Tom should not review MP3 players!

[jaxt]

David Stellmack's article about the D-Link MP3 player further reinforces my belief that Tom's Hardware should stick with what it knows - which is not MP3 players. To my memory this site has only discussed a small handful of players (HD players to be more precise). They end up only being compared against 1, maybe 2, others. There are around a dozen HD bases players out there, not just the iPod, Creative Jukebox, and the latest, D-Link's Roq-it. It is this latest review about the Roq-it that set me off.

First there is no mention of the original manufacture, SSI. It is also licensed by iomagic, who makes the Neo Jukebox - identicle in every way to the Roq-it (it's the same). But, more importantly, this product has aready been on the market for almost 1 1/2 years! Wake-up Tom's Hardware! I bought my Neo WITH a 20gig harddrive. I have since bought a 40 to swap back and forth. Why would anyone buy the Roq-it if it only comes with 10, as I am led to believe by the article, instead of the 0 - 30 that comes with the identicle Neo.

If you're going to discuss the "lastest" in hardware, make sure you have all of your information at hand - not whatever some manufacture sends you in the mail!

 

[dstell]

This was a strange situation. D-Link shipped the product out to me and it sat around for a bit and when I had a minute I dug into it as a one off review. I wanted to really should that it was possible to upgrade these devices and that really is what I was going for in the article. I am not sure that people understood that, but it was not really intended to be an all out review, more a quick look at the technology.

We will continue to do some additional follow up reviews looking at other possible solutions, but beleive it or not most companies that make these products don't know about THG and know that we will review these types of products which at times makes it more difficult to get the review units. Of course we are trying to break into other areas and this review was as much targeted at that more than anything.

One last tought, We had tried to get Apple to ship us an iPod, because we want to show how to use it with a PC and it didn't go well. The reason they gave us was that we didn't have expreience review those kinds of products.

So at any rate, thanks for the feedback!

ds