Hey again... yes, it's the THIRD post by me today.  I'm on a roll, go figure.

I picked up my Sandisk Sansa Express the other day and have been messing around with it.  It's more "bump proof" than my Zune and it doesn't require any funky software, which are the main two reasons I got it. But, it does have some minor issues and I thought I'd pass them along for anyone who's interested.

First, I gotta give props out to AnythingButIpod.com for having a good review of the thing in the first place.   It's pretty much what convinced me to go with that one over a few others.  But, there are a few things that they didn't mention that are important to me... and might have convinced me to go with another unit had I known.

The first issue I found right off the bat...  when you power the thing off, it doesn't remember where you were in whatever you were listening to.  Not a big deal if you're in the middle of a four minute song, but it's a major issue if you're 20 minutes into a 1 hour podiobook.  That kind of bites.  Unfortunately, that also immediately brought the second issue to my attention...

The fast forward is SLOW!  Not the worst I've seen, but I've seen MUCH better. :(  In an attempt to fix this, I decided to see if there was a firmware update. Result?   The third issue...

The firmware update tool doesn't work.  After dinking with it for way too long on three different computers (one of which blue-screened), I managed to get it to work once.  It went out, checked for an update and told me there wasn't one.  Nice.  As of now, the firmware of 01.01.01A2 is current.  If that saved one person from trying to go through the process of getting that silly updater to work, I've done a very good thing.  You're welcome.

Other than those three bits... so far, I like the Express.  I don't "worry" about it like I do with the Zune.  I can toss it in the tank bag or in a pocket with keys and it's no big deal if the back of it gets scratched.  It does what it does and not much else.  It's relatively simple, easy to use and it can take an extra 2GB microSD card.  I'll probably bug Sandisk to see if they can address the issues above in the next firmware update, but otherwise, I'm good with it. 

L8r!

Oh... almost forgot...  All this stands a slim chance of "going away" soon.  I've pretty much convinced myself that I should attempt upgrading Community Server sometime soon, and I'm guessing that GoDaddy's server is gonna barf on me.  Hopefully, I can get it all in there nice and happy like, but there's a chance I'll nuke it.  I *might* convince myself to copy and paste all my entries just to make sure I have them somewhere... but I kind of doubt I'll be that industrious before I decide to jump in head first.  Hey, at least I'm realistic about myself.  ;)

Rly L8r!

Tuesday, October 16, 2007 5:53 PM