Muvo Reconsidered

[rcpettengill]

I can now summarize my experience with two Muvo 128 units a couple of thousand apart in serial numbers.

Both units show the following common behaviors:

* They cannot play all .wma files. Some files that play fine in MS Media Player and MusicMatch (ripped at 64k) will cause the Muvo to turn itself off at the same point in the music.

* Both units show corruption of the firmware area of the flash memory. In this state the units will no longer turn on until you have gone through a special recovery procedure which reloads the firmware and hard formats the data area. This happens every day or two with the units I bought. One of the units also showed corruption of the file directory.

In addition the Muvo has the following design misfeatures which compromise the functionality of the 128MB unit.

* After a power off the Muvo always returns to the first song! There is no bookmarking, so to hear anything beyond the first half hour or so of music you have to do a lot of pressing of the fast forward button.

* There is no way to control the order of the music other than reformatting and recopying everything in the order desired.

Simplicity is more than doing just a few things, it is also doing them well.

I think the Muvo is a great idea, but in my experiece the execution from Creative in functional simplicity and quality leave a lot to be desired.

;rob

 

[papasmurf]

I guess you get what was coming, RESEARCH before you buy...especialy if creative makes it. There are a lot of problems with those first jukebox harddrive mp3 players too. I would buy one of those muvos from you if you still had them though PM me if you are interested.

Dungeons and Dragons Famous Last Words:
"C'mon DM,let's see some REAL monsters!" And then you turn the corner as the Dungeon Master chuckles... DM: "It hits and... Oh hold on... I need more dice"