Gigabeat

What is the worst thing you can possibly do to a good standard? How about encrypted it and make it proprietary?

The guys in Toshiba must have too much time to burn: a popular, portable, almost universal audio format like MP3 in their hands can turn into something completely the opposite. For no rational reasons, they convert all the regular MP3 files into their SAT format before they copy the files to the Gigabeat player.

What makes thing worst is this Gigabeat player does not recognize regular MP3 compressed audio files! Technically, Gigabeat player should not be considered as a MP3 player, it simply cannot handle any regular MP3 files.

Gigabeat is not a USB drive either. Regular Windows XP PC can't recognize the Gigabeat without the driver install. Even after installing the driver, this player doesn't play/ read any image or audio files that is not copied using the Gigabeat room software. The camera backup functions does not work with my Canon digital cameras.

This Toshiba is the forth portable digital audio player I bought. The price is good, the sound quality is quite good. However, the designers of this piece of machine were either living in a cave or completely out to lunch when they first started with this product. And the organization continues to progress in their directions of uniqueness and disregard the value of user-friendliness.

I understand it is fun to pretend to be an inventor, especially when you are 'enhancing' an established standard. But on the practical side, if something is good and working, there is not point of fixing it. Best wishes to the guys in Toshiba, I hope one day you can focus again and make an audio player that is usable. You may even create a standard that you dream of. In the meantime, I am sending this puppy back to the store.