On Wed, Jun 14, 2006 at 08:40:52AM -0700, alan wrote: > "PlayForSure" is the Microsoft branded DRM. "PlaysForS%$%^" is more like > it. (It is a very troublesome bit of code to keep working, even if you do > use Microsoft products.) It also drains battery life on the device > because of the extra cpu load. > > I have been looking at either the SanDisk or iRiver. (iRiver will play > ogg files!)
SanDisk players are turds. Bug-ridden pieces of crap. Creative doesn't deserve your money, and their products are not better than SanDisk's. Samsung's player isn't bad, but it's like an iPod with bling.. iRiver has Ogg going for it, but I wouldn't say it's got anything else. I'm looking at an iAudio U2 or U3 (random Asian manufacturer) because of its recording features, which are supposed to be at least as good as the typical digital voice recorder, and doesn't use unusual highly compressed voice codecs to be able to put a $150 price tag on a 64/128MB flash device because you can advertise that it can record a week's audio at RealAudio on a 9600 baud modem quality. No promises that either is actually decent at audio playback! Seriously, there's a reason why the iPod is the top seller in its market, and it's not fashion. Most music players are crappy and limited when you compare them to the iPod. They're either clunky compared to similar model iPod in size or functionality or both, or they're so buggy, unreliable, and missing essential features that anyone who buys one tells everyone they know to get an iPod instead. I've been looking for a decent quality non-Apple music player because I actually need support for WMA DRM, whether I want support for it or not. (Digital audio books..) The conclusion I reached was that every single product on the market was horrible. The Creative Zen Nano, for example, was hard to use and several times larger than my iPod Shuffle, and equally unsuitable for audio books. Bigger players just weren't any better. _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
