Review on Toshiba Gigabeat MEG-F40S Digital Audio Player - 40GB (Silver): Enhanced SEO-friendly Version by Larry Gaines

I switched all my music to digital a long time ago. However, since I was using Windows Media Player and had over 35GB of music, I didn't want to go the iPod/iTunes route and repeat everything. I looked at different players (iRiver, Creative, Toshiba) and finally settled on the Gigabeat F40 based on the screen, capacity, WMA support and price. it is a 5 star rating. At first I was probably in the 2-3 range. Most of my music was ripped in Windows Media Lossless format, which the player (and the Gigabeat Room software) doesn't support, meaning syncing through Gigabeat Room (GR) doesn't work. Consequently, I had to use Windows Media Player 10 to transfer the music as it was automatically converted to the correct format. The problem with this is a) time for the conversion process and b) that the USB2.0 connection only works via GR - WMP10 only connects via USB1.1. Bad design decision by Toshiba. The second problem with this method is that the album art is not transferred along with the songs, which means I had to go through 600+ albums and manually append the album art via GR. All in all it took about 7 days (including several nights before 5am) to get everything the way I wanted it. From that moment everything went smoothly. Sound quality is good (just watch out for some equalizer settings, they are sometimes distorted). Listening to the tape recorder in my car worked fine. I also hooked it up to my home stereo with an RCA adapter, which sounds really good too. A big problem (and it seems to be the case with every non-iPod player) is accessory dirt. After a long search on the internet I finally managed to find a case specifically for Gigabeat. Just be aware that you are very limited in what you can find, at least compared to the iPod. All in all I'm very pleased with my first foray into portable media players since my last floppy drive some 10 years ago. In hindsight I probably would have gone for the 60GB version to increase the bitrate (most of my music is 64kbps, I would have preferred any 96+). But I definitely recommend the Gigabeat range to anyone who prefers WM over iTunes.