July 2000

Sunday, July 30

Genica MP3 Player Review

I first found out about the Genica player from the MP3.com review several months ago.  You should check out the review, and the message board for more info.

Features:

• Plays CD-R's and CD-RW with MP3s.


• Plays regular audio CDs


• 50 second anti-shock protection


• 5 build in EQ settings


• Takes 2 regular AA batteries, or rechargeable nicad's (not included)... and comes with a build in charger.


• AC Adaptor


• Line out


• 500 second voice recorder, no microphone included


• In the ear type headphones

1st Impression

     I ordered the mp3 player from computergeeks.com on a Wednesday night and received it Friday morning.  It cost $99, and I chose the 3-day air select shipping from UPS.  The shipping box was smashed, but that's to be expected from UPS.  And the inside container also had a nice dent in it, but everything was ok inside it.  I shouldn't be too pissed off about it, since I used to work for UPS, and smashed stuff for fun myself :)  Everyone there does... so I try NEVER to use UPS.

    First, I popped in 2 regular AA batteries, and put in a regular audio CD, and it worked fine.  Next, I tried an old mp3 cd, with all the mp3 files in the root directory. That worked great.  Then I tried a 3 year old MP3 cd, which had all the mp3s in directories.  It worked fine also.  It's now Sunday, and no problems so far.  It has worked on every CD I've tried.  It does not work well with a few MP3s that have very low encoding rates... but those all sound like crap anyway.  You just have to make sure you have decent quality mp3s to begin with.  The cds that I have compiled in the past just had any mp3s I would download.

    The casing, like everyone said, was kind of flimsy. 
At least when compared to a sony discman.  I mean, it doesn't look like it's homemade or anything, it's just not high quality.   It's not something that would make you return it or anything.  The buttons do look a little crappy and weak too, but they work fine.  Someone's comment was right, the spring to open the door is a puny piece of crap..  But overall, it's good enough... what do you expect for $99?

I also purchased the accessory kit for an extra $19.  It comes with a 24 CD case, 10 blank CDs, a cd to cassette adaptor, cigarette lighter power adaptor, and 2 sets of headphones.  This is all stuff I needed anyway, but if you don't need it, don't get it.  One of the sets of headphones had a plug that was too small for the earphone hole, so it was worthless!  And unlike their claim, it does not come with an "over the head type" of headphone, they are both in the ear type.  The cd to cassette adaptor is low quality in my opinion, and does make a noise as it turns, like someone else commented.  It could be annoying if you have a quiet car and are listening to quiet music or something.  But neither of those apply to me.

Pro's

• It was the first on the market.  So it should be the easiest to find in stock.  You no longer need to wait behind other people for your order to be filled.  It should only take a few days for it to arrive at your door.


• The price.  You won't find another MP3 CD player for $99 right now.  So if you lose it, or it gets broken, it's not such a big deal as if it were $200.


• Comes with a 1 year warranty.


• 50 second anti-shock.  I've heard that people have shaken the crap out of this thing, and it never skips.


• 500 second voice record.  A cool feature, but who is ever going to use it?


• Store 10+ hours of music on a CD.  Forget those other players that store the music on memory, and are limited to 30-60 minutes, and cost $50-150 more.  CD's are cheap, and you don't have to wait a year for the music to download onto the player.  And if you are out camping or something, you aren't going to have your computer to download new music to the other players, so you are limited to one set of songs... but with this one, just bring along all your mp3 cds, and you will have all of your music.


• Built in battery charger.  This is one of the cooler features in my opinion.  I've heard that people can go to radio shack (yes, that is a sin, but oh well) and buy nicad batteries that will last like 7 hours. Very cool.

Con's

• Flimsy case and buttons.  Some buttons are small, which should be big, like the play and stop buttons.  Most of them have labels that are very confusing.  Obviously not written by a native English speaker.


• It's the first out on the market... so it's not going to have all the features and stability as a second generation product.


• Doesn't support ID3 tags.  You will have no visual indication of what song is playing other than a number, and how much of the song has played.


• Manual.  The manual sucks, it was surely not originally written in English.  I could not figure out the directory play feature, and a few other features.. luckily there are a few web sites out there that do explain things more clearly.  Things are explained complicated at first, like "press this button twice, then this button 3 times, wait 2.3145 seconds for this to show up, then press this button 15 times, scratch your head, go take a crap, come back, press this button 7 times"... but after a few times, it is not that hard to figure out.

Conclusion

Overall, I'd give this product a 8.5 out of 10.  I subtracted half a point because it was shipped by UPS, and another half a point because of the flimsy case and buttons, and another half because it is complicated to figure out at first, and the manual sucks.  But it is well worth the $99 price.  To me, the ID3 tags are not a big deal.. it's not like I'd be looking at them while I'm driving..  I also received an e-mail today about the new mp3/audio cd/dvd/vcd/blahblahblah player over at computergeeks.com for $199.  It looks like something really cool for your home system.

Friday, July 28

A napster for roms?

Thursday, July 27

Message Boards

MP3s and Napster

Tuesday, July 25

Finals

New Atari 7800 Dumps

Monday, July 10

Back

Thursday, July 6

Cartridge Cleaning Tutorial

Monday, July 3

Diablo has been defeated.