By pressing a button on the player's face, the unit switches from MP3 music mode, to a mono-voice recording mode. In its voice mode, the DMP-100 can record over two hours of audio on its 32MB internal flash memory. If the owner has an additional SmartMedia 32MB memory card, which the DMP-100 offers a slot for, then the total recording capacity moves to over four and a half hours.

Surprisingly, the player records audio very well. What seems like a powderpuff feature thrown in by the marketing team turns into a very practical and handy option. We've used a variety of micro-cassette recorders over the past year and a half for interviews, self-memos, shopping lists, etc, and the DMP-100 equals them all in terms of clarity and ease of use.

We do miss having a "Cue and Review" playback option on the DMP-100, which almost all micro-cassette recorders have, because it makes it easier to get to the exact point in the recorded audio that you need to hear, versus listening through sections that you've already heard. Other than that lone complaint, we highly recommend the DMP-100's voice recording abilities to anyone. We think it would do particularly well for students that want to groove on some MP3 tunes on the way to class, and then record their professor's lecture upon arrival.

Why weren't these devices available when we went to college??

D-Link includes a CD with their DMP-100 player that includes their proprietary software for communicating with the player when it's connected via the PC's parallel port. The software is very basic, it lacks advanced categorizing or organizational abilities we've seen from a few other players, but it does work well right out of the box.

Transferring MP3 or wave files to the player works by highlighting songs on your PC's hard drive and just dragging them into the player's "window".

For encoding and listening to MP3s from CDs via your CD-ROM drive, D-Link includes the popular shareware program "Music Match," which we've used in the past. It works well and gets the job done, no complaints there.

D-Link seems committed to the MP3 market, although plans for a follow-up portable player are mum for the moment.

We continue to be enthralled with the MP3 universe in general, particularly with so many great products that support the medium coming to market this year. Sony, Panasonic, and others will only add credibility to the segment with their own MP3 devices, and exotic new hardware will continue to roll down the pike from concept to marketplace as fast as possible.