Ok as any fule knowz, the biggest podcaster’s friend is (and was) the iRiver iFP series. Why?
Well they were cheap, portable, you can record on them via external microphones and do the sort of outside broadcasting/interviews you’ve heard here on Radio Clash and the likes of Bicyclemark, amongst many others.
Problem is that apart from the 790 (which is only 256Mb) the rest of the range has been discontinued…but you can still get refurbished models cheaply. I’ve just bought an iFP 895 512Mb as a replacement for iVer – the iFP890 256Mb I dropped in Canada. It’s arrived, looks good as new and all tests so far seem to indicate it’s working alright.
I only paid £39.99 from Electrobytes, and it arrived within 2 days so I think they are kosher. I’m not being paid by them, but spent ages looking through dead links. I too initially wanted to get a new not refurbished player – for those of you that still do, check out iRiver’s site where they will sell you the iFP 790 256Mb for 30 Euros + shipping (dunno if this is Europe only, looking at the US site it seems so) which came out at around the same as the refurbished one (and I wasn’t sure if custom duty was included?).
And anyway I blog so much here and on my LJ about bad service, it’s nice to talk about good service – like where I bought Charles II the video iPod from, the unlikely place of FonePlanet – but they were extremely quick, got it within 1 day of sorting out the payment, like this one was. I’m so used to shit service online, or being defrauded/abused that it literally has been a shock to find a few extremely good places. Restored my much battered faith in ecommerce.
So maybe some of you who need a replacement will find this info useful. Certainly I think the iFP’s are soon to be totally consigned to the second hand market – and the new iRivers don’t have the pre-amp or external mic facilites (I have a T30, little iVer, and it’s a nice little player but it’s recording features are close to useless). Personally though I’d not touch iRiver’s HD players after my bad experience with Gerald.
I was and am a little still nervous of buying a refurb model (but it is a Flash memory MP3 player/recorder, not like a HD player with moving parts inside) but everything seems OK so far.
So welcome Long John iVer (aka Big or Large iVer), who’ll probably be what I’m recording shows on from now on.
