Gadgets: March 2007 Archives
I'm currently in the market for a new MP3 player. I currently have a Creative Zen Touch 20GB which, in fairness, is a great device. The main points going for it are good battery life and a decent interface. However it lacks USB Mass Storage support, and has a very very annonying "Random" button on the front which I'm too good at accidently pressing.
Standard USB Mass Storage support is the main feature that I will be looking for in the new player. I have about 10G of music on the Zen, which means 10G free. You can transfer normal files to it, however unless the computer at the other end has the correct software, it's not all that useful. If I'm using Ubuntu or Debian, it's not too big a deal as I can simply apt-get install gnomad2, but on a Windows PC the Creative software is up to usual Creative standards. In order words, not the best.
Another nice feature would be Ogg support. I'm not going to re-encode the big pile of CD's in the corner of my room, but I would have no problem encoding new CDs using Ogg. WMA support is very down on my list of priorities for some odd reason :)
From searching around the internet I've come across the following options:
- IRiver H340: Seems to do all of what I want. Doesn't explicitly say USB Mass Storage Support though.
- Vibes: Looks nice, but has only 12G of space.
- Rockbox Based Player: Getting a device and flashing it with Rockbox will mean that even an Ipod will do what I want, and will even give me Doom!!
