Memorex MPD8610-07 Personal CD/MP3 Player with Backlit LCD Screen (Ice Purple)
By: Memorex Average Rating: 3.5 Total Reviews: 2
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 On: 2006-11-20
I bought this MP3/CD player when my old one took a tumble down a flight of stairs and unfortunately did not survive. I wanted to buy the same model but they didnt have one that was new or in full functioning condition so I had to go with a different brand. This one attracted me right away mostly because its color was ice purple. (Purple is my favorite color, by the way. I also bought because it had a resume function (well, at least it said it did)). I eventually lived to regret my purchase.
There are four positive points to this product: It has excellent sound quality with a great little equalizer, it displays the song title, the battery life is fairly long and the skip protection is very good--I didnt have a problem of it skipping on me, though sometimes I wish it did (Ill explain below). Those are the only reasons why Im giving it 2 stars instead of one.
Here are the cons and believe me, there are many: The most annoying thing and the reason why I chucked the CD player in the garbage (I didnt want anyone to go through what I did) is that this particular CD player will not play any CDs that are not in flawless condition. The smallest speck of dust or the tiniest of scratches will make the CD unreadable to this CD player. Thats right--it will NOT play the CD--period. I take very good care of my CDs, but if you take them out of the jewel case once in a while, they are going to have some wear and tear, however slight. Most CD players will still play these defective CDs, usually without any skipping, and even if there is some skipping, most of the CD is still listenable. Not with this CD player. And what makes this even more irritiating is that it doesnt bother to tell you this after about five seconds like other CD players do--it scans the CD for about two minutes as if its thinking about what it should tell me that would be least likely to make me enraged, then it says Disc Error. I first thought that maybe a had a few bad CDs but after about the fourteenth Disc Error I realized I only had one bad CD player.
Oh, thats not all, there are many other annoying, nonfunctional features on this device also. For one, the other main reason I bought this particular CD player, was because it had a resume function. Obviously Memorex has a completely different definition of resume than I do. With this CD player, theres an idle function where it stays on for a few minutes after you press stop. If you want to shut it off, you have to press the stop button twice. This CD players definition of resume is when the player is in idle mode, you can press the resume button and it will return to the last song you listened to. That is not my definition of resume AT ALL. I assumed when I bought this thing that it would go back to the last song I played after I shut it off. Thats what my last CD player considered to be resume anyway, and it worked great for me. Well, this one doesnt do that. If you shut it off for real it wont remember diddly squat. I found this wannabe resume more annoying than having no resume at all! Since I listen to my CDs about once a day in long sessions without stopping the player, I really have no use for the resume-after-five minutes function.
One of the things that was unique to this player is that it has lettered keypads that enable you to search out a particular title. I thought that was great until I actually tried to use that feature one day. That was an exercise in futility. I typed in three letters...it came up with nothing. I typed in four letters...ABBA...it still came up with nothing despite of the fact that I had about twenty ABBA songs on the CD. I typed in a song title..."Dancing Queen". According to this CD player, there was no song called "Dancing Queen" on the CD, even though I knew for a fact there was. I thought I was doing something wrong, but I looked at the instructions and I was doing it exactly like they said. So I had a CD player that looks more like a circular telephone it had so many keys and about ninety percent of them didnt work. So, if youre interested in the search function, get uninterested fast, because it doesnt work at all.
Another big disappointment was the color. The CD player looked purple in the picture, but when I received it was more like a washed out pinkish hue rather than purple. So, not only are the folks who designed this CD player in an alternate space/time continuum, theyre almost completely colorblind too.
Yet another very irritating feature is that this CD player took forever to read MP3 CDs. It was like being with one of those people you dont particularly like who also can never get to the point of their conversation--they just keep rattling on and on about their mothers underwear while you sit there and stew. First, the CD player has to say Welcome, then it has to scan the disc to see what kind of CD it is, then you have to press the play button again to actually play the CD, then it has to figure out what that songs title is and display it on the screen. This whole process must have taken at least thirty seconds at the very least. This doesnt seem long in theory but in the real world where you want to actually do something with your life besides get the CD player to work, it gets very frustrating very quickly. And, oh yeah, you have to press the stop button twice on this bugger to get it shut off and this thing has to think to say good-bye to you before it shuts down. I dont know about you, but I have no plans to develop a intimate relationship with my CD player anytime soon--no matter how cool and sleek it looks. All I want for it to do is turn on, play the stupid CD, do the tricks the company claims it can do, then shut down after Im done with it. All the social nicieties this CD player displayed really started to grate on me after a while. I felt like I was on a bad episode of Seinfeld every time I used this thing.
Another small but very aggravating feature is that the cover that houses the batteries is impossible to get off. It usually took me several minutes and a butter knife to get the job done. Thats not very practical when you work out and need to change the batteries in a pinch. You get very funny looks from people when they see you carrying a butter knife around while jogging. I dont know about you, but I find this worse than having the cover come open and the batteries fall out constantly. At least I can fix that problem with some tape.
All in all, I would recommend that you stay away from this CD player. I guarantee you will come to hate it very quickly. If you want your music fast and like a multi-functional CD player where the multi-functions actually work, Id say you should look somewhere else.
by: Anonymous On: 2003-11-02
Before you get another CD player, you better get your hands on this. This CD player doent just play CDs, it also plays MP3s 4 u. Its awesome.
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