The MusePod does not require any drivers to operate. As soon as you connect it to a USB port on your PC it’s instantly recognized as a storage unit. Just start dragging audio, text and image files. The installation CD-ROM comes only with a User Guide in PDF format (what a waste of media). There’s another CD with the conversion software that you have to install to view video files on the device – simply transferring .AVI or .MPEG files won’t work. And that’s our main beef with the product.

The InterVideo conversion software will transform any .AVI or .MPEG to a.3GP file (a simplified version of MPEG-4 for use on 3G mobile phones). The tool compressed a 174 MB video file into a 1.7 MB file in a couple of minutes – but instead of a 45-min video we got instead a 2-min clip. What is the use of a viewing device that won’t let you watch whole videos while there are competitors that do? Another problem: there’s no way to advance or retrocede the file while playing.

Aside from the sub par video viewing, the MusePod features standard digital music listening and a useful voice recording feature in MP3 files. The FM function, however, is prone to bad reception through the supported 87-108 band.

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Figure 4: Video conversion tool.