Finally

(and no, I don’t live in the vacuum of space, the flash reflection just overpowered the rest of the room.)

After finally deciding and ordering, my iRiver iFP-799 finally arrived, after gently prodding the store’s shipping department (their initial 2-5 day estimate had turned into a few weeks without hearing anything).

Form Factor: It’s fairly small, obviously, and fits well in the hand and easily into even jean pockets (though then you risk the headphone plug falling out if it’s angled, like mine).

The control layout seems a little odd at first, but works well in practice. Everything is accessible with the thumb once you’re holding it the right way, so it’s easy to just stick your hand in your pocket, flip off the hold switch, adjust the volume or fast-forward/rewind or pause, and flip the hold switch back on, without having to take it out and look at it.

Sound Quality: Though I’m no audiophile, I’m certain that this player sounds a lot better than the PocketPC did. I can hear details in the songs again that I couldn’t on the PocketPC; I’d originally attributed the loss to being drowned out by background noise such as traffic, but I can still hear them with the iRiver even around traffic.

Features: Besides the basic MP3 playback, it also has an FM radio, and the ability to record to MP3 from either the radio, a built-in mic, or a line-in jack. I’m not sure how much I’ll really use the recording ability, but it’s nice to have the radio option available without having to carry around a separate radio.

The one major feature that’s missing right now is the ability to act as a USB drive. There *is* a firmware update that adds that ability, but it’s an unofficial update, and using it disables a few other features (there probably just isn’t enough firmware memory for both USB support and all of the other features). Whether I switch to it or not depends on…

Managing Files: Without the USB update, files have to be loaded onto it with a special program, and it’s not all that great. All it does is let you drag-and-drop from your PC’s file folders to the player’s folders, with no playlist management or selection criteria or anything like that.

There is apparently an equivalent Linux program though, and if I can get that working, I can tie it into my existing scripts for managing my Linux playlists and what I used to select files for the PocketPC, and that should be sufficient for my needs.

Cons: Since it’s a flash-based player, the capacity (1 gig) is lower than what you’d expect from an iPod or other high-end player. Still, I was able to cram about 130 songs on it and still had a little over 100 megs free, and that’s good enough to last for a while. I don’t really need my entire library available all the time, as I rarely listen to most of it anyway. I just want my favourites available while I’m killing time travelling or exercising.

Overall it’s a great little unit, and it’s working well for me so far. The only major downside is the capacity, but some scripting to automate filling it up regularly will make that less of a problem.