So I’ve been toying around with the sansa view and rhapsody… advance america payday loanno fax payday cash advancepayday loan storefax free loan paydayloan money payday treeez payday loanlow interest payday loan,interest loan low payday,low interest rate payday loanonline payday loan applicationeasy payday loanpayday loan store milwaukeeonline payday loan instant approvaladvance cash loan payday softwareameriloan loan paydayadvance cash loan loan paydaypayday loan 1000payday loan paycheck advancecanada in loan paydaydebt get loan paydaymoney tree payday loanfast cash payday advancecompletely instant loan online payday,instant online payday loangeorgia loan payday,georgia in loan online payday2 loan online paydayadvance cash fast loan paydayadvance loan paycheck paydayloan oneclickcash paydayadvance loan online payday,loan online payday,instant payday loan completely onlinefax guaranteed loan no paydayloan payday till,loan till payday,info loan payday tillloan till paydayassociation canadian loan payday,canadian loan paydayno checking account payday loangeorgia payday loanez money payday loanquick payday advance loaninstant loan online paydayno fax cash advance for bad credit,advance bad cash credit loan loan,bad credit cash advanceadvance cash loan loan paydaycash till payday loancash advance business for sale,business cash advance,cash advance business opportunitycash fast loan paydayadvance america cashcash advance,cash advance america,business cash advanceadvance cash loan payday quickloan oneclickcash paydaylawsuit settlement cash advance,advance cash lawsuit pre settlement,lawsuit cash advanceno faxing savings account cash advance,no faxing required cash advance,advance cash faxing nocash loan payday tilladvance cash check credit nono fax cash advance,advance cash fax no,advance cash fast fax no It’s funny I have many of the same feelings about it that I had about the iriver… primarily because, from a hardware perspective, it’s nowhere near as elegant as the zune, which just has a certain beauty to it. Feature-wise, it has drag’n'drop support from windows, a big plus, as well as a very capable eq, and tons of ways to listen to your music.
One notable option I’ve missed from the Zune is the "recently added" category to filter just things that you’ve recently put on the player. It’s tragic that this would be infinitely more important to me on an 80 gig zune than a 16 gig flash player, but it’s nice that it’s there. Another neat feature is the wealth of artist information, very slacker like actually, gives you band bio etc.. with the click of a button. It’s a nice feature when using the custom radio channels, which I’ll get to in a sec, but by no means the "killer app."
The interface itself is a little on the clunky side, it feels a lot like it was designed by some very intelligent linux geeks. It’s got a main menu that is sort of an endless circle of options, which you rotate through with the wheel, it has music, videos, photos, radio, and (since I updated it) rhapsody channels, and settings. There’s no ability to add a custom background pic as your wallpaper (curses MS you’ve spoiled me), but they do let you cycle between 5 different color choices for the theme, which is a nice touch, I guess. When you drill down to the music you have a lot of meat… I kind of think, too much meat
your options are play all / recently added / artists / albums / song list / genres / my top rated / playlists / podcasts / audiobooks / and recordings
personally, I’m very used to the zune’s (and I guess for that matter the ipods) dedicated top level podcast management. I feel that podcasts should be on the main menu just like they did for the rhapsody channels. It’s a small gripe, but one that takes away from the elegance of the device. It does have audible support, which I’m sure is what the audiobooks section is all about, and I wonder if people who are into that would have the same gripe about those (the zune has no support for audiobooks at all, so it’s a non-issue at this point, but I bet they’d put a nice top level interface in if they did).
Like I said, the options for how to sort your music are pretty comprehensive, and I appreciate all of them. The podcast management is a little lackluster, and not using the zune software or itunes, I immediately realized how much of a pita syncing podcasts can be. My solution was to tell wmp11 to sync the folders that the zune uses for my podcasts, so now I’m using two programs to do it. I also got Juice working in vista (compatibility mode, and changing the config file to point to "documents" instead of "my documents") but that’s still 2 programs. The podcasts on the device are also nowhere near as user friendly as on the zune, which offers a special bookmarking / resume feature for podcasts, and dims the podcasts in the folder you’ve already listened to. The sansa doesn’t pretty up the fact that they’re just mp3s tagged with "podcast" as the genre at all. At the end of the day, the zune is still my podcast player of choice.
The hardware is nice with a rubberized wheel that spins infinitely with about 10 "clicks" in each turn so you get some tacticle feedback, with a single "home" button, and a power slider/hold button on the left. The headphone jack is on the bottom by the connector port… I guess I’m starting to come around to the thinking on this, that, by placing the headphone jack that way, when you’re messing with it it’s facing the right way, but it still seems a little awkward at first. It claims a 24 hour battery life for audio, which, since there are no moving parts, isn’t that hard to swallow.
The real reason for this experiment though (other than needing to take my anti-zune angst out on my bank account), was to try out rhapsody as a service, and specifically it’s ability to do what slacker does with custom and artist stations. This is where the whole setup really shines. Of course, the sansa is not the only rhapsody compatible player, in fact, my phone is also capable of doing rhapsody subscription content (not sure if it’s smart enough to do channels though), as well as the creative zen and a ton of other playforsure devices. I admit I have a soft spot for consumer choice. I think the sansa’s may be the only ones with out of the box channel support though, but I can’t be sure.
So, in rhapsody, any artist you browse can be a jumping off point for a channel. In addition, they have a ton of channels that are programmed by editors/dj’s. On top of that, you can pick from 1-10 artists to build a custom channel. Overall it’s extremely similar to what slacker does, and with my soulive radio test, I found it to offer a comparable station to what slacker gave me. To get the channel onto your player, you just drag and drop in rhapsody. Each channel is about 300 megs, and will update each time you plug it in. The play time on the channels is about 4 hours a pop. It will also automatically build a personal station based on your playback history, which they understandably claim, gets better the more you use it.
When you play the channel in the sansa, it basically has all of the functionality of a playlist, so you can pause, skip back and forward, artist / album info, etc… plus from your device you can add each track you like to your library instantly, and it’s smart enough to copy it over to your library in the appropriate folders, and do the same when you sync the device again with your computer’s library. In addition, (if for some reason you really wanted to) you can "purchase" the track direct from the device, and when you go to sync, you’ll get a pop up list with the tracks you wanted to purchase, and giving you the opportunity to confirm (or in my case) cancel those selections. A nice rhapsody perk for subscribers is a 10% discount on buying the drm free tracks. Granted it means it’s only 89 cents instead of 99, but that’s enough of an incentive to use them instead of anyone else if you ever buy mp3s.
The channel thing, really is a killer app, and definitely fills the hole I was looking to plug in light of my general dissatisfaction with satellite radio. I really long for microsoft to catch up to the competition on some of these things. At the risk of this being far too long a review, I’m not going to get deep into the playlists and sharing, but it is a very deep feature, and you can browse playlists from 1000s of individuals who have chosen to publish them as well as your friends. I can even send you tracks and playlists without you being a subscriber, and you can listen to 25 tracks a month for free. Which is handy for the occasional "hey cheap friend, check out this new song"
Anyway, I still love my zune for deep listening and podcast management, but I think rhapsody has a remarkable amount of depth for artist discovery that is fulfilling enough to look past a far less polished interface on the sansa.
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