portable music players

[Heidi A. Strohl]

I have an iPod nano, and I can't believe I fell for the iPod schtick again.
In retrospect, I should have known: my fiancee has bought me a new iPod
every year for the past four years. I have never had an Apple device that
lasted more than 1 year before malfunctioning. My nano has set a new record
by failing to allow me to access playlists, now 8 months in. Since the iPod
won't let you just drag and drop music, I use Floola, which works great (at
least for the first year); I found that Rhythmbox and Banshee worked fine at
first but didn't prove compatible with all features.

The kicker is, I bought my fiancee a version 1 Sandisk Sansa (version 2 only
supports Microsoft formats) for Xmas last year. He immediately installed
Rockbox; it works flawlessly and we expect it will continue to. He can just
drag and drop, since like many other mp3 players it appears as a USB drive.

As far as design and styling go, I find that the iPod user interface is
slightly more intuitive and that my iPod was significantly thinner and
somewhat sleeker. That is where the advantages end. The Sansa was slightly
less expensive and, obviously, has proven a better value. Further, he can
add memory to his Sansa by purchasing an inexpensive MSD card; my iPod is
stuck at 4 GB, of which I can only use a portion without causing
malfunction. Sadly, I think we'll have to wait for Christmastime before
Sandisk comes out with a new model which might support non-Microsoft
formats.

-- 
 Heidi A. Strohl
 Meticulous Design for Print and Web

 1.802.407.1417
 heidi at heidistrohl.com
 http://www.heidistrohl.com/
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