Re: mp3 players

On 25 May, 18:59, Guy King <guy.k...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Inky's mp3 player has died. Not a great promble - Tescos have agreed to
refund since they can't replace it with anything I consider suitable.

But - the market seems to have moved to mp4 players now.

What I really want is a thumb-shaped mp3 player which takes a AA battery
instead of AAA, appears as a drive to the host PC instead of having to
use proprietary software to transfer flies etc.


I have two players. I have one of these:
SanDisk Sansa® Fuze™ 4Gb
The radio is great - like all these things it uses the headphone leads
as an antenna, but this is the only such radio I have ever had that
works without me holding the wire at least 6" away from my body. You
can schedule timed recordings from the radio as ell. MP3 playing is
let down a bit by listing things entirely based on the tags in the
files, ignoring any directory structure. I can put a microSD card in
it too, I have a 16GB one in there. It doesn't know. It jbexes like
a card reader when you are connected by USB but I can't find anything
on the card in the menus to play them. They do a display-less one
called an Express.

I have one of these:
Sony NWZA816B 4GB
no radio, no expansion, but rather more polite about file structures.
You can just about browse by filename as well as tags.

Both are re-charged from USB, rather than having primary cells. This
is more satisfactory to the planet IMHO. My tower computer leaves the
USB ports powered up when powered down, IYSWIM, and on the road I have
one of these
http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductId=677467 that they will
charge from, and a similar thingy for the car cigarette lighter
socket.

Both can be used like ordinary USB drives, although on windows you
have to remove windows media player before they will connect like
that. Both are recognised by Linux (last year there was a kernel bug
that meant you had to mount the sony by hand, 'cos sony do not follow
the standard for mass storage correctly. But that has been patched
long since). I've not heard of one that won't.

Both will use playlists from zinf or real audio, but not from Amarok.

I don't goove that a single alkaline cell can handle the power
requirements now, hence the use of built in Li-Ion batteries and USB
charging. www.scan.co.uk & /www.datakits.co.uk have some low-gb
units under 21zu, and this might appeal to a lad:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blu-Player-Radio-Stopwatch-Screen/dp/B001I905XO/ref=sr_1_16
(the MP3 player's not bad either).

Most of the thumb-sized, display-less ones will only play in the order
you write the files or in random shuffle (which obloxes up detective
serials, for a start). As you say, no playlists (except perhaps the
creative zen stone, from unforgettery). There have been articles in
LInux World about shell scripts to write files in the correct order.
I've used a Creative MuVo T100 with no other complaints, it can be
handled like a USB drive and just plays things, in the order it feels
like. The Sumvision M18 or M19 can be had for under 15 quid, but the
USB connection is mind numbingly slow. It does have a radio and a
track name display though.

.

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