Setup

The iRiver iFP-395T connects to your personal computer via a USB cable. In order for you to make any use of the iFP-395T, you're obviously going to need to load some music. To do this, you need to load iRiver's proprietary music organizer application - the iRiver Music Manager application. The reason this is the case is because Windows XP does not recognize the iRiver as an external storage device. The included CD has the application and device driver for the iRiver music player.

However, iRiver has since provided a firmware upgrade to the iFP-395T that changes the device to be seen as a USB Mass Storage (UMS) device. The advantage of applying this firmware upgrade to the iFP-395T is that you no longer need to load the iRiver Music Manager application to load music onto the player. The music player can connect to any Windows XP system and appear as an external USB hard drive. Placing music onto your player is a simple matter of copying MP3's to your player. The only downside to file transfer is the USB 1.1 bandwidth speeds - it would have been nice to have USB 2.0 support but then again - there's only 512MB of storage space on the player.

This is a wonderful upgrade because your player can also double as a portable flash key drive similar to many other dedicated flash keys on the market. In short, iRiver provides support for either model of use so it really depends on your needs. We would generally recommend users upgrade the firmware to turn the player into a UMS device. This will make your lives a whole lot simpler.

You can find more information about the UMS upgrade here:

http://www.iriveramerica.com/support/ums.asp

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