External "Discman-style" Sony MPD-AP20U external USB 2.0 CD-RW/DVD drive / MP3 CD/DVD/Flash player (Memory Stick) $99.99

[desiplaya4life]

i just got an open boxed one for $120 w/ shipping:\ raped me on shipping though

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: desiplaya4life
i just got an open boxed one for $120 w/ shipping:\ raped me on shipping though

How are you enjoying it?

I just got mine yesterdat and it's incredible 🙂 Load times between tracks are WAY faster than any iRiver/RioVolt MP3 CD Player. Battery life is also excellent... 10 hours MP3, though I ran mine dead in eight be being a strenuous user and making the disc spin constantly with my expirementation 😉 Although I keep forgetting, it's a PC drive first and a portable audio player second so it doesn't have any display or controls on the actual unit (Except a duplicate "sound" buttun... Assume it applies the same equalizer presets to PC CD audio as it does to stand-alone audio output. The eject button is a software eject (How many PC drives can you open/eject during a burn without using the pin-hole?) so a recessed lever is accessible from the bottom of the unit to open it when the batteries are dead. It has some strange CD brake mechanism which will only stop full-size CDs so if you flip the top open while a disc is spinning it'll stop it pretty quickly. I haven't burned a CD with it yet, but so far it seems to work great as a PC DVD drive. I just wish the dock had a removeable cable for more portable use as a extended-life battery back 🙁 The dock does have some portability features, such as a folding mechanism. It doesn't clip the drive right unless you squeeze it really well. Otherwise the drive seems hooked but you can pull it right off. Manual says only rechargeable batteries can be used. No Alkalines and certainly no Heavy Duty batteries. The thing cannot charge any type of battery so I assume the restriction is because rechargeables have a more consistant voltage output throughout their charge. NiMH (Rechargeable better than Alkaline and with no battery memory like NiCd) is supported and gives you 30 hours of playback time when playing MP3s.

The guy on eBay who I bought mine from runs a large electronics shop in CA and was able to print a receipt for my rebate. All seems well!

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to mention the annoying things I did find. For some reason, you have to cycle through hundreds or thousands of songs using only the next and previous track functions if they are on the disc's root. Well, maybe not thousands (There is a maximum of 200-something songs per directory) but it is annoying because you can't even go backwards from the beginning as a shortcut to one of the last songs. To make things worse, you can't even let it play a song while you browse for another. You have to switch songs to browse for music 🙁 You'll DEFINATELY want to use the playlist support extensively.

I did find two bugs which are probably fixed in the latest firmware, but I don't have a memory stick to upgrade so I'll hold-off on those.