Lexar LDP-200 Digital Music Player and SD Card Reader for Linux, Mac, and Windows- Page 3

MozillaQuest the on-line computer magazine

7 November, 2005

Office and Productivity Software

SCO IP, SCO v Linux, & Caldera v IBM

Lexar LDP-200 Digital Music Player and SD Card Reader for Linux, Mac, and Windows

Good Sound, Easy Listening, and Good Value

Lexar's LDP-200 Digital Music Player is a nice product. We like it. And considering it doubles as a cross-platform SD card reader too, it is a good value . . . If you are looking for a digital music player for yourself or for a gift, consider the Lexar LDP-200 Digital Music Player.

Mike Angelo -- 7 November 2005 (C) -- Page 3

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Article Index

Pogo Altura64 Workstation:

The Pogo Altura64 workstation is an excellent PC. It uses the AMD Athlon64 processor, a 64-bit CPU. Our Altura64 has an AMD Athlon64 3000+ microprocessor, ASUS K8V SE Deluxe motherboard, 512-MB RAM, Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 video adapter, 120-GB Western Digital serial ATA (SATA) hard drive, Teac CD-RW/DVD drive, and more.

If you are looking for a top quality computer for yourself, or for a Christmas or holiday gift, the Pogo Altura64 is an excellent choice. A slightly newer version of the Altura64 is the Altura939 Workstation.

About the Author

Mike Angelo has written hundreds of published newspaper and magazine computer and technology articles. He has more than 40 years experience using solid-state, digital computers.

Mike has written lots of computer programs in assembly, BASIC, FORTRAN, machine, and several other languages -- on a variety of mainframe and desktop machines. He has designed and built some special purpose computers, and does PC upgrading and building. Mike also creates, designs, and maintains Web sites.

In 1993, Mike Angelo started writing a print newspaper computer column, About Computers. He has written articles for top-tier magazines including Byte, Computer Buyer's Guide & Handbook, DOS World, I-Way, Laptop Buyer's Guide & Handbook, Linux Journal, Maximize, MozillaQuest Magazine, PC Novice, and PC Today.

Despite Mike Angelo's extensive computer experience he has a real life and uses computers as tools. Therefore, he approaches his computer writing from the user's interest and point of view.

Note: MozillaQuest Magazine Technical Editor, Aric Campling contributed to this article.

Article Index

Books

Here are some books that deal specifically with digital music hardware and software or with computer systems and computer hardware buying, fixing, and upgrading issues.

Most of the Linux books listed below these books also have chapters or sections of chapters that deal with digital music plus computer hardware buying, fixing, and upgrading too. The Linux books also will help to show you why GNU-Linux is a better operating system than M.S. Windows. And they describe and help you to use much of the free software that comes with most Linux distributions.

Most of the book links lead you to Web pages about the books that also there have links to things such as Tables of Contents and sample chapters. The sample chapters are free and well worth reading.

Digital music, audio, and video books

Building a Digital Home Entertainment Network: Multimedia in Every Room Terry Ulick, Que, ISBN: 0789733188. $25

Easy Digital Music, Tom Bunzel, Que, ISBN: 0789732459. $20

Family Computer Fun: Digital Ideas Using Your Photos, Movies, and Music, Ralph Bond, Que, ISBN: 0789733781. $25

Great Age Guide to Gadgets & Gizmos, Sandy Berger, Que, ISBN: 0789734419. $20

MacAddict Guide to Living the iLife, Shelly Brisbin and Mark Rosenthal, Ques, ISBN: 0789731916. $30

MP3 Underground, Ron White, Que, ISBN: 0789723018. $25

Sams Teach Yourself Digital Video and DVD Authoring All in One, Jeff Sengstack, Sams, ISBN: 0672326892. $35

Sams Teach Yourself DVD Authoring in 24 Hours, Jeff Sengstack, Sams, ISBN: 0672325136. $30

The definitive computer hardware book:

Upgrading and Repairing PCs, 16th Edition, Scott Mueller, Que, ISBN: 0789731738. $60

Computer systems and computer hardware buying, fixing, and upgrading books:

Absolute Beginner's Guide to Upgrading and Fixing Your PC, By Michael Miller, Que, ISBN: 0789730456. $19.

How Computers Work, 7th Edition, By Ron White, Timothy Downs, Que, ISBN: 0789730332. $30.

Maximum PC Guide to Extreme PC Mods, By Paul Capello, Jon Phillips, Que, ISBN: 0789731924. $30.

Maximum PC Guide to Building a Dream PC, By Will Smith. Que, ISBN: 0789731932. $30.

Maximum PC Ultimate Performance Guide, Maximum PC, Que, ISBN: 078973317X. $30.

