Tuesday, July 13, 2004
iRiver Firmware Delays
Posted by Suhit Gupta in "THOUGHT" @ 11:00 AM
For all you iRiver customers, you may have noticed how the promise of regular firmware updates have not been met. Here is a small excerpt from a letter by an annoyed iRiver customer -
"Like many here I am an owner of an H140 - at the time I bought it, it was clearly one of the most ambitious players on the market. Unfortunately it had some very obvious well-documented problems, nearly all related to firmware. The main reason I bought an iRiver (rather than a creative or an iPod) was that iRiver had previously demonstrated a commitment to regular firmware updates, had had promised shedule of updates for the next four months. Reading through the sheduled updates, it would be easy to assume that within 4 months the iHP-140 would be able to do everything I want. Put simply, if I had known that the promised firmware was never going to be released I would not have bought the iHP140. I would probably have gone for Creative or Apple's machine. It may be a lower-spec player at a higher price but at least it gets regular updates."
I tend to agree with him because I too had bought my iHP 140 with the hope of getting constant updates. However, except for the firmware update that they pushed out last month, there have been no updates. iRiver is really doing a good job putting out devices that are rockin' but if they continue this trend of not updating their devices, they will lose some of their loyal customers.
"Like many here I am an owner of an H140 - at the time I bought it, it was clearly one of the most ambitious players on the market. Unfortunately it had some very obvious well-documented problems, nearly all related to firmware. The main reason I bought an iRiver (rather than a creative or an iPod) was that iRiver had previously demonstrated a commitment to regular firmware updates, had had promised shedule of updates for the next four months. Reading through the sheduled updates, it would be easy to assume that within 4 months the iHP-140 would be able to do everything I want. Put simply, if I had known that the promised firmware was never going to be released I would not have bought the iHP140. I would probably have gone for Creative or Apple's machine. It may be a lower-spec player at a higher price but at least it gets regular updates."
I tend to agree with him because I too had bought my iHP 140 with the hope of getting constant updates. However, except for the firmware update that they pushed out last month, there have been no updates. iRiver is really doing a good job putting out devices that are rockin' but if they continue this trend of not updating their devices, they will lose some of their loyal customers.
