[austonia]

Now this is my kind of thread. heh.

Have to agree with you on the support issue. Obviously, they shouldn't have made promises they can't keep. And the features they are promising are vital to keep the iHP current among a sea of other players that are getting more advanced. I'm sure some people even bought thier H100 player assuming that the new features would be added as iRiver promised. No one's even sure at this point if there will be any update. The delay, I'm sure, is because of thier new product rollout. They have so many new things coming out this year, taking up the time of thier engineers.

But still nothing like the H100. The H300 doesn't really count IMO because it's not being sold worldwide and it's mode multimedia-focused.

About ergonomy, yeah, it's no secret that there's many, many things that could be better implemented on the H100 to make it easier and more efficient to use. Your gripes aren't all the same as mine, but not far off either.
- For me, the one thing that just bugs the living hell outa me, is the File/Folder Browsing screen. Fully 30% of the screen is wasted on stupid File icons, reducing the amount of space left to display text.
- Then there's the 52-character limit on importing tracks into its iD3 tag database, effectively rendering it useless for me.
- The iHP should be able to scan the tracks and build its own database anyway, that's how I thought it worked till I got it and found out you had to use a PC app to build the database. Even RCA has managed this feature, and new Rio products will have it as well.
- The play control buttons should remain play control buttons in all screens, it's dumb that they change function in the Browser since they are only duplicating navigation control that's allready handled by the Joystick.
- on-the-fly playlisting. Hello, iRiver, this is a basic feature.
- etc etc etc I've said it all before

I do like the H140, much more now than when I first got it, in part due to it being one of the only 40gb players of its size. Adding some foam on the top of the joystick greatly improved its ease of use for me, but it's baffling how it got by iRiver in its default state. The File/Folder browsing is a nice change (though less efficient) from my other players that use iD3-tag databasing. The recording features are nice to have on tap, but not often useful. Voice recording is the best of 4 DAPs I tested. Mass Storage Complience is useful as always. And I like the black design with chrome accents, although I would have preferred a matching black case.

The H100 is a hugely mixed bag. It's fairly impressive for thier first player, but it's aging now, and I know they can do better...