the won't-boot club too. Its screen lights up and continuously shows an hourglass icon. My computer doesn't detect it in Windows explorer. I contacted the seller and asked for the firmware. They recommended formatting the player, but I can't without being able to detect it first. Unfortunately they ignored the question about finding the firmware files.
---home ---------- Created July 1, 2007 - updated July 1, 2007