Cowon goes red, upgrades firmware, and drops prices

Cowon just keeps showering us with good news. Earlier I reported on the U.S. release of the Cowon iAudio 7, and now I've got photos of the latest red version of the Cowon D2. The red D2 was given a very soft launch here in the United States and appears to have been available directly and through a few online retailers for the past several weeks. To sweeten the deal, Cowon has dropped prices on some models of the D2, U3, F2, and A2 by around $10 to $20.

The cherry on top is a new firmware upgrade to the D2 (v2.45) available directly from Cowon's Web site. With the upgrade comes a seemingly dull notepad utility that in reality is a dope sketchpad application, ideal for doodlers. I was a little disappointed that it doesn't allow you to doodle and listen to music at the same time, but it does save your doodles as bitmap images in the D2's photo directory, allowing you to drag sketches onto your computer. The utility lets you draw in a handful of colors with variable line thickness. I'll be using it to secretly draw childish portraits of people on the subway.