Virgin Electronics VM-500 (5 GB) Digital Media Player

The reason I purchased the player was because of the 5gb storage. The product worked great at first. Did I mention the company that manufactured this product is no longer in business? The product was made at a time when there were (2) versions of Windows Player, 9 and 10, and can only be used with these.
I did say things worked great at first, but then I downloaded the updates for the player and during that process updated Player 10, which seems to have caused problems. Such as I no longer can download music that I downloaded. The only thing that seems to work is downloading disc's that I bought.

The Boom Tube speakers I also purchased, made by Virgin, are awesome! I couldn't believe the sound from them. I have this set up on my desk at work.

Also, I failed to mention that the player has a FM tuner, that works well.

All in all, I knew I was taking a chance when I bought this, but I do have some music loaded and do enjoy what I have. It's nowhere near the 1200 songs that it is capable of but, as they say, live and learn.

I purchased this mp3 player on Ebay. It lasted about a week or so before it started to freeze up. I thought I had been ripped off. So I visited the virgin website. I did all the troubleshooting tips and the player still malfunctioned occasionally. I again visted the virsin website. I noticed the was a firmware update. I installed teh updated firmware and the player has been great ever since. Just a few tips about reformatting and using this player if you want it to work properly. 1) Make sure you download and unzip the update( remember the file unzipped to. 2)Make sure after formatting the drive, and creating the system folder, use the pp5020.mi4 from the update folder not the one on the website as stated at virgin. 3) Run the update .exe file while the unit is still plugged to the pc. 5) Press "Home" button to run the player's setup application. 5) Make sure you use windows media player 9 or 10. The player is no longer compatible with newer versions of media player. If you try to sync songs with a later version you will corrupt the drive. I am in the process of buying broken virgin units for repair. I will update if this process works consistently.

Small, easy to use, cheap, and lots of capacity. This little player, while no longer in production, was a worthy competitior for the venerable Ipod. It contains can't-miss setup software which is activated by plugging into any Windows-based computer, so even if you have several computers in the house, you can load it up or edit it's playlists anywhere in your home (or work!) network. It will play MP3 or the even higher compressed WMA format. Flipping through it's internal instructions one can se the programmers had a sense of humor, with little impedded "smart" comments here and there. A pleasure to use, and an even better value now since the price has dropped so dramatically.

This is an awesome player...easy to use and with the highest quality expected from Virgin Electronics

"Getting what you pay for" really doesn't apply here because I feel compared to a lot of MP3 players that I looked at this was a GREAT value. It holds way more music than I listen to, it is so easy to use that I never read any instructions except how to load music which was really a no brainer once I read it. It lasts about 6 hours on the rechargable battery. I would recomend this to anyone.