edtang wrote:
I think you are mistaken Chris. It's pretty simple to open up a current iPod case, many people do it to change out the battery. I just saw a demonstration on The Screen Savers on TechTV a few days go.
I'm using a 20gb series one, and it has the glass/plastic front and the chrome back, the only place it joins in between these 2 elements, there are no screws/no clips/ no nothing!
search under battery replacement for the IPOD... there was ( is ) a very detailed
description of it with pics out on the web... saw it about 6 months ago...
chris78cpr wrote:
I'm using a 20gb series one, and it has the glass/plastic front and the chrome back, the only place it joins in between these 2 elements, there are no screws/no clips/ no nothing!
Chris
Yup, you can pry apart a corner with a small flathead, and the rest just pops off. I saw a demo on TV, it looked super easy.
Yeah dreams, I figured this would happen as much. I actually looked at one of those auctions and felt like sending an email to the seller congratulating him for his "keen business sense". But you would have to be crazy to turn down the possibility of earning $200 a pop with the 4GB microdrives, I mean it's what came to my mind when I saw them. The only thing now is who is going to pay for these drives knowing full well that they came from an Ipod mini/MuVo. Unfortunately I don't think sellers will put the real picture of the different looking drives from the mp3 players, they will instead use the company photo for the $499 one. Such is the nature of the beast...
The real question at hand now is what is Hitachi's next move. They can either discontinue the usage of the microdrive in the mp3 players, create some sort of tamper-proof device that will ruin the drive if it is removed, or they can lower the price of the retail microdrive. It is an interesting situation, in my opinion, as it is obviously something they did not expect, however they are going to have to deal with the consequences now. I should hope that they lower the price of the retail version, because this little shortcut is showing us exactly how much we are being overcharged . IMHO prestige pricing is not the way to attract a clientel. One could take into account the capabilities of the mp3 player as a value of say, $50. This leaves the drive as the major component, at around $200. Versus $499. This means that Hitachi could retail the drive for less than Lexar's (1/4 as large) 1GB 40x WA card. I am sure that Hitachi would be able to devastate Lexar with such a lower price by the sheer volume of sales and therefore compensate for the price drop.
Makes you wonder if Creative Labs or Apple really care if you buy there players just to part them out. If more people who NEED/WANT a 4Gb Microdrive start buying mp3 players they would have to be happy about the "popularity" of their player but it might not really effect sales of the players because cameras that support microdrives for the average consumer isn't that high and people who would spend $299 for an MP3 player only to take the drive out of it would be real small percentage. Although Hitachi might have a problem with it. I just ordered a MuVo 4Gb at CES for $199.
Please forgive my ignorance but what is CES? I can’t find the 4GB Muvo for sale anywhere. The best I could find was at the creative labs site where they show a price of $299 but are out of stock.
Creative Labes was selling a lot of products at their booth. Yeah so far I have only found it available for $299 on their website. But look for it to possibly drop in price as the iPod Mini sells for $249 and they care competting products and the iPod Mini is thinner than the MuVo 4gb.
oeyvind wrote:
Not sure about that John... might work but first you need to figure out how to xfer the firmware to the new storage...
Someone in other forums stated that the mp3 player does not support CF card. However no one can confirm the case yet.
rsoemarsono wrote:
I read in other forums somewhere that the portable MP3 player Nomad MuVo2 4GB uses a Hitachi Microdrive for its storage.
So I plunked down $299.99 to buy the MuVo (instead of $499.99 for the 4GB MD), got it today, did an emergency surgery, and extracted the microdrive from the MP3 player. Then I put it in my 10D, formatted the card, and happily saw the frame counter went up to 647 for RAW images!!!!! Not bad at all.
And now, I have this brand new, ultra portable MP3 player split open without any storage and I started thinking, "Will a 1GB Microdrive work for a replacement?"
So I installed a 1GB MD, powered the MuVo, and it gave me an error message. After digging through nomadworld.com website, I downloaded the firmware update and got the MuVo to work.
So, I got a 4GB Microdrive AND an MP3 player for $299.99 (plus shipping). Now I can take tons of photos while listening to hours of music. Life is good!
Edited by rsoemarsono on Jan 14, 2004 at 06:18 AM GMT...Show more →
I just saw on eBay a posting that claims that the MuVo2 uses proprietary pin outs that are not guaranteed to meet the CF standards. The guy is of course trying to discourage people from buying the units removed from MP3 players and buy his instead. The link to his listing is http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2981713410&category=50519 . He also claims that using in other devices you may have read write trouble. Have any of you adventurous guys that are using these had any trouble, or is this guy just blowing smoke? Thanks.
That guy on ebay is a total crock. If you look carefully, the very unit that he is selling IS a drive pulled out of a mp3 player. The OEM unit has a black and white label (which is what he has). Whereas the RETAIL unit has a color label. I know because I have handled these. I am selling the OEM drives on ebay that are actually pulled from the muvo2. They work perfectly fine as a CF card. That ebay guy is simply formulating lies to edge out the competition.
quick shameless plug - if you need a 4gb hitachi microdrive, you can look for me on ebay as 4sevens. I have a few listed now and will continue to list them with bids starting at 0.01. I guarantee my drives for 30 days and after that it's hitachi's 1 year warranty.
. IMHO prestige pricing is not the way to attract a clientel. One could take into account the capabilities of the mp3 player as a value of say, $50. This leaves the drive as the major component, at around $200. Versus $499. This means that Hitachi could retail the drive for less than Lexar's (1/4 as large) 1GB 40x WA card. I am sure that Hitachi would be able to devastate Lexar with such a lower price by the sheer volume of sales and therefore compensate for the price drop.
