[Arm_The_Homeless]

The total screen... let's all just hate iRiver for creating it because it's just such a gargantuan hassle to click the joystick once to get into the root menu. It shows battery life, equalizer settings, and all the info about the song that's currently playing. From what I've read that's one of your biggest complaints. If you can seriously go on complaining about things like that then don't buy an mp3 player. Actually, don't buy any kind of device that uses any kind of explorable interface. Someone will always find something wrong with it. If they got rid of the total screen, I'd be mad. So if iRiver do that, how about I start a thread complaining about how iRiver removed that screen?

The firmware: you are definitely not the only person who owns an iRiver and feels this way. But it's not going to help to b*tch and complain until it's finally released. H owners aren't the only thing iRiver as a company has to worry about. So I completely understand that they really screwed up on the whole firmware issue. It will come, whether it be from iRiver or from third party sources with hacked firmware.

I couldn't keep the iPod due to its weak compatibility, in terms of USB recognition as a hard disk... i needed that for work

If you only needed the recognition at work, the just install whatever driver and/or software need to be installed for it to be recognized. If that's the only complaint you have about the iPod then I'd suggest selling you iRiver and buying another one of those. I haven't heard any mention of you needing recording, radio, or support for music formats other than mp3, so then why does it matter to you that iRiver has more features? You obviously want the most simple stripped down player on the market.

Anyway. That's what separate a good product from a "average" product : it's called "professionalism ". Do you think, truly think iRiver has any ? By daring release such a good product with such a NON-FINISHED firmware ?

Yes I do think they have profesionalism (I'll refrain from talking further about "professionalism " here). The firmware is finished. I'd rather have useful features like gapless and on-the-fly than a more simplistic user interface (which will appear soon with all the recent developments in regards to stripwax and his reversed firmware). The only problem that I have with the current display is the folders on the left side of the menu that take up a lot of room on the screen. And I'n not even that worried about that, because I use the player to listen to music, not as something that I stare at in my free time or tell my friends about the ease of use of the interface. Features that enhance the music are more important to me than add ons that enhance the interface.

I don't think that windows would have been a success if, in order to launch, let's say, Internet explorer, you had to type in a command line window : "Start Internet Explorer", and in a case sensitive way. Same thing here.

It's be more like Microsoft putting the "forward" and "back" buttons into the file menu or something. There is no way that much of a hassle to use.

And just for the record: my H140 is easy to use.