I swear I’ve set the clock right several times to no avail. The on/off switch only works when it feels like it. Locking the keys mean the screen displays ‘hold’ rather than something logical like ‘keys locked’ (why?) and the radio, while of good sound quality, has audible ticks every second or so while listening (unless the signal is absolutely perfect) and tuning involves putting up with scratchy squeaks with each change of frequency. And don’t mention the back to basics type face.

But, I’m using it and becoming rather fond of it. Hit or miss? Well, atm it’s at the wicket but looking out of form, it’s innings depends on the bowling I guess.

Navigating between albums is a convoluted affair (hinging on an orderly use of folders), the controls are unresponsive (anything that spends a second flashing “initializing” before playback doesn’t bode well) and as mentioned above, getting songs to play in any proper order seems to take some kind of tagging beyond my ken. Oh, and stepping out of the audio play mode even to browse the other modes (to, say, look at photos or read an ebook) halts play.

And I’m gutted. I wanted to love this thing, I really did. And in many ways I do. It does have the feel of a good, solid earthy piece of technology. The torch is great, there’s a nice little speaker on the front, and there’s a lovely tingle when you see your mobile recharge bar come alight as you wind the crank (and not due to poor electrical insulation), but it’s not quite there.

My advice: wait a bit. The idea is solid, and it shines with all manner of hardware innovation. Now they just have to get the software on the same page.

And speaking of hi-low-tech, anybody had a go with one of the XO laptops? I love the “buy-one-get-one” program they are running, but it’s not available in the UK at the moment. It strikes me as a great tool for writing on the go!

Alice – I’m hoping that it was just yours that was a bit quirky … I’ve just ordered one. That said, it’s mostly Audio Books that I’ll be using it for, and so I won’t generally want to skip sections (though I will want to be able to carry on from where I got to; would be a pain to hear chapter 1 every time.)
The comment that it didn’t play things in the right order could be a pain though.

I’ve so far found the whole thing to be poorly designed and frustrating to operate. I have tiny fingers, yet each time I try to turn up the volume the song skips instead (painfully slowly too: fade-out, long pause……). Can’t skip through more than one song at a time either, each file has to load before it can be skipped. I tried listening to a whole album and it played back in the wrong order despite my carefully numbered file names. I set it to random and frequently heard the same song play consecutively. I’m almost craving the functionality of my old (battery powered!) flashdrive/mp3 player.