I'm using the iRiver iHP-120 with Mac OS 10.3 on a Powerbook G4. I've had it for about 2 days, and its interaction with the OS is an absolute disgrace.

Connecting to the Player

The computer recognizes the player about 1 in 10 times that I plug it in. To copy files to it, I have to spend 20 minutes randomly plugging and unplugging the cable and turning the unit on and off. It came with version 1.17 of the firmware, and I upgraded it to the latest beta, 1.20, to no avail. When the computer does recognize the player, it shows up as a hard drive and you can simply drag files to it. It doesn't interact with iTunes, but you can drag your iTunes folder to it.

Filenames

The player doesn't like the characters in many of my filenames, so the OS throws up error messages in the middle of copying files to the player and then stops its copy. Nowhere in any documentation does it mention which characters are taboo. So far I've found that it objects to question marks and quotation marks. There is no rhyme or reason to which files are copied before an error message comes up, so I had to download a file synchronization program to finish up the job. My strategy with filenames that it objects to has been to remove the file from iTunes, rename it, then drag it back into iTunes.

ID3 Tag Database

The player can filter songs using the fields in ID3 tags. In order to do this, it builds a database of ID3 tag information. You can only do this from a Windows computer. Files with long names or in folders with long names (more than about 48 characters) cannot be indexed. All the files can be found using the Windows Explorer-like directory structure if you wish to locate a particular one, but I prefer to simply play everything randomly.

Battery Life

Ostensibly, the battery will last for 16 hours of play. I have not gotten to test this due to OS X's refusal to copy random files with names it didn't like. I did charge the battery fully and then take the player to work without the charger to finish copying files to it. I figured that given the long battery life, it would last long enough to copy the remainder of my files (about 4 hours) even though the battery would drain faster because the hard drive would be working constantly. Not so much; it died after 3 hours.

Sound

I've played it in the car (my stereo has a line-in, so I used the included cable to hook it up) and through computer speakers. It sounded very nice, and my car is not known for having great speakers.

Buttons

Control is mainly through a joybutton (think joystick but shaped like a button). Pressing it or pushing it up/down/left/right accomplishes most operations. It's finicky about how it's touched. I have small fingers, and it sometimes misinterprets the direction I pushed it in. I'm adjusting and getting more accurate.

Conclusion

Now that I have my library all copied over and I only need to hook it up from time to time to add new songs, it would be feasible to copy files to a Windows machine for transferring (for me, as I happen to have a few laying around on my network). I chose the iRiver over the iPod because of Apple's evil battery replacement scheme, but I cannot recommend that anyone else do this. Don't plan on returning it if it you don't like it -- you have to destroy the packaging to extract it.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 354
Recommended for: Music Lovers - High Capacity Storage for an Entire Album Collection