Impulse buy that turned out to be a good thing...
Written: May 03 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Small, 64MB onboard, expansion slot, works with WinNT4
Cons: Might not work with 64MB Smartmedia cards
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| bitnaut's Full Review: Samsung Yepp YP-E64 (64 MB) MP3 Player |
I'll admit it. This was an impulse buy when I heard it was available at BestBuy from a friend a mine.
I had been looking for the "right" MP3 player for awhile to replace the CD walkman that had died recently. I wanted an MP3 player over another CD or MD player because a) it wouldn't (ok, shouldn't) skip and b) theoretically, you could download songs to it at high rates of speed (unlike MD's). It needed to be at least 64Mb, expandable memory, small, easy to use, good download speed, definitely had to work with Windows NT 4.0, and most definitely should not have all that fidgety SDMI shhhtuff on it.
The first MP3 player I bought was the Sony Memory Stick thing...I was hypnotized by its sexy looks and diminutive size but once you got beneath the sexy part all you ended up with was something that would not work with anything but Windows 98 (not even Win98SE according to the manual), would only work with one computer, had some crappy song check-in/check-out procedure, the list goes on. So I returned that puppy the next day. I learned my lesson but received a full refund, so no harm done.
Then along came the Samsung Yepp YP-E64. It has all the features I've been looking for plus a few extra: voice recording and telephone number storage.
Some people will complain about its current parallel port interface and that it should be a USB connection. For my purposes, since Windows NT 4.0 does not support USB, the parallel port connection is perfect. Although not as fast as USB, the interface is definitely snappier than trying to send songs to a Minidisc player. On average, it takes about 25 seconds per song AND the ID3 tags are sent along as well so no cheesy manual typing like on a MD player.
The sound is decent with the given headphones but I'm not too picky on this since I'll be using it while mountain biking or walking to work and I'm just not at my audiophile critical best during these occasions.
My one complaint...well, possible complaint...is that I haven't been able to establish whether the Yepp will work with 64MB Smartmedia cards which are currently available. The instruction manual only mentions up to 32MB. So, I sent an email to Samsung asking them about this but haven't yet received a reply.
Overall, the Samsung Yepp YP-E64S (couldn't find the teal blue YP-E64B anywhere) fits in with what I wanted an MP3 player for and I highly recommend it.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID: bitnaut
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Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 2 members
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