Re: Is this MP3 player alright??
I have an iRiver H10 and I love it. It is pricey, in fact really pushing the limits of what an mp3 player is worth to me, but I use it all the time, so I'm getting my money's worth.
The design and construction are excellent, as good as ipod IMHO. The interface is nearly as good, but having the play/pause and < > buttons off to the side is a little cumbersome. Otherwise the touchpad scrollbar works superbly. The unit it small, elegant, and well built. The supplied rubber case has worked well for me. One big grip I have is the cable, I would have liked if it used a standard USB cable.
Perhaps the best feature of the design is the removable battery-- not just replaceable, but removable like your cell phone's battery. Carry and extra battery and you're golden. The battery life is quite good though, rated at 12 hours, I can go about a week between charges.
The usefulness of the color screen is questionable to me-- most of the time it's in my pocket or I'm driving so I'm not looking at the screen, as pretty as it is. And the photo function is cool, but with a 1.5 display you can't really see much anyway.
The device is designed to sync with Win Media Player 10 which actually works quite well. There is firmware for international units to make it a UMS device, but this patch has not worked too well on US versions of the H10 (apparently there is some hardware difference btw US and ROW). On the subject of firmware, a lot of people had bug issues with the initial fw, but they did just release new firmware for the US version that works a lot of that out. Mine has always been bug free so I haven't bothered to upgrade.
They will also be releasing more players based on the h10 design, a 1GB and 2 GB flash players, and IIRC 4, 6, and 10gb hard drive versions.