Rating: 
Summary: Extremely Unreliable
Review: Firstly I'm going to show my age and state that I'm from the "walkman" generation. I remember getting my first Walkman in college. My friend bought it back from Japan and it was the second model available. Through college and University, my Walkman was my constant companion, in the library , on the bus, riding my bike etc. During that time, I've gone through 3 different models. Along with this came the grief of dirty capstans and heads, broken tapes, scrunched tapes,"bouncing" sound, dropped and broken tapes, belt clips and falling down pants......I never got into carrying my CD Walkman around with me. It just seemed to hard because of the size of the player , and the CD's that you had to carry around with you. As I've got older, I haven't had the time to sit down and listen to music and I've got to admit that now days it's pretty rare. My LPs are stored in boxes, most of my tapes got thrown out in the last house move and most of my new cds are the kids music. I got the PA-2 as my first player and I've gotta admit I'm impressed. I've added 64MB ( the maximum upgrade ) and having cut my CD's to 96k ( seems a good trade off for me b/w size and quality), I can fit 2-3 albums on it. It's tiny, portable, and durable ( though I'm not sure how long the brushed metal finish will last, it's already scratched ) has about a 10 hour battery life and sounds great. Even the included headphones aren't too bad, but they are a strange fit, and I've swapped them for one of my sets of Sony sports. As people say it is a bit slow to download and the plug for the USB port is sure to be lost. And the best thing, it doesn't effect the sound when the device bounces like my Walkmans did. I'm finding myself wearing it whenever I'm working around the house. I get music to work by and I can't heard the kids :-p For those who have had problems with it being recognised by their PC , I've had it working on Windows 98 SE, W2K and XP. The updated 98/W2K drivers are on the Compaq site, though they seem a bit unstable and sometimes lock while downloading. At first XP gave me grief, but looking at the Microsoft Site the driver for it is included in XP, though it does show as a PA-1. At first it gave me a USB unrecognised error. To get round this, I rebooted the machine with the PA-2 turned on and connected. Haven't had a problem since. I'm using Musicmatch to rip my CD's and also to download the music to the player. I've also used Media Player 8 to do the same but Musicmatch is much more flexible. For those who find the quick reference guide that comes with it a bit thin on, there are PDFs on the CD as well which go into more detail. All in all a great product that I would recommend. I hope this helps somebody out there :-P
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful
Review: Firstly I'm going to show my age and state that I'm from the "walkman" generation. I remember getting my first Walkman in college. My friend bought it back from Japan and it was the second model available. Through college and University, my Walkman was my constant companion, in the library , on the bus, riding my bike etc. During that time, I've gone through 3 different models. Along with this came the grief of dirty capstans and heads, broken tapes, scrunched tapes,"bouncing" sound, dropped and broken tapes, belt clips and falling down pants...... I never got into carrying my CD Walkman around with me. It just seemed to hard because of the size of the player , and the CD's that you had to carry around with you. As I've got older, I haven't had the time to sit down and listen to music and I've got to admit that now days it's pretty rare. My LPs are stored in boxes, most of my tapes got thrown out in the last house move and most of my new cds are the kids music. I got the PA-2 as my first player and I've gotta admit I'm impressed. I've added 64MB ( the maximum upgrade ) and having cut my CD's to 96k ( seems a good trade off for me b/w size and quality), I can fit 2-3 albums on it. It's tiny, portable, and durable ( though I'm not sure how long the brushed metal finish will last, it's already scratched ) has about a 10 hour battery life and sounds great. Even the included headphones aren't too bad, but they are a strange fit, and I've swapped them for one of my sets of Sony sports. As people say it is a bit slow to download and the plug for the USB port is sure to be lost. And the best thing, it doesn't effect the sound when the device bounces like my Walkmans did. I'm finding myself wearing it whenever I'm working around the house. I get music to work by and I can't heard the kids :-p For those who have had problems with it being recognised by their PC , I've had it working on Windows 98 SE, W2K and XP. The updated 98/W2K drivers are on the Compaq site, though they seem a bit unstable and sometimes lock while downloading. At first XP gave me grief, but looking at the Microsoft Site the driver for it is included in XP, though it does show as a PA-1. At first it gave me a USB unrecognised error. To get round this, I rebooted the machine with the PA-2 turned on and connected. Haven't had a problem since. I'm using Musicmatch to rip my CD's and also to download the music to the player. I've also used Media Player 8 to do the same but Musicmatch is much more flexible. For those who find the quick reference guide that comes with it a bit thin on, there are PDFs on the CD as well which go into more detail. All in all a great product that I would recommend. I hope this helps somebody out there :-P
Rating: 
Summary: Nice mp3
Review: For me the PA-2 is great. i dont have any problems with it and it was for a reasonable price. There was one problem but that was due 2 my stupidity. So i just wanna let everyone no to get this product if youre lookin for a mp3 player!!
Rating:
Summary: I miss it...
