Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Things to Look for in a Flash DAP
note: there is no dap out there that fulfills these reqs.
1. Make sure that the flash chip inside your dap player is high quality. Some Flash players are cheapo. SLC vs MLC. Google them. More read/write cycles means longer flash life.
2. Buy a flash player with a SD slot so you don't have to google the specific chip. You buy an expensive ATP long lasting SD card and call it a day.
3. Look at the physical interface. Can you use it with both hands? Is the screen good? 4 lines of information that are 25 characters each is pretty good. That's about 1.4 inches diagonal. Personally, i like the Kenwood HD20gb. It's a pretty big screen with all the controls reachable by one thumb. And a screen that's considerably more than 2 inches.
But from a technical standpoint, a smaller OLED screen is more efficient.
4. Make sure the company updates its firmware regularly. This is the trend. All succesful and productive companies with talent do this.
5. Make sure you know the pros and cons of li-po batteries vs nimh. If you havent spent a good chunk of change getting a NIMH charger, stick with built-in rechargeable batteries like lithium polymer. The ipod nano for example charges on USB exclusively. The DAP should fit around your daily life. You should fit in the price of a USB hub if you don't have enough USB ports for your nano. And the cost of turning on the computer everytime you want to charge your nano. For me, I use NIMH AA/AAA. I carry around a charger on vacations. I don't like downtime. I charge batches of batteries so I won't ever be powerless. I actually wouldn't mind a flash player with replaceable lithium-polymer battery btw. It's not that hard to jury rig a circuit board to charge a lipo battery. The important thing is to not have any downtime.
6. Make sure that the internal interface is good. Every player's different. The nano needs to have replaceable battery before I'd even consider it even if Apple's got great interface design.
Everyone's looking at DAPs like they are the next cellphone industry. Even to the point of copying the business models. Music is not a consumable space. It's a customized space. You rent apartments because it's too expensive to buy outright. Or you don't want to mortgage because you don't want to make a lifelong commitment. You can always move to a new place. Music is different. Music is like your clothes. You have a certain taste. You band together with other people with the same taste. And you've overpaid for it when you were young just because of some of brand name label. What happens when your girlfriend throws away your favorite tattered 10 year-old t-shirt? You get a new girlfriend. And you dissolve the corpse with industrial solvent.
Where you live is not as important as who you are. And if where you live is more important than who you are, chances are, you don't even like music in the first place.
Oh yeah, fuck hard drive mp3 players.
1. Make sure that the flash chip inside your dap player is high quality. Some Flash players are cheapo. SLC vs MLC. Google them. More read/write cycles means longer flash life.
2. Buy a flash player with a SD slot so you don't have to google the specific chip. You buy an expensive ATP long lasting SD card and call it a day.
3. Look at the physical interface. Can you use it with both hands? Is the screen good? 4 lines of information that are 25 characters each is pretty good. That's about 1.4 inches diagonal. Personally, i like the Kenwood HD20gb. It's a pretty big screen with all the controls reachable by one thumb. And a screen that's considerably more than 2 inches.
But from a technical standpoint, a smaller OLED screen is more efficient.
4. Make sure the company updates its firmware regularly. This is the trend. All succesful and productive companies with talent do this.
5. Make sure you know the pros and cons of li-po batteries vs nimh. If you havent spent a good chunk of change getting a NIMH charger, stick with built-in rechargeable batteries like lithium polymer. The ipod nano for example charges on USB exclusively. The DAP should fit around your daily life. You should fit in the price of a USB hub if you don't have enough USB ports for your nano. And the cost of turning on the computer everytime you want to charge your nano. For me, I use NIMH AA/AAA. I carry around a charger on vacations. I don't like downtime. I charge batches of batteries so I won't ever be powerless. I actually wouldn't mind a flash player with replaceable lithium-polymer battery btw. It's not that hard to jury rig a circuit board to charge a lipo battery. The important thing is to not have any downtime.
6. Make sure that the internal interface is good. Every player's different. The nano needs to have replaceable battery before I'd even consider it even if Apple's got great interface design.
Everyone's looking at DAPs like they are the next cellphone industry. Even to the point of copying the business models. Music is not a consumable space. It's a customized space. You rent apartments because it's too expensive to buy outright. Or you don't want to mortgage because you don't want to make a lifelong commitment. You can always move to a new place. Music is different. Music is like your clothes. You have a certain taste. You band together with other people with the same taste. And you've overpaid for it when you were young just because of some of brand name label. What happens when your girlfriend throws away your favorite tattered 10 year-old t-shirt? You get a new girlfriend. And you dissolve the corpse with industrial solvent.
Where you live is not as important as who you are. And if where you live is more important than who you are, chances are, you don't even like music in the first place.
Oh yeah, fuck hard drive mp3 players.
Sandisk Sansa Firmware Updates: Finally!
Well, it doesnt really do much. Aside from the Favorites list, there's really nothing much useful in it. It didn't fix the usability factor.
They should really fire the guy that came up with that scroll wheel. No grip, and forces the user to use his right hand to scroll.
They don't tell you on the site how exactly to use the Favorite lists but it's not hard to figure out.
The Install:
1. Back up the music on your player. For safety's sake, i took out the SD card too.
2. Plug in a fresh battery.
3. USB cable to your PC, plug it in.
4. Download firmwre 1a.
5. Open the program and let it format the Sansa. I think it's better to format the Sansa, you never know.
The Feature: (There's only one new addition)
Favorites List
1) If you are on the Now Playing Screen, and it's playing "Fug me" by the mugger fuggers, press and hold the center select button. It will then give you an option to add to your favorite list. If you want to Add it, tap select twice. If you don't press << twice.
2) The second way to do this is to go to perss the Power/Menu button then
Play Music >> Artist >> Album >> Songs, then press and hold the center 'select' button on the song you've scrolled to. It only works for individual songs and not for albums or artists. So you can't just add all songs by artist A or all songs in album D. You see, that would make too much sense for these Sandisk folk.
Yup, yup. And this is why Sandisk is not Apple.
They should really fire the guy that came up with that scroll wheel. No grip, and forces the user to use his right hand to scroll.
They don't tell you on the site how exactly to use the Favorite lists but it's not hard to figure out.
The Install:
1. Back up the music on your player. For safety's sake, i took out the SD card too.
2. Plug in a fresh battery.
3. USB cable to your PC, plug it in.
4. Download firmwre 1a.
5. Open the program and let it format the Sansa. I think it's better to format the Sansa, you never know.
The Feature: (There's only one new addition)
Favorites List
1) If you are on the Now Playing Screen, and it's playing "Fug me" by the mugger fuggers, press and hold the center select button. It will then give you an option to add to your favorite list. If you want to Add it, tap select twice. If you don't press << twice.
2) The second way to do this is to go to perss the Power/Menu button then
Play Music >> Artist >> Album >> Songs, then press and hold the center 'select' button on the song you've scrolled to. It only works for individual songs and not for albums or artists. So you can't just add all songs by artist A or all songs in album D. You see, that would make too much sense for these Sandisk folk.
Yup, yup. And this is why Sandisk is not Apple.
Friday, September 09, 2005
d
