Product Description: The Kid-Tough FP3 Player is a real digital player designed just for preschoolers. It's tough enough and easy enough for kids to use. We've also made it easy for parents to download songs and stories onto the player from the Fisher-Price FP3 Song&Story Online Store, or from any CD you already own. The Kid-Tough FP3 Player features: A backlit 1.4-inch LCD screen that uses icons to help kids recognize and choose their favorite songs and stories all by themselves; big buttons that make it easy to navigate; Kid-tough design that stands up to the way preschoolers play Holds two hours of entertainment--that's approximately 30 songs or 15 stories; add an SD memory card to store even more songs and stories Headphones that are sized just right for little ones and that play at a safe volume; breakaway neck strap; six songs and two stories pre-loaded on the FP3 Player; Plus, there are hundreds more songs and stories ready for safe and simple downloadfrom our Song&Story Online Store.
What a wonderful toy! My daughter just received this for her 5th birthday. She's a huge music lover, and this was just up her alley. Let's just say she's been attached to it every since she received it. The software was easy and quick to install. Loading music from a cd (can't load from a computer to the music library, it has to come from a cd) is a simple process. We also took advantage of purchasing a few stories from the website so she's got some of her favorites for bed time. We have a dial up connection and still were able to download stories which was nice. :) The FP3 is so simple for kids to figure out how to operate without a lot of help needed from mom,dad or whomever. One option I loved was that I was able to assign an icon for each song I loaded on to her player. This was a great feature considering she's not reading quite yet and this helps her id the song before she has to hear it play. I also love that the volume can't go too high either, so I don't have to worry about her hurting her ears. She's enjoyed going to bed with her FP3 player on and listening to bed time stories. It also has an auto-shutoff so the batteries won't continue to drain while she sleeps. Either way - it's got simple features, yet is built to last, and is just such a fun and fantastic gift for the music and/or story lover in your child. It looks like her two year old sister just might be getting one for her birthday in the near future as well! (It really is a great gift for any kid!) I just can't say enough wonderful things about the simplicity of it and the sturdy design. Fisher Price got it so right this time!!!
Not so kid tough We bought this for our 5 year old 2 months ago for her birthday. We bought a 1 GB SD card for it so that she could put tons of music on it. As far as the software goes, we didn't find it to be that painful since we had read the reviews knew what to expect. She loved the player and especially the speakers that we bought separately. She played it every night to fall asleep and carried the player in the speakers everywhere with her. Now it's been only two months and the player hardly works. We have replaced the batteries twice to thinking that would solve the problems but it didn't. A few days ago it froze and I had to unscrew the battery compartment to get it to turn off. Only the forward button works, so if she wants to change songs, she can only go forwards through all the songs. Also, the play button seems to be very fragile. It seems to play the preloaded songs (all 6 of them!) and she really likes the stories, but the ones that we loaded ourselves either don't play at all or they stop playing in the middle with a loud popping noise. I know she is disappointed, and so am I. She has stopped listening to it altogether. I bought this player brand new from a seller on Ebay (lesson learned) so now I am out of luck. I was hoping that Fisher Price would have some techincal support on their website with some updated drivers or something, but no. I am disappointed in this product. It's a great concept, but needs some improvements. With all the technology available today and the price, it seems like it could be so much better. On their website it says that this product has been discontinued in 2007. How come my 2GB Ipod shuffle works without a glitch and I paid close to the same price? Maybe Fisher Price just needs to stick to what they know.
Excellant FUN !! Bought for my 3 yr old grand-daughters BD. Easy to download songs from a CD through the computer. Also easy to download from the website at extra cost, and they have a pretty good selection to chose from. They also have pictures that you can attach to the songs for those that can't read yet, which is very helpful although I wish there were a bigger selection of pictures, not quite enough. Another problem is that you have to buy the speakers separately (also the protective case) and you really need them to enjoy all the fun with them. Very worth buying, just precious watching them sing and dance and learning all the words to songs. Her 1 1/2 yr old sister sings and dances with her when speakers are attached.
good idea but very complicated A very good idea, but a complete pain to load songs on to. I bought two and the first took so long to do that a year later I still have not attempted the other one.
Fixing problem with not writing to device This is a solution to all the others that cannot write new songs to the device. it looks like when some of these devices were manufactured, all of the files were set with the Read only bit set on all of the files.
When a song is written to the device, it adds the track, then it will update either the playlist.sng (songs) or playlist.sty (story). If these files are set to read only, then they can not update the internal playlist and the player will not know about any new tracks, and you will get the write access error.
Short story to get it working with XP, Vista or whatever - When you connect it to you machine and the drive pops up; right click playlist.sng and then choose properties. Uncheck the attribute for Read only. Then do the same for playlist.sty. It should work fine for everything, and the access errors will disappear.
I hope this helps some people out.
PS. I was called in to resolve this problem because parents of the device could not get it working
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