Price: $159. Each additional 16-MB flash card: $49
Grade: D
Bottom line: Don't buy it.
It's hard not to slam this poor puppy. It comes with no onboard memory and currently supports only two 16-MB flash cards–though there are plans to support 32-meg cards. While the tiny, wafer-thin cards are really cool to think of as the CDs of the future, 32 megs just doesn't cut it. You'll end up playing the same tunes over and over on your commute, which means you'll be humming them at work and driving everyone crazy. Furthermore, a device that won't let you store a whole album on it is just not worth it. To make matters worse, the Mplayer3 comes with a serial cable instead of a parallel type. That means download times of about 3 min. per megabyte. Does it seem worth it to wait an hour and a half to download 30 minutes of music? Not. A big not for the Mplayer3.
