Why The Tiger VuGo Rules (for 18 months)!
		Not much information is available on the internet about the personal media player called the Tiger Vugo, so I decided to do the public a service and buy one myself ($127.99) and post a review about it. WHAT IT IS:A video player. A music player. A photo viewer. A tapeless VCR. A solid-state disk drive, inexpensive WHAT IT ISN'T:a voice recorder, your only stereo system, a TV, a digital camera, quiet, a game system, expensive, a useable clock, a junky toy WHY IT RULES:It only costs $127.99 (bring $131 to Wal*Mart if you buy it with 5% sales tax)! You can hook up the A/V cable to even a broken VCR (so long as the TV tuner is working) and use the VuGo to record shows (not that there's anything good on analog antenna TV anyway). If you have old episodes of "Thanks" or other good shows in an NTSC composite format (what a VCR with stuff you taped or DVD player using burned DVDs puts out), you can record them into the player. You can expand the memory with SD cards (I had a 512 megabyte one lying around) and record lots of shows. If you don't have other video equipment, you can hook up the audio cables up to your stereo (or stick the headphone plug into your walkman's headphone jack) and record music in real time without wasting space for the nonexistant video. If you have a computer, you can install the program that comes with it and copy virtually all those photos you have on your computer and see them on a real 3 inch color flat screen. If you have an image editing program you can add borders to the image so that it's not squished/stretched-looking on the screen. The screen is quite viewable when the unit is turned on its side, so you don't have to waste screen real-estate to show images that are taller than they are wide. The photos, music, and video is stored in its own format. You can copy the songs you have on your computer (in MP3 and WAV format {rats! no .MOD!)} and play them on the VuGo. Too bad the sound is mono even with headphones connected, so if you were thinking of using this as your only MP3 player, you will be disappointed with the lack of stereo separation (converted MOD music loses most of its magic on the VuGo). The battery life is quite good, and if you're out in the field demonstrating videos and your battery dies, you can swap in a second set of 4 AAAs (if you don't have the second set with you, you can buy them even in hick country) with a screwdriver (too bad you need to carry a screwdriver to open the battery compartments...were old enough to have over a Benjamin's worth of electronics but too young that we might swallow a battery). Here's where it rules.. the internal speaker ACTUALLY IS GUTSY! It's loud enough to be heard over 67dBA of refrigeration compressors when playing 80s hits for my friend's store, unlike my Sony ICD-B100 voice recorder or Macally Podwave. Commodore 64 SID music sounds quite good on this machine, and it's ear-splitting at maximum volume. This is also a problem...the volume control only goes down to moderately loud, then goes silent in one press of the "-" button. If you're playing at night you need to make sure that the people around you are moderately heavy sleepers and that you are in your own room with the door closed, or you can use headphones. The volume control is also kind of unresponsive, so if it's 3:00 AM and the music/movie starts dropping bombs (either explosives or swear words) loudly, you can't just hold "-" and expect it to even so much as slowly go silent. You can't even frantically tap "-" to get it to pipe down either. You need to pump the "-" button about once per second, and it will finally obey. The screen (for photos), if I had to guess, looks like 160x120 pixel resolution, and for video looks like half that (1/4 as many pixels). The 1956 resolution test pattern doesn't even go that low. The video quality is more than watchable/enjoyable, even with this early-TV-like resolution. Don't save JPEG photos at anything higher than 320x240 resolution, or else you'll get aliasing rainbows (the picture's still quite viewable, even though at less than optimal quality) that remind me of the Amiga's Hold and Modify pixelation (where there are sharp edges in the photo, there are colored fringes). The headphone jack is loud enough, but not much louder. You can actually fast-forward/rewind movies and songs with the right/left buttons (respectively) and the photo mode has a slideshow, and the cool part about all 3 modes is that you can randomize the order in which the files are viewed so you don't know which photo/movie/song comes next (this mode is a hazard to your freedom in a room with a prude if the player has risque media. Lucikly it is off by default). You can even give newly recorded VuGo music visualization IF and ONLY IF you use the original gray Sony Playstation to play CDs with the SoundScope and record with the VuGo's record mode to record the oscilloscope onto video mode. Don't bother with the high-quality video mode, it doesn't look any better to me, yet it takes up 33% more memory. The music only records in one mode, but you can get an INCREDIBLE amount of songs on it if you add the 512 MB card. The only things wrong with it: WHY???! OH WHY IS IT MONO??!!! The screen is kind of pixelated. Cannot play the speaker quietly enough/unresponsive volume control (see above) The internal clock loses its time the exact instant you take the batteries out (no grace period to change the batteries). The battery covers need a screwdriver for opening.  If you record music to the internal 128MB of memory, the vocals sound kind of like someone talking underwater (the SD card memory sounds fine). Scrolling through the list of files takes an incredible amount of time (as in OhMyGosh! Am I going to lose my audience? Wait! I haven't shown you it yet! Don't go! This is going to be so cool!) even if you hold down the button (i'm guessing about 4 files per second). So if you have a list of only 60 files, it will take up to a quarter of a minute to get to the one you want to show. You can make it scroll about 1 file per second faster if you rapidly tap the down button (your fingers tire quickly doing this!). If the batteries die and a screwdriver is nowhere to be found, it stays on until the batteries are totally depleted (which can damage rechargeable AAAs by causing even slightly stronger cells to charge the weaker cells in reverse).  If you're using headphones and have a long headphone cord and are using the built in stand on a smooth (like Formica) surface, the player will rotate in the direction the headphone cord's weight is pulling, which might cause you to drop it. If you don't turn on the VuGo before you plug in the USB cable, your computer will say that the USB device is not recognized. It is faster to use Windows Explorer to copy the converted VuGo media files than to use the VuGo software to do the actual writing to player memory (often the program is no faster than real-time recording, which can be a drag for full-length features.) So convert the file with the VuGo program (quite fast) and then copy the converted file to the drive.
	UPDATE:I upgraded my PC to Ubuntu in August 2007, and the VuGo is incompatible with it. For a first personal media player to own in the year 2005, it's cool. But in January 2009, it's old. For only $85 you can get a Sony NWZ-E436F and have twice the storage with MUCH more video resolution. While the VuGo's video was like 30 line Televisior resolution, the new Sony NWZ-E436F walkman is like CED quality (slightly crisper than VHS), and this is on a TWO INCH screen, so it looks like a photograph that moves. The Walkman can be made to work with Ubuntu, and get this...the sound is STEREO! 1958 A.D. here I come! Another good thing is that the sampling frequency for the Linear PCM is accurate when generating slow-scan television and weather fax signals on the PC and loading them on the MP3 player, then playing them back into the PC. No more slanted pictures! Yeay! You can also listen to IMA ADPCM music on the walkman, so you get 4 times more music than you would if you used Linear PCM, and the quality only drops a little.
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