FiringSquad's Gadget Feature

X-Micro MusePod

Number one on many shopping lists over the holiday season was undoubtedly portable hard drive music players, which have been dropping in price as fast as new models have been springing up, thanks in part to Apple’s successful introduction of the iPod. Now everybody wants a slice of Apple’s pie but the industry standard still seems to be set by the slim, highly functional yet simple and sophisticated iPod and iPod Mini. It seems all portable hard drives players, whatever their merits, are to be inevitably compared with the iPod, just as Sony’s Walkman and Discman dominated the portable tape and CD player market. Even today, 25 years after the introduction of the Walkman, any portable tape or CD player, regardless of brand, is still commonly referred to as a “Walk/Discman”. Will portable hard drives go the same way? Who knows, but at least one company is not even trying to buck the trend.

The MusePod by X-Micro, a Taiwanese company that also makes portable MP3 players, USB flash disks, Bluetooth cellphone headsets, portable HDDs, and WLAN network hardware, pays homage to the iPod, while surpassing it in features and beating it on price. The MusePod comes in a 20 GB version that also offers voice recording, text file storage/retrieval and an FM radio, all for the relatively low price of between US$250-270, about $75 cheaper than the 20 GB iPod. As far as looks go, it’s not quite as slick looking, but it doesn’t look too shabby either, with a nice purple metallic-silver color theme and a blue backlit 1.5” LCD screen.

X-Micro MusePod

Functionality

The MusePod has a 4-directional toggle button, with a 5th center Menu button, as well as Play, Stop, Mode and Record buttons. The buttons make easy navigation of the 6 Modes (Music menu, Playlist, Voice Record, FM Radio, Text Viewer and Data Backup) as long as you remember to use the +/- keys instead of the , which will activate a mode rather than switching to the next one. The MusePod could have been just as functional with 4 less buttons-I think the Stop, Play, Mode and Record buttons could have been incorporated into the system using just the 4 directional buttons plus the center menu button. For example, when scrolling the music library, either >, Play or Menu opens an artist or album file and will also begin to play, so as you can imagine there is a bit of redundancy. However, this is a minor quibble and doesn’t detract too much from the MusePod, which seems solidly built: in a week of taking it almost everywhere, it hasn’t skipped or crashed.

Handy carrying case

Scrolling through musi

In terms of recording or copying files, the MusePod is pretty straightforward. For copying music from a computer, it plugs right in without any drivers for Windows 2000 and XP, showing up as a hard disc that you can easily trade files back and forth with, although this basic information was not really in the instruction manual. It’s also just as easy to copy from another USB device, weather it be a flash disk, MP3 player or another portable hard drive player. For copying from a CD player, a line-in cable is provided. Voice recording is also a breeze with the built-in mic. Now you can record those amazing conversations for posterity.

X-Micro has also made sure that users are well taken care of by including all the cables and adaptors you could ever possibly need, as well as a nifty leatherette carrying case with a belt clip. Sound quality is excellent in both radio and player format, especially with WMA files. Overall, this is a very solid first effort at a portable hard drive player for X-Micro and we look forward to seeing more products from them in the future.

So there you have it, our thoughts on a few gadgets you may want to consider to accessorize your PC with. Hope you enjoyed it!