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Installation and Performance:::...
Installation is as simple as loading
the drivers from the supplied installation CD.
This also installs a handy utility for
updating your firmware as and when new versions become
available.
Firmware Update Panel
Firmware Details Panel
Performance:::...
For some reason SiSoft Sandra's new
flash drive benchmarking module refused to complete
without crashing so I wasn't able to get any definitive
data on its transfer performance. It should be remembered
that the Mega Stick is a USB1.1 device and not USB2.0
and though I couldn't get any figures it seemed to
be about right based on the time it took to move my
MP3s back and forth.
Sandra was however happy to throw up
a little info on the Mega Stick including the fact
that 7 of your total 128MB are lost to formatting.
Subjective performance:::...
The Radio:
It doesn't say anywhere that I could
see but I'm assuming the headphone cable also doubles
as the antenna. Reception was good if unspecacular
and the sound was crystal clear but light on bass.
The tuning runs from 87.5 to 108MHz on the FM band
only and there are ten memory presets available. Annoyingly
there's no stereo indicator on the display and no
way to switch to mono for weak channels. Generally
though it works well and it's a great addition to
the feture set.
The MP3 Player
:
Probably the Mega Sticks headline feature
is its ability to operate as an MP3 player, and not
a bad one at that. Okay, it can't compete with the
dedicated MP3 players on the market but the main functions
are in place and the price positions it as one of
the best value players on the market (take
a look for yourself).
I tried MP3s encoded at various sample
rates and all played without a problem and though
the sound was again very clear and precise it was
still lacking a little at the low end. Unfortunately
this appears to be due to the headphones rather than
the player which is unfortunate being as they're part
of the lanyard. I'd certainly urge MSI to take another
look at the type of earbuds they've opted to use,
for something that's such an integral part of the
product they'd benefit from being better than they
are. That's not to say they're awful because they're
not, they just can't do justice to the quality of
sound they're receiving.
The Voice Recorder:::...
When you're not listening to your...ahem....
perfectly legal collection of non copyrighted MP3s
you can always impress the boss by strutting around
the office leaving voice memos to yourself. The Mega
Stick allows up to 8 hours of either voice recording
or recording directly from the integral FM radio and
comes with variable recording rates of 8000Hz, 11025Hz,
16000Hz, 22050Hz, 32000Hz, 44100Hz and 48000Hz.
The Flash Drive:::...
Flash drives or, as they're sometimes
known, solid state hard drives are the ultimate in
quick and convenient file transfer and I've made no
secret of my belief that everybosy should own at least
one. For transporting your music, your photod, your
office, college or school work, your artistic images
of scantily clad ladies, your presentations, your
email from the president, the uses are limitless,
and at 128MB the Mega Stick is a genuinely useful
size. Just to clarify, the memory is shared so if
you have 64MB of MP3s on your Mega Stick then you
have the remaining 64MB available for other files.
??????:::...
To fit MSI's "5-in-1" billing
for the Mega Stick we need one more function, and
useful though it is I think MSI marketing were reaching
a bit with this one. The A-B repeat function allows
for small sections of your audio source to be repeated
at will and this, say MSI, is a valuable language
learning aid. Now I'm not arguing with that fact,
I've no doubt it is, but whether it's worthy of its
status as the fifth big feature is kind of debatable.
Still, it's good to have.
The Other Features:::...
It doesn't just stop at the basics features,
the Mega Stick offers several additional tweaks that
let you tailor things to your liking. On the sound
front there's a five preset equalizer that offers
Normal, Rock, Jazz, Classical and Pop sound cuves.
There's also a variable repeat mode offering Normal,
Repeat One, Repeat All, Shuffle and Shufle Rep settings.
Alongside these you can set the LCD
contrast, set the auto power down feature to 1, 2,
5, 10 minutes or disable. You can set the backlight
for 2, 5, 10 or 30 seconds as I mentioned on the previous
page. You can also set the recording sample rate,
delete individual voice or music files, switch between
English or Japanese menus and verify the amount of
free space remaining.
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