Cheap iPAQ PM-1 Mini-CD Player with 8 minutes of MP3 Anti-Shock Protection (Electronics) Price

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Customer Reviews of iPAQ PM-1 Mini-CD Player with 8 minutes of MP3 Anti-Shock Protection

I like old radio shows. One disk will hold over 20 hours of radio shows.

Tip #1: Ditch the supplied headphones. They didn't fit and have a limited range. Plus they let in too much outside noise.

Tip #2: If you fly a lot, invest in a pair of noise canceling headphones. I have found that the AIWA or Jensen perform equal or better than the BOSE and cost only a fraction.

Tip #3: Since the software supplied is very pedestrian, replace it with almost any free downloaded ripper and even the CD cutter that came with your CD-RW drive.

Tip #4: Buy the 3.5" disks in bulk. They are much cheaper that way.

Tip #5: Label all of your tracks. There is no ability to go directly to a track or select the sequence that I have found that consistently works. "Next" and "Back" are about all you get.

Tip #6: If you use MUSICMATCH Jukebox do not perform volume leveling on your music before you cut the CD-Rs. For some reason this blocks the iPAQ's ability to read the title and artist data.

Since the player, control unit, and headphones all fit nicely in your briefcase, it is truly a portable unit. Need sound for a group, add a pair of good travel speakers and you are all set.

Not ready for prime-time
Just got this unit a week ago, and immediately thought that it looked more bulky than it had to be. This player is bigger in relation to the media it plays than the first "portable" CD players were in relation to regular CDs.

The battery life is definitely not anywhere near the advertised 8 hours. I think I was able to get 4-5 hours out of a fully charged battery. Speaking of batteries, if yours run down, you're stuck - I wasn't able to make this player work off the regular over-the-counter AAAs. It seems to only accept it's bundled batteries.

The whole construction has a rather flimsy feel to it, especially the CD door and the battery door.

Interface is nothing to write home about either - there is no display on the main unit, and the remote isn't backlit. The battery indicator on the remote is so tiny, it will be difficult to figure out how much charge is left. Even though all the player buttons are duplicated on the remote, you can only "turn on" the player by pressing "play" on the main unit. Which ... if you have it in a bag, with "hold" turned on, and accidentally press "stop" on the remote. You have to extract the player, turn off hold and press play before you can use it.

The unit seems to rely entirely on buffering for skip protection, reading the whole song into memory at times. This is problematic because the CD will have to spin up before the next song can start playing, and if you are walking and have it in your pant pocket, you may have to stop so it can find and read the next track without being shaken.

The sound quality is acceptible for the applications, and if you are OK listening to MP3s as CD substitutes, this device won't disappoint. The little CDs are incredibly compact, and take less than 2 minutes to burn, making this by far the most convenient and inexpensive removable media on the market today. I think mini-CD mp3 players are a terrific idea with a great future ahead of them, but I'll be waiting for a better player to take advantage of it, and so should you.

Good Player, Headphone, BUT they don't match.
It's small, light weight, doesn't look cool. The player can charge the included two batteries. The included software is useless to me, as I have more advanced, highly appreciated streambox ripper 2.009 which can encode to the low limit of 8kBps and 8000Hz and high limit of 256Kbps and 44kHz from wav,mp3,ram!. The player can play mp3's of all the range above. The LCD can show file name, song title, and author name. I encoded 15 hours of music on a single CD. Of course they are 16Kbps and 50Kpbs.

The most important part should be sound quality. I have read from amazon reviews that there is buzz background noise, and I did hear it and annoyed by it, and even intended to return it. However I tried to use a cheapist headphone for no reason, and the noise is complete gone. Then I put the original headphone back, and I heard the noise again. So I decided that the headphone must have been cheaper than the cheapist. Before I had threw it away, I plugged it in my computer and listened some music. Supprisingly there was no noise at all, and the sound quality was much better than my cheapist headphone. So I decided to keep it for other use except to use it with the mini CD player.

My concludsion is that both the player and the headphone are of high quality, BUT they don't match!!! What a mistake compaq made!

My personal feeling about it is that it's relatively cheap for its functions---value(5); the sound quality is good except they shipped with a mismatched headphone---performance(4);there is no LCD display on the play, making it unconvienient when not using inline remote---ease of use(4); and the average is rounded to 4. But for the player alone, 5 star.