To sum up the review so you can get on with life … it’s a piece of crap. Don’t get it.

First of all, it seems to be of a new generation of media device that is recognized as a media device and only lets you transfer music through Napster or the Microsoft player .. whatever it’s called. I don’t use either and could not figure how to just drag music over on the the player, unplug and play.

Ubuntu recognized the device and let me move files over. Then when I unplugged it would get stuck (as it is now) on a screen that says “Refresh Database” and stay there. Tech support had me connect the device by

1. Power down device
2. Slide “hold” button to right (on)
3. Hold left search key (previous)
4. Connect to USB

Now windows recognizes it as a USB device. Then he tells me to reformat the drive in FAT32 (it was FAT16). Now it works. great. I’m happy.

So I load up almost 3gigs worth of songs and take it to work for an 8 hour shift driving around. And hear “Crisis” and “Corruption Inc.” over and over and over again. It looks like the device only recognized 86 songs to play. (they both have myspace pages I refuse to link to)

Feck.

So I take it home, reformat the device and the microSD. Great it boots again. Load music. great it’s happy still. Load up the device, disconnect … “Refresh Database.”

DAMMIT

I’m just going to call Sansa and tell them to send me something better, or the version 1 of the device so at least I can load Rockbox on it (oh yeah. I tried that too. turns out V2 is incompatible at the moment.)

At least my ipod is handy as a paperweight. This one is complete crap. OH! and the screen got scratched before I even took it out of the house to listen to it. Just sitting around on my desk it got scratched!

Like I said at the beginning. Don’t get it, it’s a waste of time.

I was getting peeved that the music on my (gifted) iPod wasn’t readable by anything that couldn’t decode the iTunes database structure. Well, the music is readable, but you can’t tell what song you’re clicking on unless you memorize the length and size of every song. The names are replaced with things like FWOX.mp3 in folders of similar names with dissimilar tracks (not of the same album). Plus you couldn’t copy (decoded) music from the iPod to another computer unless you purchased it through iTunes and were transferring it to one of your five approved machines. And you couldn’t play open-source music formats (ogg, flac, etc)

Well, I fixed that.

http://www.rockbox.org/

Solves all problems iPod related. Well, software related.
I installed the opensource firmware for my iPod. Then I used the tool for converting the iTunes database and can play music. I didn’t reformat or anything, just installed over existing ipod data.

Not only can I play ogg files, and mpeg video, but many other lossless forms as well. It acts like a regular removable hard disk now, and can play and transfer files (and pictures etc) from anywhere on the drive.

And it’s theme-able. Different skins and fonts etc. Works on my charger/fm broadcaster. Linux, XP, osX all good.

They have firmware for many other players as well. not for my myMusix, but oh well.

I’ll have to find another podcatcher besides iTunes. But that won’t be much of a problem.

yay.

I also managed to get the Belkin USB dongle working. It’s model F5D7050 version 2000 apparently. I did use ndiswrapper for that one, and used the M$ucks drivers on the install CD. That works on this newer laptop, I’ll try it on the older compaq later.

yay. I’m happy
pb

Now, if you have never used a floppy disk or liked flashy graphics to tell you how to do simple computer actions in a specified way, you might like it.

If you’re like me and want to uninstall all the crap and just use it like a portable hard drive, go here

http://www.u3.com/uninstall/

Tell U3 what you think, download the program, insert you drive, run the uninstaller and reclaim your drive.

Make sure you don’t have any important info on there first. It will be destroyed.

I run Firefox off linux at home and off my iPod using the PortableApps version when I’m at a windows machine.

Essential plugins:
Foxmarks - allows you to synchronize bookmarks across different computers
Tab X 0.9.2 – adds a “close tab” X to browser tabs
Adblock with FilterSetG (not plus) – stops advertisements before you see them whith a customizable black list.
FoxyTunes – controls your media player from your browser window. No floaties or system trays to mess with. Mine is set to control dBpowerAMP, which also runs off my iPod (very cool)
Gmail Manager – allows you to check and manage multiple Google Mail accounts.
Brushed (Theme) – cool silver theme for Firefox

Just FYI. And also so I can find them all again if I need to.

I chose Xubuntu because the Ubuntu user forums are fantastic, and I didn’t want all the bloat etc that comes on Ubuntu or Kubuntu. (Although Kubuntu is very nice and I used that for a while) Xubuntu uses a desktop manager called XFCE and it’s very lightweigh and bloat-free. It’s not quite as configurabale as KDE on Kububtu but it’s good enough for me.

Linux definately takes some learning. But that was always my complaints about macs… they assume that everyone wants a function to work the same way. That and one-button-mouse issues… I’ve actually reformatted this HDD several times with different linux “distros” (flavors) and redone ubuntu a couple times as well.

at the moment, I’m taking a break from installing MythTV on this box. MythTV acts like a digital video recorder on the computer. I run the TV cable through a card on the computer and record the shows I want to watch later. Like TiVO without the monthly fees. The idea is to record shows down here, then burn them to a DVD and watch them upstairs or whatever, but I’ve got to get it running first. I’ve thought about reviving the other desktop on the floor and using knoppmyth on a dedicated box, but I’d rather just run it in a background session on this machine and refurbish the other one later.
Doing things like “compiling source code” still makes no sense to me. It’s kind of like copying off someone else’s chemistry test… the answers are there and I have no frigg’n clue what it means, but it seems to get the results I’m looking for.

and on.

pb

blah. sigh. one more time I guess.

edit: fixed it. just needed to reload the CSS file too

hmm, clean the garage, screw with the websites, or start on taxes…