Toshiba's Hot MP3 Player for PC's August 12, 2002 Oh my God, it is soooo cool! Yeah that's right! That was quite nearly the universal acclaim around the office here and in our lab amongst our small staff and college interns. Everyone was begging to be the first take this marvelous new personal music player home with them to put it to the test . . . . and well, make friends envious! Last time THAT happened was upon the first arrival of the Apple iPod some year plus ago, but this time it was for a hot little device from an unsuspecting source, Toshiba! We waited weeks in great anticipation knowing we'd be the first in North America to evaluate Toshiba's first entry into the MP3 Personal Music Player market, and man it was worth the wait. I am going to tell you right here and now, THIS is the digital music player that is going to really give the Apple iPod a run for it's money! ALL the others - Nomad Juke Box 3, Archos Jukebox , Sonicblue Rio Volt SP250, TDK Mojo 620, Sonic Blue and all the rest of the big bulky clumsy awkwardly shaped players, none of them can come close to the MobilePhile, except the iPod and I'll briefly tell you why. It's shinny, it's tiny (the same size as the iPod), it's USB 2.0, it's as easy to play with as the iPod, and . . . . . . it has a REMOVABLE Hard Disk Drive!!!!! Just imagine that my dear music player fanatic friends. You can have a bloody archive of disks and disks and DISKS of tunes, and your best little buddy personal music player will never be land-locked with just the HDD size it came with! Initially the Toshiba MobilPhile will come with a 5 GB Type II PC Card HDD, but plans are afoot to bring a 10 GB HDD soon, according to Tony Ikeda at Toshiba, and the expected retail price is $399. We'll have more on this in the upcoming full review article. Briefly, the MobilePhile includes the player, 5 GB Removable Type II PC Card HDD, a miniature auxiliary controller much like the new iPod one, earbud phones that are quite				nice (better than the iPods), a 110v AC adaptor, USB 2.0 cable, a basic carrying pouch and Toshiba's own Audio Application which runs on Windows 98 through XP. This last item is the only area that is vastly under whelming compared to the iPod and the whole interface with any Mac running iTunes. Neither Windows Media Player or the Toshiba Auto Application will open automatically and do all the wonderful things that a Mac will with iTunes. And of for now, all the great Freeware and Shareware apps that clever programmers have written for iTunes and the iPod is wanting for the MobilPhile. But Windows code crunchers are a clever lot too, and I'm sure the Shareware goodies will pile up for the MobilePhile quickly. ìIt's shinny, it's tiny (the same size as the iPod), it's USB 2.0, it's as easy to play with î There are plenty of advanced and nifty features in the MobilPhile, too many to cover right now, all this will be explored later in our complete review article. The MobilePhile will store 1000 songs in MP3 or WMA format that are an average of 5 minute length @ 128 Kbps, same as the 5 GB iPod. It has a built-in advanced Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery that gave me nearly 18 hours of playback time (with the LCD screen backlight set at the shortest timeout). Hey, it even knows five different languages! Es ist meine neue Liebe! Et vous ne pouvez pas l'avoir. Yeah, I know I'm rusty. By the end of this Month we will have given the Toshiba MobilPhile a full torture test and recorded - stored - played everything from Van Halen to Beethoven and Prince to Charlie Daniels. Tweaked the software and choked the batteries to maximum play length. Check out the FULL Review here by Angel Lee
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