Ok, this message is being posted everywhere I can do it to spread the word as fast as possible since I want people that can use this thing (sorry if this is against the rules, if it is just delete this thing and I'll forget all about helping people get a great deal - possibly the greatest one in the past few years).
Here's the info:
Ok, I'm hoping that this will help some hapless person out there desperately seeking a nice portable mp3 player without breaking the bank.
I was planning to head out to CompUSSR today to find myself a reasonably priced portable mp3 player - preferably something like a Rio or some other Flash memory based player. I had hoped to find something that was also upgradable as far as additional memory (SD, CompactFlash, etc). Certainly not a hard drive based portable since those are just too far out of my price range. I set $100 as the limit for the unit itself and alotted maybe $35-50 for some additional storage cards.
I went to CompUSSR's website to browse through their inventory and came across something called the Imation RipGO! portable mp3/USB CDRW player. Here are a few links that I came across when I went searching for more info:
www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/ripgo.html
www.everythingusb.com/hardware/index/Imation_RipGO!_Mini_CD-R_Burner.htm
www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20020131/minicdr-02.html
This unit has been out for some time (I actually got my hands on one at COMDEX in 2001 here in Las Vegas). Nice, sturdy, built very solidly and has some great features. Battery life is a bit weak at around 5 hrs on a solid charge but it *does* use a Lithium Ion battery so battery memory isn't a problem. The battery is propietary of course and Imation doesn't even support/manufacture these units anymore so the following disclaimer should be stated:
YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN IF YOU READ FURTHER AND BUY ONE.
Read that line again and remember: Imation doesn't support them or make them anymore. No firmware updates, no software updates, nothing.
Anyway, I took a look at the price over at CompUSSR's site and it was $99.95. I remember when these first hit the market they were retailing for like $399.95 or higher. Big difference in price.
So anyhew I say WTF and decide to check the stores inventory online. They had some in stock so I then went a step further and called the store to check the physical stock. The young lady said, "Yeah, sure, we've got them... I'm looking at a stack of about 16 of them and the computer confirms it. I'll hold one if you like..." and of course I said I was on the way.
I figured (after a bit more research) on getting a 25 pack of blank 3" CDRs to start stuffing full of music. The 3" CDRs usually hold 185MB of data (approximately 3 hours of mp3 files at 192Kbps CBR or 6 hours of *choke*cough*hack*wheeze* Windows Media files, depending on the bitrates you choose to encode for the CDRs).
My primary intention is to use this as *drumroll please* a portable mp3 player but of course it's HIGHLY USEFUL as a portable mass storage device (185MB CDRs come in handy on occasion). Also, Windows XP supports this thing natively as a USB mass storage device (tada!) - It IS a CDRW drive ya know.
So so so to make this long story short, when I get to CompUSSR the girl reaches under the counter, hands me the box (impressive) and I head off to get some blank CDRs for it. I look for a 50 pack minimum and lucky for me I find them. But wait...
What's this??? 210MB 3" CDRS!!! Yep, that's right, apparently Memorex and some other manufacturers have released 210MB 3" CDRs so I snagged 4 10 packs (40 total) of them and now I'm headed back to the register to check out literally walking on air.
Don't worry, it gets better.
When I get to the register and the girl scans the box for the RipGO! the price comes up...
$49.99 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CRIKEY!!! I exclaim to myself in my head... I wonder if they realize this monumental booboo. Now you're probably saying who the hell cares in this iPod-age about some old ass piece of hardware that can't do Ogg/AAC/MPC/etc etc., and uses CDRs instead of a hard drive for storage.
Well, quite frankly, I DO. And so do a lot of other people out there that would like to have a nice decent solidly built portable mp3 player that comes with the following:
- Practically unlimited storage (yes, you buy more CDRs but it IS pretty much unlimited)
- A rechargeable battery included (and a Lithium Ion one at that - no more battery memory issues like NiCads and it's better than NiMH too)
- IT'S $50!!!! (beat that you rich Apple-owning snobs)
- You can buy TWO if you like!!! (beat that yo--- oh, already said that)
- It's Plug & Play right out of the box (take it anywhere and plug it in a WinXP machine and it's a done deal)
- New 210MB CDRs to play with to store even more data/music on them
I could go on and on. I've been playing with this thing for about 4 hours now and I must say I'm one seriously satisfied customer. I'm curious to figure out why this thing never made it anywhere (since I live in Las Vegas I'd bet hard currency on it's to-the-market price of $399.95 - damned discouraging to say the least).
So anyway let me end this by saying this post is to let the real dealio people who are interested in owning a nice little portable mp3 player (that can do other things as well) about this deal. CompUSSR won't honor this $49.99 price off the website; I've already tried that online (the price stays at $99.95 all the way through checkout) nor by calling them on the 1-800 number to place an in-store pickup.
This is an IN STORE ONLY DEAL. B&M all the way baby.
I hope some of you take it for what it's worth - one helluva wicked evil cool deal.
Let me know who/what/when/where if you do head off to CompUSSR and get one. I'm going to crosspost this across some other forums on the Net (since I'm being censored here I'll just let it go, you know the sites for great deals that I'm talking about).
