SANSA - South African Network of Skills Abroad .

Hello and welcome to the den of pain. Not really, but whatever.


Here we are – at the gates of buying yet another media player. For whatever reason you’re buying it:
-         To look metropolitan
-         To look cool
-         To fit in with all those folks in the subway having ear-buds stuck in their ears
-         To listen to important podcasts for self education and then discuss them with your friends and co-workers, while trying to pretend as if you’re better educated than they are, just think about the phrase ‘I was listening to this podcast...’

Or maybe you’re buying it for a real reason; enjoying yourself and completely shutting out the outside world – fair enough then, here’s a quick but definitely helpful review.

Please enjoy.

STORAGE SPACE – 8 GIGS

Wonderfully lovely, unless you’re planning to store the whole series of Friends on it, unless you don’t watch friends in which case I applaud you. For music, this space would be plentiful, if you’re wondering just how many songs you can cram in there, let me make a quick calculation for you;

If one song is about 5mg on large scale, then divide 8000/5= 1600, but of course given that most songs are smaller than 5 megs than we can assume that you can fit about 2000 songs on this little gadget. Lovely, isn’t it?

Videos you ask? Movies? Different story all-together, because firstly – all movies differ in size and quality and therefore if you get a simple Divx rip, which is about half a gig per movie, then you can fit about 16 on them in there, but let’s face it – that’s an ideal situation. Most likely you’ll go after large sized DVD quality films and then it’s a let down, because 8 Gigs just isn’t that much space. So between a couple of movies and a few albums – you’ll have your baby full of milk.

For those who want to expand their empire – there is a slot for a MicroSD card, so as long as you buy one – you can stick it in there and have more space.

BOTTOM LINE: Enough space to tinker with an average amount of songs, good enough for people who are not planning on keeping their whole life music collection on it. Think once more – 1600~2000 songs… enough you reckon?

EASE OF USE

Computer to player

Drag and drop.
Need I say more?
Wonderful, a lovely relief for those of us who hate to meddle in the complicated interface software that Zune/Ipod supply. Screw that complication. Just drag and drop.
Lovely.

Player interface

Very instinctive. A large circle button in the middle of the player lets you manipulate volume and browse through your collections. The circle button also has 4 buttons, left, right, up and down, which in turn commandeer such functions as “Back” “Forward” “Options” and  “Pause”. Simple stuff, nothing to worry about.

Navigating the player’s interface takes a couple of minutes to get used to, but as soon as you get a hang of it – it becomes second nature – alike to visiting the bathroom.

CONVERTING MEDIA TO PLAYER'S FORMAT

A converter software program comes in the package, but to keep the story short - it doesn't work very well and doesn't convert most of what I want to watch. 

I am the sort of person who absolutely hates digging around and trying to find converters/plug-ins/new software online - therefore - this aspect of the player fails. It doesn't convert videos, and that annoyed me at first, but now I don't try anymore. I just listen to music on it and watch movies on proper screens.

 
Various facts
 
-What you get in the package are: earphones, the actual player, USB wire, a manual, and a CD.
- The player has a bit of a lag when you switch between songs, if you press “Back” button too many times, you might end up too far back.
- The battery life is not bad and has lasted me for about 15 hours on music alone, not fantastic, but not bad.
- The display is bright and easy on the eyes, although not big, Zune for example is much better for watching movies, bit then Zune is bigger overall, and much more expensive.
- Durability is good, fell down a few times, but working so far. I reckon it can survive a trip to the beach.

There it is darlings, enough of that malarki.

Enjoy yourself and enjoy your lives!

Alex