Hotboxx , I will beat you to this one.
I bought the exact one pictured in black (stay away from the black ones , haha ! ) back on Dec. 1st. on E-Bay from a seller who only had 89 feedbacks (98% positive). And I have bought many items on E-Bay over the years , and got some great deals , and have yet* to be burned. I normally don't deal with someone with such low feedback. But , I saw some good feedback from people who had bought the similar iSlim players from the same seller , so I went ahead and bought one.
I did not get the item until Dec. 20th and that was only after I filed a dispute with PayPal. It seems the user was listed and "no longer a registered user on E-Bay" shortly after I had bought it. After filing the PayPal dispute , I got a message the next day saying the item will go out shortly , and I got it within a few days.
I turned it on and plugged it into my home stereo and I was impressed with the sound quality of the pre-loaded song (Hotel California).
I went ahead and loaded some folder with songs on it , and it worked fine and sounded good , both on my home and truck stereos.
I then went back and tried to load it up with folders to it's "4" gig capacity" . That's when the problems started.
I couldn't get it to cursor through the folders corectly , or play the folders I wanted (although it did still play the folders IT wanted to).
I then went back and tried to delete some of the folders because when I went on "my computer" with the iSlim hooked up , it was showing I had something like 18 gigs on there !!!
I tried deleteing some folders , which it let me do , but would not let me delete other folders. Then I found one folder (that I had named for a certain band) and it contained folders for all of the other (band) folders I had loaded unto it.
It would not let me delete this , nor would it "power up" when I went to turn it on (only a blank screen).
I could still see the music folder I put on it (if I hooked it up to my PC) , but the player was acting as if it were dead , with a blank screen. (I couldn't turn it on by the buttons on the player).
I then found this site and tried reformatting to both Fat and Fat 32 (on my computer). I also tried reformatting with the "disk manager tool" that came with the CD that came with it , both in Fat and Fat32. After following the instructions on here for reformatting and finding it's true capacity , that is when I found it's TRUE capacity to be 1.89 gigs.
It did reformat , but when I tried to reload the software with the "MP3 player upgrade tool" , it would TRY to upgrade , and it even would say "upgrade complete" , and the player would then switch itself off for about 15 seconds and then back on again (all while hooked up to the USB cable to the PC). I was hoping that this reloaded the software. No luck.........
According to the instructions , when you run the "MP3 player upgrade tool" it is supposed to recognize if your software is on the iSlim and either repair it in a "repair mode" or upgrade it in the "upgrade mode".
It seems like that it thinks the software is still on there , even though I reformatted several times , and tried to reload the software from the "upgrade tool" that came on the disc that came with it. It should have (according to the instructions) went into a "repair mode" rather than the "upgrade mode".
Since reformatting , I can reload music files and folders on there , and can even play them over my home stereo with good results (when accessed through the USB cable through my PC).
I just can't get the software to reload so I can get the iSlim to play by itself.
The screen was blank , but I could load a music folder onto it , and see it and access it through the USB cable on my PC. . That was yesterday. Today , I can't even get a blank screen out of it , nor can I get the PC to recognoize the drive. Screen is just dead now.
The software version is 9.1.52
I guess it has bit the dust , with no hope of repair ?
I guess my only course of action will be to CONTINUE my dispute with PayPal , which I have already done , asking the seller for a refund. That was a few days ago and I got no response as of yet (I don't really expect to get one either).
Do you think there is ANY chance of getting my mony back through PayPal ??
Sorry for the rambling , but my point is : STAY AWAY FROM THESE !!!!!!!!!!!!!
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