Rating: 
Summary: Many weak points
Review: I have been living with this unit for about 2 months now, so I think I've discovered just about all the good and bad about this player.First the bad stuff: 1) You WILL damage the player and the memory chips just trying to open the box, and you WILL also lacerate your hands with the sharp knife you'll need to cut the plastic. 2) This player does NOT work with Music Match which has been tested as one of the the most error-free CD rippers around. You must use the Windows Media Player to download. Compaq also says in their manual to not download over 160/kbps files, so if high quality mp3 file playing is a priority, dont get this unit. 3) The player failed to play some variable bit rate files I have that play just fine in Music Match and WMP. 4) The volume control is a BIG negative. It wont play softly, and when you do play it softly the sound is very grainy. If you are planning on listening yourself to sleep, you wont get it to play quietly. An analog volume control would have been nice. 5) The bass response of the headphones is inadequate, you'll need to purchase different headphones. 6) The power of the amplifier is too low to prevent clipping at higher volumes. Now the good stuff: 1) Its small and light enough for you to not know its there 2) No nasty hard drives to skip 3) Good ergonomics and simple to follow menus 4) I can dance with it, which was my top priority in an mp3 player, to be able to rehearse in a crowded studio with my own music.
Rating: 
Summary: Good small MP-3 Player
Review: I've had the iPaq PA-1 for about a week. Before buying it I read the reviews and for the most part they're accurate except for the few people who will never be happy no matter what they buy. I fortunately didn't cut my hand or damage the player trying to get it out of the plastic wrap. What a stupid idea. Battery life is poor and so far I haven't seen any good solutions. I would like to get a 64MB memory card, but there's nothing in the manual about mixing a 64 and 32 sized card so I don't know if it's possible. The included software seems adequate. I think the sound is great although the headphones need to be replaced if you're going to use the player while exercising (the included ones fall off). On the other hand the player's small size is great for running and it doesn't skip like my "antiskip" CD player.
Rating: 
Summary: Great sound - mediocre software
Review: Got this for my gal for Valentine's day. It's as light and nice as they say, with killer sound. We use 128 bit samples and therefore can fit about an hour's worth of CD quality sound. Watch out about the "expandable" claim if you see it anywhere in the product description -- it is not. It comes with 2 32M cards, and that's all that can fit in there. I bought one extra 32M card, believing I could go to 90 minutes of play time, and it's worthless (at over $...!!) unless you want to share half a set with another iPAQ owner, or unless you want to pre-record a bunch of different sets and you won't be anywhere near your pc for awhile. But that would get mucho expensive, like $... per tune! The software I find pretty convoluted. We're on a better groove now, building a library of playlists; but that first one was really confusing to me, and I'm a programmer and a musician and I like to think I know my way around a menu. The USB download time is just fine, once you get it going, like 5 minutes per 32M card. You have to design the card's contents separately, one at a time, although playback is seamless. Also, although it refused to let me grab a tune from my own freakin' CD that I once paid good royalties for, it had no trouble using the exact same tune when I got it from a certain well-known, pirated, illegal MP3 site whose name rhymes with Krappster -- what's that about? Bottom line: the player is 5-star, the PC software is less than 3-star. There's some Windows Media Player interface I have yet to mess with; maybe that's the trick, we'll see. Peace.
Rating: 
Summary: Great little audio player
Review: I found the compaq pa-1 a great way to carry your favorite tunes with you. I can take it to work, walking, bed, in the car (which it can be hooked up to your tape player by a car cassette adapter) anywhere you want to go. It is easy to download. I am looking toward until the prices come down on memory cards so I can purchase longer playing memory cards, like a 128 MB or even a larger one. I find the two 32MB cards that came with the player ok, but I would like to store more of my favorite music in the future.Anyone who knows where you can get a good buy on the larger cards just drop me a line at dtred@earthlink.net.