Some Interesting Linux Books

Expanding Choice: Moving to Linux and Open Source with Novell Open Enterprise Server, Jason Williams/Peter Clegg/Emmett Dulaney, Novell Press, ISBN: 0-672-32722-8. $30

Fedora 4 Linux All in One, By Aron Hsiao, Sams, ISBN: 0672327074. $40.

Fedora 4 Unleashed, By Paul Hudson, Andrew Hudson, Bill Ball, Hoyt Duff, Sams, ISBN: 0672327929. $50.

Linux Bible, 2005 Edition, Christopher Negus, Wiley, ISBN: 0-7645-7949-5. $40

Linux Desktop Garage, By Susan Matteson, Pearson Prentice Hall, ISBN: 0-13-149419-8. $30

Linux Desktop Hacks - Tips & Tools for Customizing and Optimizing your OS, By Nicholas Petreley, Jono Bacon, O'Reilly, ISBN: 0-596-00911-9. $50

Linux Quick Fix Notebook, By Peter Harrison, Pearson Prentice Hall, ISBN: 0131861506. $40

Linux Troubleshooting Bible, Christopher Negus, Thomas Weeks, Wiley, ISBN: 0-7645-6997-X. $30

Mandrakelinux Discovery 10.1 - Your First Linux Desktop, By Mandrakesoft, Mandrakesoft, ISBN: 2-84798-085-7. $64

Mandrakelinux PowerPack 10.1 - The Full Power of Linux Desktop, By Mandrakesoft, Mandrakesoft, ISBN: 2-84798-086-5. $87

Official Fedora Companion, Nick Petreley, Wiley, ISBN: 0-7645-5836-6. $20

Optimizing Linux Performance: A Hands-on Guide to Linux Performance Tools, By Phillip Ezolt, Pearson Prentice Hall, ISBN: 0131486829. $50

Point & Click Linux!, By Robin Miller, Pearson Prentice Hall, ISBN: 0131488724. $30

Testing Procedures

To test the LDP-200, we connected it via the included USB cable to our Pogo Linux Altura64 Workstation test PC. The Pogo Linux Altura64 Workstation test box is a multi-boot box. The Lexar Digital Music Player tests were conducted with the Pogo Altura64 booted into Mandriva LE 2005 Linux.

The KDE Konqueror File Manager was used to download three and one-half Al Hirt albums, a Benny Goodman album, a Gerry Mulligan album, a Harry James album and a Peter Nero album to the LDP-200. These great jazz albums previously had been digitally recorded and backed up as MP3 files -- 241-MB altogether. Audacity was used to digitally record the LP albums and save them as MP3 files.

Putting these seven and one-half albums on a single 256-MB SD card created a nice jazz album with music from great clarinet, piano, sax, and trumpet artists -- AL Hirt, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan, Harry James, and Peter Nero. That's 4-playing-hours, without repeating, of red, hot, and smooth Al Hirt trumpet jazz -- plus Harry James on the trumpet, Gerry Mulligan on the sax, Benny Goodman on the clarinet, and Peter Nero on the piano.

After the downloading was completed, the XMMS music player on the Pogo Altura64 test machine was used to play the music files stored on the LDP-200. That worked great.

The LDP-200 stand-alone tests were conducted using earbud headphones and also by directly connecting the Lexar Digital Music Player to some el-cheapo, generic, self-powered PC speakers. These tests worked great too.

We did not use any audio test equipment to check out frequency responses of the Lexar Digital Music Player. However, to the human ear the music does sound good and seems to have a full range and depth of sound.

Officially, Lexar lists its LDP-200 Digital Music Players for use with the Microsoft Windows Me/2000/XP and the Apple Mac OS 9.0 and above operating systems (OSs). However, in our tests the Lexar, LDP-200, 256-MB, Digital Music Player connected to the above-described Pogo Altura64 running Mandriva LE 2005 Linux worked well.

The Lexar Digital Music Player Web page states in part: "Windows 98 drivers are available online at www.lexar.com/support". However, we were not able to find any Windows 98 SE drivers for the LDP-200 by following that link on the Lexar Web site.

Thus we did not test the LDP-200 on MS Windows 98. Nor did we actually test the LDP-200 with any Windows-based PC or the Mac OS. We prefer the Linux OS to Microsoft Windows.

Wrap-Up

Lexar's LDP-200 Digital Music Player is a nice product. We like it. And considering it doubles as a cross-platform SD card reader too, it is a good value.

The LDP-200 does what Lexar says it will do and it does it well. The ability to create custom super-albums provided by the removable SD memory card feature is handy and somewhat unique among digital music players.

If you are looking for a digital music player for yourself or for a gift, consider the Lexar LDP-200 Digital Music Player.