iRiver H320 - Software Usability
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The iPod’s best feature is its usability. The scroll wheel makes running down your list of songs easy. The H320, unfortunately, falls short in this area. When you first plug in the device, it doesn’t need any software to work. They only software you need from the CD you receive with the device is for the database feature, which can list the songs by title and album. The documentation does not say that you need this software running to organize the songs.
Hitting the Navi button once will get you the music browser. Here you can browse by artist, album, and genre. Holding the Navi button down will get you to the general options, like display, time, control and mode. To change media, for instance to pictures, MP3, or radio, you must hold down the record button. The point I’m trying to make is, you are going to have to read the whole manual to know how to get everything to work. Scrolling through your music will lead you to early carpal tunnel syndrome. For instance, if you want to listen to an album that starts with the letter “m,” you are going to have to scroll through every album you have till you get to the “m.” This is a very painstaking task.
Once connected
Once you understand how to get everything working on the player, things get easier. Let’s go back to the two ports, the Data and Media. First I connected to the data port, the USB 2.0. It worked great the first day. Shortly afterwards, it became very picky. I could get the device to charge, but making the connection to the computer was tricky. If I disabled USB charging, or set the USB connection to Hub, instead of computer, it worked, but didn’t charge.
Once I did get it connected, it showed up like a normal hard drive. I used Windows Explorer and dragged and dropped some files; they transferred quickly without any problem. Next I connected the media port. This was found immediately by Windows Media Player. Media Player’s sync works in the same way as iTunes with an iPod. It's a very nice feature; just hook it up and it will sync your songs and playlists. The H320 can also be accessed by using Windows Explorer. This time instead of being seen as a hard drive, it is seen as a portable media player. It provides the same basic function, but it is located in a different area, with a different icon.
Next, I fired up Napster to see how it works. The H320 is part of Microsoft’s PlayforSure. This is basically a pairing of a media player and a music service. Before I got this player I checked to make sure that the H320 and Napster were compatible. Sure enough, they were. So I opened Napster, and went to the portable device. It came up, telling me to check my connection. I did; then I tried the data and media, and got the same message. I clicked the link they provided for more help. From there, I went to the iRiver site, but discovered nothing new. So I went back to Windows Media Player, put the new Napster songs on there, and proceeded to transfer the songs to my H320 without a hitch.
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