Good luck and I hope you get one, they're worth every damned cent.
Here's the info:
Ok, I'm hoping that this will help some hapless person out there desperately seeking a nice portable mp3 player without breaking the bank.
I was planning to head out to CompUSSR today to find myself a reasonably priced portable mp3 player - preferably something like a Rio or some other Flash memory based player. I had hoped to find something that was also upgradable as far as additional memory (SD, CompactFlash, etc). Certainly not a hard drive based portable since those are just too far out of my price range. I set $100 as the limit for the unit itself and alotted maybe $35-50 for some additional storage cards.
I went to CompUSSR's website to browse through their inventory and came across something called the Imation RipGO! portable mp3/USB CDRW player. Here are a few links that I came across when I went searching for more info:
www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/ripgo.html
www.everythingusb.com/hardware/index/Imation_RipGO!_Mini_CD-R_Burner.htm
www.tomshardware.com/mobile/20020131/minicdr-02.html
This unit has been out for some time (I actually got my hands on one at COMDEX in 2001 here in Las Vegas). Nice, sturdy, built very solidly and has some great features. Battery life is a bit weak at around 5 hrs on a solid charge but it *does* use a Lithium Ion battery so battery memory isn't a problem. The battery is propietary of course and Imation doesn't even support/manufacture these units anymore so the following disclaimer should be stated:
YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN IF YOU READ FURTHER AND BUY ONE.
Read that line again and remember: Imation doesn't support them or make them anymore. No firmware updates, no software updates, nothing.
Anyway, I took a look at the price over at CompUSSR's site and it was $99.95. I remember when these first hit the market they were retailing for like $399.95 or higher. Big difference in price.
So anyhew I say WTF and decide to check the stores inventory online. They had some in stock so I then went a step further and called the store to check the physical stock. The young lady said, "Yeah, sure, we've got them... I'm looking at a stack of about 16 of them and the computer confirms it. I'll hold one if you like..." and of course I said I was on the way.
I figured (after a bit more research) on getting a 25 pack of blank 3" CDRs to start stuffing full of music. The 3" CDRs usually hold 185MB of data (approximately 3 hours of mp3 files at 192Kbps CBR or 6 hours of *choke*cough*hack*wheeze* Windows Media files, depending on the bitrates you choose to encode for the CDRs).
My primary intention is to use this as *drumroll please* a portable mp3 player but of course it's HIGHLY USEFUL as a portable mass storage device (185MB CDRs come in handy on occasion). Also, Windows XP supports this thing natively as a USB mass storage device (tada!) - It IS a CDRW drive ya know.
So so so to make this long story short, when I get to CompUSSR the girl reaches under the counter, hands me the box (impressive) and I head off to get some blank CDRs for it. I look for a 50 pack minimum and lucky for me I find them. But wait...
What's this??? 210MB 3" CDRS!!! Yep, that's right, apparently Memorex and some other manufacturers have released 210MB 3" CDRs so I snagged 4 10 packs (40 total) of them and now I'm headed back to the register to check out literally walking on air.
Don't worry, it gets better.
When I get to the register and the girl scans the box for the RipGO! the price comes up...
$49.99 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CRIKEY!!! I exclaim to myself in my head... I wonder if they realize this monumental booboo. Now you're probably saying who the hell cares in this iPod-age about some old ass piece of hardware that can't do Ogg/AAC/MPC/etc etc., and uses CDRs instead of a hard drive for storage.
Well, quite frankly, I DO. And so do a lot of other people out there that would like to have a nice decent solidly built portable mp3 player that comes with the following:
- Practically unlimited storage (yes, you buy more CDRs but it IS pretty much unlimited)
- A rechargeable battery included (and a Lithium Ion one at that - no more battery memory issues like NiCads and it's better than NiMH too)
- IT'S $50!!!! (beat that you rich Apple-owning snobs)
- You can buy TWO if you like!!! (beat that yo--- oh, already said that)
- It's Plug & Play right out of the box (take it anywhere and plug it in a WinXP machine and it's a done deal)
- New 210MB CDRs to play with to store even more data/music on them
I could go on and on. I've been playing with this thing for about 4 hours now and I must say I'm one seriously satisfied customer. I'm curious to figure out why this thing never made it anywhere (since I live in Las Vegas I'd bet hard currency on it's to-the-market price of $399.95 - damned discouraging to say the least).
So anyway let me end this by saying this post is to let the real dealio people who are interested in owning a nice little portable mp3 player (that can do other things as well) about this deal. CompUSSR won't honor this $49.99 price off the website; I've already tried that online (the price stays at $99.95 all the way through checkout) nor by calling them on the 1-800 number to place an in-store pickup.
This is an IN STORE ONLY DEAL. B&M all the way baby.
I hope some of you take it for what it's worth - one helluva wicked evil cool deal.
Let me know who/what/when/where if you do head off to CompUSSR and get one. I'm going to crosspost this across some other forums on the Net (since I'm being censored here I'll just let it go, you know the sites for great deals that I'm talking about).
Good luck and I hope you get one, they're worth every damned cent.