The iRiver H10 is a 5GB MP3/WMA media player similar to the iPod mini, but with a very nice colour screen. This is unfortunately about all the player has going for it. Important controls are poorly positioned, the "condom case" is flimsy, except for the belt clip, the battry life definately isn't as advertised, and the player is incompatible with just about every operating system on earth, including versions of Windows XP.
The H10's biggest problem is it's reliance on MTP, Media Transfer Protocol, and on Windows Media Player 10. The first part of this equation, MTP, eliminates anything non-Microsoft. This means MAC and Linux users are SOL if they want to connect their iRiver H10 to their boxes. The second part of the equation is the hook into Windows Media Player 10. According to MSDN, the MTP driver can run on Windows 98 through to XP, but iRiver have chosen to impliment it on Windows XP with SP1 installed and Windows Media Player 10. I had these all installed and my player still didn't work until I did all updates, and updated to SP2.
Another disappointment was the battery life. It's advertised as up to 12 hours. Realistically, it's more like 4, and that's not using it every day.
The H10 also has some major design flaws. The power button is located on the side of the player. Every time I try to slip my player into the included "condom" case I end up shutting off the player in the middle of a podcast. The power would have been much better on the top where the lock is. I also don't like the placement of the fwd, play, and back buttons, with the case on I often reset a podcast.
On to the software side. What can I say, except I hate Windows Media Player 10.
Why couldn't the dummies at iRiver have just made this another hard drive mp3 player instead of selling out? Yeah guys, the image of Bill holding your product says it all. And the condom case might appeal to some, but it really has limited functionality, and in the case of the H10, it hampers proper use.
Resources
- MSDN info on MTP
- IRiver Link excluded because I don't recommend this product at all!
One of the things I love most about Linux is how customizable it is! While the same is somewhat true of Microsoft Windows, you usually have to buy add-ons like Stardock Window Blinds. The see through calendar is gdeskcal, the music player just below is a minimized version of xmms, and I have The Gimp opened.
The Sun Ultra Enterprise 2 I ordered on eBay arrived yesterday, 2 days after it was shipped - amazing! Unfortunately the box seems to hang at the beginning of the memory count. I suspect the problem is the RAM configuration. I read somewhere that the minimum RAM configuration would be 128MB of RAM because the RAM is installed 4 DIMMs at a time, with 32MB RAM the minumum (4x32MB=128MB). My machine has 8 sticks of RAM, but shows 64MB at the top. I won't speculate beyond this, but I may have some other RAM coming.
My machine has a single 200MHz UltraSparc processor. It's possible that it might take up to a 400MHz processor, but even if it doesn't, the machine is still dual processor capable. I was amazed at the internals of this machine, everything is packed pretty tighly. I couldn't even see a spot I might stick a hard drive other than under the floppy bay. The Ultra 2 is a heavy beast! I'm somewhat surprised I only paid $14US for shipping, considering how fast the machine arrived, its packing, and weight.
