disappointed with cowon

[cschrils]

Hi... I've been a user of Cowon products for a while now, my first device was an A2, which I loved and used a lot, and then upgrade to the Q5W...
my disappointment with this product is simple, I got obsolete real quick, and the factory stopped making upgrades for it 3 years ago... I do not know if I am wrong, but I think it was a really expensive and powerful device, and I believe that it can do much more than it does right now... maybe change the OS? .mkv files support...

[tedkord]

Originally Posted by cschrils

Hi... I've been a user of Cowon products for a while now, my first device was an A2, which I loved and used a lot, and then upgrade to the Q5W...
my disappointment with this product is simple, I got obsolete real quick, and the factory stopped making upgrades for it 3 years ago... I do not know if I am wrong, but I think it was a really expensive and powerful device, and I believe that it can do much more than it does right now... maybe change the OS? .mkv files support...

the Q5W was a real disappointment which Cowon stopped supporting about 1.5 year after it came out. Updates in the US just stopped, and the company's attitude seemed to be, "Well, we got your money." They didn't even keep their word on the 1 free navigation maps update they promised. And the maps/nav it came with are AWFUL.

However, you're wrong about it's potential - the MIPS processor it uses is a severe handicap, as very little software is MIPS compatible, most uses ARM instructions. So, no OS update is going to help. (Maybe a port of Android, I'm not sure how many MIPS programs Android has, but I'd be surprised if it was more than a handful.)

My experience with the Q5W is such that I will NEVER buy another Cowon product. Their customer service is awful, their product was crap that never lived up to their advertising. I should have just burned the $500 I spent on this - at least then I'd have gotten some heat out of it.