Rating:
Summary: A Middle of the Road Player
Review: After having an opportunity to play around with my Compaq iPAQ PA-1 64 MB player, I'd describe this device as being middle of the road and, while not offering spectacular performance, provides enough bang for the buck that could justify a purchase if price is a primary consideration. The unit is also quite compact and battery life is approximately 10 hours, corresponding to about 8 hours of playing time; unless you listen to the same tracks over and over, 10-20% of battery life will be consumed in selecting, downsampling tracks, and uploading them into the player (which is a relatively slow process). The Player is a fairly well-built unit with an attractive metallicized plastic chassis and earbud headphones. Be warned that dropping the chassis (even on linoleum) will rub off the coating at the point of impact. The unit has button layout that needs some revision and the inclusion of tactile elements (such as bumps or textures that let the user know what the button is without looking). It is easy to manipulate volume and sound tracks; play, pause, and skip backwards and forwards along tracks are simple. However, I would have liked to have seen an acceleration feature when scrolling through a track where the scan moves faster and faster through the track the longer the forward button is depressed; this feature is quite useful for MP3s of audiobooks, for instance. As it stands, scrolls through tracks occur at a stately pace when the forward or reverse button is depressed, so you may have a long wait to get where you're going if you have a long track. The worst navigation element is the Menu button. The Menu button that is adjacent to the other buttons brings up a very sloppily designed list of choices on the LCD that makes adjusting the bass or treble quite difficult since navigation and selection through the menu choices is not obvious. Worse yet is the useless "self-test" feature included in the Menu. Selecting this choice within the Menu results in a 30-second series of audio tests that cannot be interrupted. There also appears to be bugs in the embedded software of this unit; I have been able to crash this unit by pausing in the middle of very long MP3 tracks (90+ minutes) and then turning off the player. Doing this will crash the player intermittently, and requires a hard reboot by removing the batteries. As for the software, Rioport, I give it a 5 out of 10 overall. It does what it is supposed to, barely. Compaq needs to write some better software to interface with their player. I would say that updating the file library is only fair since I cannot easily find files after I add them to the library, the interface is awful (it is much easier for me to find music using Windows Explorer than through descriptions placed within Rioport's file library) , and the software does only a fair job of managing the 32 MB cards supplied with the Player. Still, it is somewhat better than the badly designed and pokey Windows Media Player. Despite these shortcomings, I am still pretty satisfied with this unit, as I primarily use it for the daily jog. What goes on my iPAQ beats the pants off of anything on the local radio stations!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Player, Lousy Software
Review: Am I the only one that hates the rioport software? In my opinion, it is way more complicated than it needs to be. Upon installing it, I found that most of my mp3 library didn't transfer over correctly. For example, some song titles would be listed under "artist", while the artist would be listed under the album name...or any variation of this. I had to manually correct each song (around 600 tracks!). The software should be directly integrated with windows explorer, which is the simplest way to organize and keep track of music, and any other files for that matter. For example, when want to choose songs to download to the player, it should bring up an explorer "Open" box to pull the files straight off the hard drive. One more gripe about the software. On the packaging it says the software is capable of ripping .wav files from audio CDs to .mp3 files on your hard drive. What they don't tell you is that the software only allows you to rip 50 tracks from CDs. You have to go online and pay an additional $10 to "unlock" this feature for unlimited ripping. IT DOESN'T SAY THIS ANYWHERE ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE BOX, OR EVEN IN THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL! So be ready to shell out a few more bucks. The actual player itself is great. Very solid construction and build quality. Also, very small and lightweight. If the software was comparable to the player, I would give 5 stars in a heartbeat.
Rating:
Summary: Nice Player! Great size and great sound
Review: I have had no s/w problems and the unit was up and running in minutes.. Some people crab about 8 hours of battery life, but i use Ni-mH batteries (rechargable)..So its not a problem..The memory access door is flimsy but i dont plan on swapping cards in and out that much..I think for the price and ease of use, and expandability of mmc memory, its a great buy. I had the RIO 600 and its back pack options leave nothing to be desired..
Rating: 
Summary: Hard to work with. Poorly supported.
Review: I have found this device to be very difficult to work with. It has successfully connected to my PC--via the USB port--exactly once. I have since tried to connect to another PC on my network with even less luck. I have attempted to remedy the problem via the Compaq support site and the Rioport site. Next time I plan on asking my grandmother for assistance as this will be less time consuming and will have identical results. For the kids in the back of the room, that means no results. I've gone from the Sony to the Compaq in my attempt to find a fully functioning .mp3 device that works simply and cleanly. So far both have been pretty bad but at least the Sony worked.
Rating:
Summary: An okay player for its size
Review: I haven't had the software probs most ppl seem to mention. I am not very proficient on the computer but it wasn't hard to install and run the software. Besides the fact that it came in a really hard to open plastic package, the complaints I have are: 1)There is no cover for the usb port. 2)It really eats up batteries! Be ready with a few on hand-especially if you plan on listening to it after d/l music to it. 3)The MMC's are way too expensive. The good thing is that it's small and light. I pretty much take it on the train and can even get away with playing it during class and work. And even though it's just 64 mb, it's good enough for me b/c my taste in music keeps changing so I don't really need 128 mb of memory. It'd be nice but not necessary. Well, that's my experience with it. I hope you find it somewhat helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Buy One
Review: I'd buy another one if something happened to the one I have. There isn't anything else that matches its size, weight and performance characteristics. OK, it's a battery monster, so buy some stock in Eveready and then you can deal with the trauma. I get about 5 hours of battery life, not the ten claimed but maybe that's because I got two 64mb multimedia cards to expand it to 128mb. That stores about 4 hours of music...about 50 or so tracks. I am a runner nso the size and weight of it are ideal. However the belt clip presents a challenge: You have to unscrew it to get the battery door open which, as mentioned, will be frequently! Nickel-hydride batteries only lasted an hour so save your money on those and get that Eveready stock. SOUND QUALITY: I don't know where some of the other reviewers are coming from on the sound quality. I am getting really excellent sound out of it with either the earbuds ir came with or the Bang+Olufsen A-8 earbuds I have. If you like cool looks, the B+O earbuds are slick.
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