Failed iPod killers mean bargains
p2pnet.net feature:- Last holiday season MP3 Newswire said in its semi-annual digital portable roundup “We have run the iPod Killers for Christmas/Summer series since 2004. In that time we reported on 149 portable players and NOT one iPod killer from the bunch”. As we were finishing up our Summer 2007 edition of the series it occurred to us – what happens to all the unsold stock after these players fail? Do they get crushed in a big…crushing thing and the manufacturer starts from scratch again?
That’s when it dawned on us that all of these players were most likely sold for pennies on the dollar to overstock vendors who then pawn them off cheap to the public, all New in Box (NIB) items, albeit a couple of years old. Now add to this all the portables given as gifts and never opened and that open bazaar we know as eBay can hold some hidden gems. That means there are some old players that nonetheless may offer excellent value even when compared against today’s units and prices. So we spent a couple of weeks checking out eBay to get some idea of what is out there.
The trick is to find players that are well under their original price, but are not yet obsolete. For example, Creative just announced the 1GB Zen Stone for $39, so it makes no sense to buy a 512 MB Sony Walkman Bean, which was in our Christmas 2005 guide, for $59. That’s the price we saw Overstock.com peddling it.
The other trick is to identify reasonably good players. Some of these units died a quick death for good reasons. Despite heavy advertising, including a million dollar Super Bowl ad, the Olympus MR500i from our Christmas 2004 guide garnered poor reviews and disappeared quickly.
Value is a subjective measure and for some an old player is just that, yesterday’s news. But the digital savvy know what features are most important to them and they will know right off if an older player at a steep discount makes a compelling option. A good way to gauge value for any user is to use a compass point, in other words a contemporary player that’s popular and well priced to measure older players against. In this case, we will use the iPod shuffle, which offers 1GB of memory and no display for $79.00. Apple’s player is particularly good for this, because there are users who find significant value in just the iPod name alone.
For those who have interest in this New Old Stock (NOS) market, below are some examples of old stock alternatives to the $80 shuffle that we think offer decent value. A couple of more notes, a few of the units we found on eBay were reconditioned units. The overstock vendors were upfront with this in their posts and, for the most part, these units have been fixed and retested so they should be fine. Still, factor that into to your value assessment when you make a decision, especially since some companies like Rio don’t exist anymore so there is no warranty. We noticed some overstock vendors are asking at or near the original list price for these old units. Just ignore them, they’ll catch on the hard way eventually.
Virgin Player VM-500 5GB (2004)
Released for the Christmas 2004 season, Virgin’s CEO Richard Branson has high hopes for this little player. Targeted against the iPod mini, the Virgin Player was a little smaller and lighter and used the same 5GB Hitachi Microdrive.
The following March the entire Virgin DAP line was discontinued due to very poor sales, despite the fact that the VM-500 garnered good reviews from the likes of CNet and PC Mag. On eBay several NIB units started at $39 – and closed with one or zero bids.
Toshiba Gigabeat F40 (2005)
This unit was part of Toshiba’s first generation Gigabeat line, which came in 10GB, 20GB, 40GB and 60GB capacities. Toshiba Gigabeat F40 offered 40GB of space, an in-line remote, a dock, photo capability and a brushed aluminum finish (champagne colored no less). The player drew high praise from the digerati who in 2005 drooled over the F40’s 2.2-inch QVGA color display, though they weren’t particularly happy with the unit’s transfer software.
The overstock/backstock people are asking around $125 for the player on eBay, but the bids were flocking to user-sold NIB players, which sold for between $80 and $90, a compelling price for a 40GB hard drive unit.
Rio Carbon 5GB (2004)
After SonicBlue was acquired by Denon & Marantz it looked like the maker of the Rio finally had a parent with deep enough pockets to help what was once the number one player in the US at least reach double digit sales against the iPod. Instead, D&M decided to eventually shutter the whole division and get out of the digital portable market all together. Biggest casualty was the Rio Carbon C, also known as the Rio Cubic, which promised to bring one of the best portables at that time to the Christmas 2005 season. The Carbon C was not to be, but the excellent (again, for the period) Rio Carbon is available.
New-in-box Rio Carbon’s pull quite a few bids on the eBay market, but the bids generally close for around $60. We are assuming D&M no longer honors the warranty (though we have not confirmed this), but for 3/4ths the cost of an iPod Shuffle it’s worth a look.
AlienWare CE-IV (2005)
Measuring 3.1 x 2 x 0.7 inches and weighing just 1.3 ounces, the AlienWare CE_IV was that computer makers attempt to follow in the footsteps of the Dell DJ. The unit offered an FM tuner, 3D sound and an SD/MMC slot for expansion. What was most interesting about the player is that it offered a matching speaker system as an option that also served to recharge the player.
Reviews on the CE-IV ranged from excellent to so-so, so do your research. Mostly it is here because one overstock shop on eBay is selling factory sealed 1GB CE-IVs in a package deal with the sound dock, and is getting between $50 and $80 for the set.
Dell DJ Series (2005)
An NIB 512MB Dell DJ Ditty went unsold at $14.99, probably because the eBay seller tried to hit the buyer for $12.50 to ship a player that weighs less than the paper that wraps the package. If you can pay actual shipping costs this player makes a nice stocking stuffer for under eighteen dollars total.
The hard drive-based Dell DJs aren’t badly priced either. There seem to be quite a few NIB DJ-20s (20GB) around with a starting bid of $49.99. Keep the final bid under the price of the iPod shuffle and you are doing pretty good.
Archos AV700 Mobile DVR (2005)
Archos is actually one of the more successful iPod competitors, it just serves a smaller niche of high-end users. The AV700 has a monster 7-inch 16:9 display, comes with a dock to time record your TV programs (who needs to BUY episodes of Lost?) and afterwards allows you to crop out the commercials within the player. So when we saw an NIB unit with 40GB going unnoticed on eBay for $180 it caught our attention. This is a huge player though, weighing in at over a pound, so it’s not for everyone. Some overstock vendors were asking prices over $400 for this model, which is silly as you can buy Archos’ new Wi-Fi 604 for that money.
Rich Menta – MP3NewsWire
If your Net access is blocked by goverment restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the endSurvey: How Did Copyright Infringement Become Equated with Robbery? (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php | | And use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site
Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
May 11th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
anyone have the softwaer for one of these?
I have one and the dl page fromtheir site has dissaperaed andI cannot find my cd