Software for cowon q5w

A suction cup at the base of the in-car dock allows the Q5W to be affixed to your windshield. The Cowon Q5W's 5-inch screen is recessed slightly to prevent scratching. Though the Q5W's screen is somewhat reflective, the x TFT screen offers excellent viewing angles. Both competing devices sell for considerably less than the Q5W, but neither of them can match the Cowon's screen size, Bluetooth integration, media format support, or built-in TV-output capabilities.

The Cowon Q5W is definitely not a device anyone will want to carry in their pocket. The sheer bulk of the Cowon Q5W makes it a poor option for wimps and klutzes. At around 13 ounces, dropping the Q5W on your toe might require a trip to the emergency room. At close to a pound and measuring 3. Cowon put two USB connections one standard, one mini on the device for loading media, as well as a built-in speaker and a mic.

There's also a remote that controls many of the device's functions. These inclusions are thoughtful, but the real meat is in the player itself, and boy, is it a pain to use! Part of the problem here is that, though it's marketed as a personal media player, the Q5W is also trying to be a PDA, and even a GPS device, all at the same time.

And this approach isn't very successful. When I saw that the device runs Windows CE 5. His thoughts? But Cowon wasn't intending to make it a fully fledged PDA—just to leverage the Windows CE marketplace for its own development advantage.

For instance, pulling up a keyboard to enter text isn't easy, which in turn makes something like using the player's built-in Sure, it connects, but entering a network password is a major challenge. I accidentally made the virtual keyboard appear once but had no luck when I actually wanted to try using it to surf the Web. The one included office app is a rather buggy version of WordPad.

Considering that the Q5W comes in at nearly a pound of unwieldy metal girth--measuring 5. Anyone shopping for high-capacity portable video players is likely resigned to issues of size and weight anyhow, so let's dive into the heart of what makes any PVP worthwhile: the screen. The Cowon Q5W's 5-inch touch screen x resolution is both beautiful and responsive. Like those on most PVPs, the Q5W's display is constructed with a reflective plastic that limits visibility in direct sunlight.

Despite its secondary use as a mirror, however, low-light conditions make colors dramatically pop on the screen, especially compared with the less-reflective matte finishes found on the Archos line of PVPs. Like any proper PVP, the Cowon Q5W's screen is recessed slightly from the face of the player offering some protection against wear and tear.

The top edge of the Cowon Q5W includes conveniently located buttons for controlling volume, a power switch that doubles as a hold button for disabling onscreen controls, two built-in speakers, an infrared sensor for the included remote control, and a pinhole microphone for creating voice recordings.

A useful often necessary stylus pen for the Q5W's touch screen is conveniently housed in the top-right edge of the player. Packed into the left edge of the Q5W are jacks for a 3. The back, bottom, and right edge of the Q5W are bare, save a small proprietary port on the bottom for the player's AV cable output and optional GPS dock.

Although Cowon has proven its track record for making solid, attractive hardware time and again, the company's software interface performance is historically inconsistent. This time around, the Q5W's software interface is remarkably attractive, but there's a catch. After booting the Q5W, a slick Cowon-branded graphical menu system separates the player's media applications music, videos, games from other features such as the Web browser, utilities voice recording and settings , and Windows applications like WordPad.

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, the attractive Cowon-branded browser is really just an application that runs on top of the Windows CE 5 operating system at the root of the device. The minute you need to perform some mundane task such as setting up the Q5W's wireless connection, the comfortable Cowon interface gives way to the all-too-familiar graveyard of the Windows desktop. A pop-up virtual keyboard lets you input text for things like network keys, web browsing, and search.

The apps are all fairly easy to use, and you can have several open at once, though the screen can get cluttered with all the file information presented, especially in the music player where you get way more info than most users need. We love the full-featured wireless remote, which is actually more useful for most basic functions than the screen itself. Image Courtesy of Cowon.