Chris May

I really feel pretty stupid...

This weekend I read on a few tech blogs that Steve Jobs had invited his friends to attend his keynote address at MacWorld.

Obviously he was going to unveil something very cool, and obviously that "something" was probably going to be the long awaited iPhone.

It was at this point that I moved on to other things, instead of making the next "obvious" step.

Obviously this would cause Apple's stock to go up.

APPL was trading around 85 on Monday and 97 on Wednesday, an increase of 14%.

Maybe next time I will hear news like this and make the final connection :).

 

I figure I should put up a review of my Sansa e200 incase anyone else is thinking of getting one.

I had a couple trips I had to take last month and my old Archos mp3 player decided to die on me.  Luckly for me I was able to find a Sankdisk Sansa e200 or e220 or e2XX whatever.  My model is the 6GB version, which is the largest they offer at the moment.

The unit cost $280 at Circuit City and while I could have got it online for $250 or so, I was going to be on a plane the next day so I didn't mind paying a little extra to have it with me on the trip.  Have I mentioned that I hate Circuit City?  Why is it that every time I got there I end up getting frustrated or pissed off?  I guess the one time I went there to see a TiVo demoed was ok... except now that I think about it they didn't know how to work the Tivo.  I ended up buying one and loving it though (this was back in '99).

Anyway, I have to say I am very pleased with the Sansa.  It was exactly what I hoped it would be in almost every way.

Battery life is awesome.  I think I read somewhere that it does 15 hours, which sounds about right.  I haven't had it run out on me yet.  Oh, this does bring me to one of the few things I don't like about it.  You can't listen to it while you have it connected to your computer, which means you can't listen to it while you are charging it thorough the USB.  Maybe you could "disconnect" through windows and have it still get power, but I don't know.

Playback quality and volume are good.

Navigation is IPod-like, which is ok, but rather than use a "touch wheel" they have an actual wheel you can turn that makes navigating easier in my opinion.  The only thing I don't like about navigation is that if you want to change to a song on another album by the same artist, you have to click Menu (down), Back To List (Middle), and then "Back" (Right).  I guess there is not obvious way to improve that, so overall I can't really complain.

FM Radio / Video: Well I will never be using the video, and I am sorry to say that as soon as I started using the FM radio I realized how much I would have rather had AM.  Oh well.

Audio Recorder: Haven't used it.

Graphics: I was a little suprised that there were now "Themes" to choose from, only the 1 default theme.  It's not bad, just something I would have figured they would do.  They show the album cover if you downloaded it, which is cool.

PC Integration: Awesome.  My winXP computer saw it right away as some kinda media device, no driver installs or anything.  You go to My Computer, click on the Sansa icon (it's almost like an external hard drive), and you just drag over your folders.  Once loaded, the Sansa will look at your MP3 tag info and index them all like the IPod does.

My wife bought me a little rubber case for it that I leave on all the time, and I have no worries about it breaking.  The thing feels really solid. 

Size: It looks bigger in these pictures than it is.  It's smaller than a large pack of gum.  Very nice.

Overall I am very happy with it!!  I would really recommend it to anyone who wants a great MP3 player, but doesn't want to get stuck with an IPod.

 

Almost all of my friends have IPods, but I have held off. 

There are a number of reasons why:

1) ITunes:  It sucks.  I hate it.  My current MP3 player simply allows you to drag and drop the files you want onto your MP3 player.  No syncing, no problems.

2) User interface.  I know a lot of people think the wheel is really cool, but I think it overly involves the user.  Tell me what is wrong with up/down buttons before you redesign the interface to use a wheel.

3) Batteries.  As noted at http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/.  The battery in an IPod can not be removed, and some say they start to fail after 18 months.

Well I came across a site called http://www.idont.com/, which went live today (before today it had some anti-ipod message up there). 

Turns out it is a site for the new SanDisk MP3 player.

The e200 (really catchy name... not) looks pretty cool, and might be worth me looking into more: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2006/03/sandisk-sansa-e200-series-review.php

 

This is a pretty sweet looking firmware that someone wrote for Archos MP3 players. I'm not sure if it will work on my box, but I will have to look into it.

Update: I wish I hadn't put this on there.  It's been more of a pain then it's worth.

Here it is...

This is a review by motor trend of a group of radar detectors.

I was just messing around looking at some hacks for installing a PC into a car. There doesn't seem to really be a good product out there, but here were some of the links I found:

http://www.gnetcanada.com/

http://www.via.com.tw/en/VInternet/Peter_Bridger_Car_PCPower.pdf

http://www.microsoft.com/automotive/windowsautomotive/

http://www.mobilevideo4less.com/mobile-pc.html

http://myhtpc.net/

http://www.caseoutlet.com/

http://www.opussolutions.com/itx_work.html

http://www.trumanmobile.com/prod/Default.asp

http://www.dashpc.com/

Slashdot had a review for a book on hacking TiVo, which led to a discussion of that topic and the various other PVRs out there.

I could walk to this guy's store from my parent's house. $85 to do the HDD upgrade, or you can buy the HDD yourself and just follow his directions. I'm not sure if it is worth $85. I could probably do it in an hour myself, but maybe just to make sure I don't screw it up.

Here and here you can find some forums on TiVo and hacking it.

Most interesting to me was the mention of MythTV, a linux based product that is free, and can support 2 tuners. Aside from that, it also can do a lot of other cool stuff from what I have read, such as pictures, audio, weather reports, web browser, web server, etc. I also read somewhere that you can setup one as a "

Interesting.

Amazon has the Archos Jukebox 10GB MP3 Player (I love it) for only $99 bucks .

I had left my old 6GB version of this one by Archos on the train, so I need to get another one.