OK so you've probably seen my last posting and the forum thread on my little gadget that I found on Amazon. At this time I can fairly report back my success with this new found toy of mine. Recall that my only motivation for buying it was so I can listen to MP3's on my Gold Wing. It only has a tape deck and an AM/FM radion on it. Lets face it, listening to commercial radio stations is getting more and more painful every day. If you're like me you're getting tired of all the commercials which are rising up the "lamer" scale three fold.
Anyway, over the past few weeks I've been using the MP3 player in the truck on the way to work (and back). I can't quite try it out on the bike because of all this cold weather we seem to be stuck in. The player has worked flawlessly except for one occasion when it wouldn't play. I eventually took it out and stuck it back in with success. One thing that I don't like is it automatically fades songs in when it plays them. I can do without automatic fading.
When I first received the player the sound was pretty distored but after using the remote to turn down the volume it sounds just as good as the radio. I've read reviews online that indicate the satellite companies are craming so many stations into their lineup that even their sound quality has degraded. If that's true then this thing is better than satellite (the only difference being who owns the music).
Last night we (the neighbor and I) ran a range test. Their house is behind ours and over one so we tuned his car radio to my MP3 player and I drove away slowly down the street. Just like the Energizer Rabbit I kept going and going and going until I got all the way home. After a few minutes I got a phone call from my neighbor who told me he could hear it fine until I turned the truck off in the garage. That's quite a signal this little thing has. This could be pretty handy for say parades when everyone is listening to the same station. I suppose any FM modulator would perform like this but it was un-expected for this little deal. I guess this feature might backfire a little when everyone in town buys one.
I understood the MP3 player would remember it's location in a song when you turned the ignition off. I thought this because when reading about it on Amazon, people were saying that it was good for books. When I tested this out I found that the player will remember what track you left off on alright but it would not restart automatically and it would not remember where to restart within that track. When you turn the ignition on again, it is necessary to hit PLAY and the player will resume again at the beginning of whatever track it was on before. This doesn't hamper my enjoyment with the device but it would be really neat if it would remember the exact spot it left off. Also the seller was very helpful in pointing this out. After re-reading the description it would appear that I did indeed read this incorrectly.
The remote is very handy because typically the lighter in vehicles is down low and there isn't anyway in the world you can read the print on the MP3 player without taking your eye off the road. What I don't like about the remote is that the volume control is located only on the remote. If you were to misplace your remote you can't adjust the players volume anymore. On normal circumstances you wouldn't adjust this setting but once or twice anyway.
Still to come...how will this thing work on the Gold Wing? I'll find out when the weather finally warms up and I get my Gold Wing back into once piece (early Spring is a great time to add stuff to your ride). I must admit that overall I am very happy with this purchase and as cheap as this thing is, it sure beat buying an expensive integrated MP3 Player system and spending all Saturday adding it to my bike. Installation of this thing only takes 14 seconds and can be moved from ride to ride to truck.
Also still to come...It was advertised as working on drives up to 1 GB. It worked with my 2GB drive but will it work on my 250GB drive? If a 2GB flash drive holds say 32 CD's worth of music, imagine how many would fit on a 250 GB Drive. Stay tuned for "Little, Plastic, Different Part III" coming soon to a GWTA Region C Blog near you...