Review: Got this one after a very bad experience with a Rio 600 with the rechargeable power pack which died. Once you get the software going and the cards formatted (the directions didn't specify HOW you format the cards), it works OK. The NOT OK part was: not loud enough (I can't hear soft songs while I'm riding my lawn tractor), the MusicMatch software will not recognize the unit (after numerous emails from Compaq and software patches I can still only load WMA's with Windows Media Player), the earphones are passable, and the transfer is a little slow. It seems to be too easy to inadvertently hit the play/pause button. The belt clip is plastic and not altogether sturdy, as well.
Rating: 
Summary: Works OK - with a few gripes...
Review: Got this one after a very bad experience with a Rio 600 with the rechargeable power pack which died. Once you get the software going and the cards formatted (the directions didn't specify HOW you format the cards), it works OK. The NOT OK part was: not loud enough (I can't hear soft songs while I'm riding my lawn tractor), the MusicMatch software will not recognize the unit (after numerous emails from Compaq and software patches I can still only load WMA's with Windows Media Player), the earphones are passable, and the transfer is a little slow. It seems to be too easy to inadvertently hit the play/pause button. The belt clip is plastic and not altogether sturdy, as well.
Rating:
Summary: Love It!!!
Review: I bought the I-Pac 2 to use for running. It small size allows me to clip it on, run hands free and forget about it. I am semi-computer literate and I thought it was very easy to transfer my already downloaded songs into the software that it comes with. It did take me a few seconds to figure out how to upload to my player but I still figured it out pretty quickly without any tutorials. The earphones are some of the best ones I have ever used to run with too. No slipping and very comfortable. Great Player! No problems here!
Rating:
Summary: Could be good, but isn't...
Review: I bought the PA2 to play mp3 tunes on a recent trip and was very disappointed with several features of the player. First, to get a reasonable amount of music onto the unit I had to decrease my music encoding down to 64kps which is pretty gritty. Second, the player will suddenly stop or skip to the next song while playing a song which is very irritating! I think I'll buy Apple's iPod MP3 player next time around.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Unreliable
Review: I bought this product about 11 months ago. However, I've only been able to use it for about 6 months because it keeps malfunctioning. I had to ship it in twice for repairs at my own expense. This last time, they even forgot to ship back the memory card. Now I have to wait again... When it works, the product is great. However, it's so unreliable that it's not worth it. My recommendation is to buy another brand unless Compaq can get their act together.
Rating:
Summary: Great SMALL player!
Review: I have had the PA-1 for about a year now and have only had one problem. The LCD went out on me about 1 month into ownership. It was handled superbly by Compaq though. I sent it in and it came back within 4 days, and has worked seamlessly ever since. I use it everyday when training. While running the unit shows its strengths best. It is so small and weights next to nothing that you don't even notice it clipped onto your running shorts. I have run for 3-1/2 hours continuously with it and didn't even notice it. And the battery life is good enough with the 2AAA batteries for over 9 hours of continuous use. I do notice that cheap batteries do not last as long. I switched to high quality NiMh rechargables and get over 10 hours per charge! There is one thing that you need to do to get more play out of the memory cards. I use 2x64MMC cards and only download from Windows Media Player in XP using the .wma format. I can get over 4 hours of music at 64bits on the 128megs of card this way; it is the same quality (or better) as using 128bit mp3's. So just scrap the included software and use the Windows Media Player in Windows XP and you will get 2 hours of music per 64MB MMC card. When the 128MB cards come down in price you will be able to get over 8hours of music on this little device --- that is awesome considering the hard drive portables cost 3 times this amount and they are not solid state devices (you CANNOT run with them, or even walk briskly wihtout skipping problems). I highly recommend this little device for those who want an exercise companion for music. This excels in that catagory!
Rating:
Summary: Great SMALL player!
Review: I have had the PA-1 for about a year now and have only had one problem. The LCD went out on me about 1 month into ownership. It was handled superbly by Compaq though. I sent it in and it came back within 4 days, and has worked seamlessly ever since. I use it everyday when training. While running the unit shows its strengths best. It is so small and weights next to nothing that you don't even notice it clipped onto your running shorts. I have run for 3-1/2 hours continuously with it and didn't even notice it. And the battery life is good enough with the 2AAA batteries for over 9 hours of continuous use. I do notice that cheap batteries do not last as long. I switched to high quality NiMh rechargables and get over 10 hours per charge! There is one thing that you need to do to get more play out of the memory cards. I use 2x64MMC cards and only download from Windows Media Player in XP using the .wma format. I can get over 4 hours of music at 64bits on the 128megs of card this way; it is the same quality (or better) as using 128bit mp3's. So just scrap the included software and use the Windows Media Player in Windows XP and you will get 2 hours of music per 64MB MMC card. When the 128MB cards come down in price you will be able to get over 8hours of music on this little device --- that is awesome considering the hard drive portables cost 3 times this amount and they are not solid state devices (you CANNOT run with them, or even walk briskly wihtout skipping problems). I highly recommend this little device for those who want an exercise companion for music. This excels in that catagory!
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