Digital Trends

I had two annoyances during setup: the battery set step and the multi-cable AC charger. When you charge the player for the first time you have to slide a microscopic battery switch at the bottom of the unit to the “On” position. It’s not like Toshiba doesn’t warn you with a big sticker on the back of the player, but in my haste to get up and running fast, I just started charging the unit (my bad). After a day when it hadn’t charged at all, that’s when I discovered my oversight.

My other complaint is about the charging apparatus. Between chargers for my Treo, digital cameras, iPod, Bluetooth headset, laptop PC, and noise-cancellation headphones, I have way too many cables and chargers hooked up to my outlet strip already. When a charger requires its own adapter cable, as the Gigabeat’s does, that nearly puts me over the edge. The extra adapter cable is the kind of thing that’s first to get lost when you’re scrambling to pack up in the hotel at the end of a business trip. (We’ll see if it makes it back from Denver this week.)

I laughed when I followed the instructions for setting up Gigabeat S remembering all the difficulties I had with the first Gigabeat. The two are night and day. The S comes with a setup disc that has Windows Media 10 and Adobe software for the manual. But I already had Adobe Acrobat and Windows Media 11 (that works too) so I simply connected Gigabeat to the PC using the supplied USB cable, and my computer and Gigabeat hit it off like old friends. Each recognized the other, Gigabeat synched with my Windows Media Library, including playlists and album art, and all my music dumped to the portable. Sweet.

I used Windows Media Player for transferring pictures, too, but this time I cherry picked photos rather than shooting my entire imaging library to the device. That worked without a hitch, also, and the photos lined up properly in the Pictures section.

I decided to try Amazon’s new Unbox video download service as my video source for the Gigabeat. There were a few hitches in trying to load the Unbox software—and not a lot of compelling content on the TV side--but that had nothing to do with Gigabeat. Once the Unbox problems were sorted out, it was easy to drag and drop my downloaded videos to the Gigabeat, which Unbox recognized as readily as Windows Media Player did.  

The Windows interface is wonderfully simple, categorizing content according to Music, Pictures, Videos and Radio. Within each group you can choose how you want to access content. In music, you can choose from album, artist, genre and track. Within pictures, you select from date the photo was taken or by album, and videos are organized by source, name or date. You can choose to shuffle and repeat songs and change EQ settings if you’re inclined.

It’s impossible to get lost in menus in this platform, and when you want to get to the main screen, it’s a quick snap on the Windows icon. My favorite part? Being able to shuffle a playlist on the device without having to sync with the PC.

 

 
Image Courtesy of Microsoft