Customer Reviews:
 daughter delighted with this as gift November 3, 2005
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
I had moderate expectations with regards this. My daughter (age 11) has been eye-balling all the iPods her friends are getting, but I couldn't afford them (especially the Mini, which I understand is being phased out in deference to the iPod NaNo. Plus, I liked the idea of a flash memory based storage, and the advertized ease of draging-and-dropping MP3's and WMA's into and out of the player. And that she could connect it to her CD-player to import songs as MP3's, without the need of a computer.
Well, it has been everything I'd hoped it would be for her. She loves it, and her iPod-ish friends think its cool, too. It is sturdier than I expected, very small, and weighs almost nothing, so I can see why it would be appealing for jogging/aerobics. She also likes the FM radio (though reception is not exceptional except for the strongest signals) and the digital voice recorder features. It has been relatively intuitive for her to figure out - otherwise it would have gotten shoved in a drawer. She keeps a library of MP3's and WMA's on her computer, and drags-n-drops files between the MuVo and her computer, for whatever ~4 hours of music she wants to take around with her. Frankly, I think this beats having to try to use your MP3-player as the library of all your music - less tragic if something happens to your player if you have your master library at home on the computer (which you are of course backing up regularly, right?). She gets excellent run-time off of a rechargeable AAA battery (my estimate at this point, 25 to 30 hours). I strongly recommend investing in a pair of rechargeable batteries (one in the unit, one in reserve), as they seem to run longer, and will pay for themselves over the cost of akaline batteries very shortly. And get a charger for them.
Also, it's nice to work with MP3's and WMA's instead of the semi-proprietary M4A format. And make sure you understand that this unit will not play M4A's.
These must be getting popular, as the price is now ~$14 more than I had paid in August.
Hope this helps.
 Don't buy this product! October 19, 2005
8 out of 10 found this review helpful
I have been through two of these units, and neither one operated properly for more than a few hours. I spent hours corresponding with Creative's help desk trying to correct the "programming error" on the first unit, and nothing worked. I finally returned it and got a replacement, which also malfunctioned after the first use. Problems varied from not staying powered on, to forward and reverse buttons turning off the unit rather than doing what they are supposed to, and also the memory malfunctioning so that when I turned it off or paused it and turned it back on, it picked up at a totally different location. There are supposedly downloads you can get to correct these errors, but I don't think it's too much to expect a new product to function properly for several months, let alone a few hours!
Buy something else!
Great Mini Player October 17, 2005
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Overall, I am very satisfied with the player. The battery life is great and it is really very small. I also find the FM radio to be a nice bonus, allowing you to listen to the radio if you get tired of the music you pre-loaded. I also think it is great that they include the arm-band and belt clip for it, since some companies make you pay extra for this.
Dies after warranty period October 16, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As an early adopter I appreciate the Muvo's wonderful features as all other high reviewers had mentioned. The noise during playback was annoying, but I mainly use the unit to record cassette into MP3s. After 4 months of usage, it suddenly died, as all other low reviewers experienced. But at least their warranty is still in effect. Since the warranty runs out in 3 months, I would have to pay $25 to have the priviledge to learn how much more I will be charged in order to get the unit fixed. At this time, I wouldn't want to pay $25 for even a new unit!
 Good value October 15, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have the smallest, 256 mb Micro and it does what it's supposed to do quite well. For the money, a very good deal. I am not planning to give up on my iPod for listening to the music, but if you need something really tiny, with a radio and a portable recorder, MuVo Micro works great. It's excellent for recording voice, too, if you are a singer, this is a very useful device.
However, I have had major problems when trying to install the software that came with it; you don't really need it, since you can record anything straight into MuVo and then use it as a simple flash drive, but I figured I'd like to try the CD included in the box. It crashed when I hit the Set up button, and kept crashing all the time, never letting me install anything. I Googled the error message and found out that if you have Quicktime installed on your PC, it will cause major conflict. I simply uninstalled Quicktime, loaded up the Creative software, and then installed a new (and more recent) Quicktime. It's doable, just a bit of nuisance.
Good product overall, just be warned about that software issue.
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