Neither my wife nor I have a good record of checking pockets prior to laundry time, and my nano is the latest victim. What’s worse, we 
recently got a fancy new LG washing machine, which sounds like a 777 starting up. It’s a beautiful machine, but it’s not good for electronics survivability. The startling thing is the nano has some signs of life. I wasn’t getting it to start up initially, so naturally, I took it apart. I was able to sync it at that point, but it locked up on the screen you see here afterwards. Since then I had to let the battery go dead since it wasn’t taking a reset. After that, it synced again, and hasn’t locked up yet. My only problem now is putting the stupid thing back together. There’s a little 
ribbon cable connecting the click wheel and the headphone jack to the mainboard, and that’s giving me fits. In the meantime, I’m looking pretty hard at the Creative Zen V Plus as an alternative for this slot (I use the nano mostly as a workout player and for my Audible account). One can tell Apple really doesn’t want end users taking these things apart; there was some prying and peeling back glue, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to get the thing back together right. If I were a smarter man, I might work on putting the guts into an Altoids tin or something.
Archive for the 'mp3' Category
So I got the shiny new U10 a couple of weeks ago, and all were amazed by the wonder and beauty of it. The dock is a near-perfect implementation, and my only gripes with the player are the sort of sluggish menus, no album art (I like album art, sue me), and the small memory size.
Well, those iRiver dudes went and launched their update to this player, the iRiver clix. 2gb, cheaper, album art, updated interface, etc. At least it works with the dock for the U10. Here’s a pic.
I’m the impulsive type. I got reading a bunch of reviews of the iRiver U10, and got thinking that it seems like a cool little player. So I trolled eBay for a while, and lo and behold, I was able to score the 1gb version with a dock for $200. The dock alone retails at $69, and the player retails for $249.
Ok, it’s really expensive for a 1gb player. But it looks like the features are really cool, and it’s definitely one of the more unique players out there. My impulsiveness has an upside: both loyal Modstomp readers can get my thoughts on this little player when it arrives in a few days.
Firmware flashing is not for the faint of heart. Especially when upgrading to a 3rd party open source firmware that is not supported by the manufacturer of your device. By doing so, you potentially run the risk of ‘Bricking’ your beloved peice of electro-gadgetry, as well as the fact that you’ll definitely forfeit any remaining warranty you may still be relying on.
So… you can understand my reluctance to do so with my ever-so-beloved iRiver iHP-140 mp3 player. Even though my warrenty had long since run out, that just meant it would be that much harder to try to get support if I did happen to screw something up. But after reading the accounts of many successful upgrades on the RockBox forums, I decided to go ahead with it. With my fingers crossed and headphones on in anticipation, I followed the step-by-step (and quite easy) instructions. Once everything was in place I selected ‘OK’ to confirm the firmware upgrade and then held my breath…
Well, I’ve had my little iPod for a few months now. So naturally, I’m sick of it and I want a new mp3 player. The nano is great player, taken by itself; throw in iTunes, however, and it really causes me headaches. For one thing, all my media is stored on a Windows Media Center 2005 PC, so synchronizing involved making a second music library just for the iPod so iTunes wouldn’t frag my current library. Additionally, the iTunes interface really blows compared to WMP10, in my humble opinion. It’s a pain to cusomtize tags, make playlists, and organize music. It’s the Playskool effect – Apple tries to make things too easy by taking away control.
Anyway, check back over the next week or so for a report on the new Zen Vision:M, and we’ll see if I like it any better than I liked my last Zen.
PEZ is probably the most overpriced and delicious candy you can find at your local Wally-World. Who knew, however, that it could be converted into music as well? engadget posted this neat item this morning.
PEZ, of course, holds a special place in eBay lore (see here. Maybe that PEZ player could be this year’s corporate gift?
(sorry, links are broken because someone… ahem… broke the database this weekend.)
Ok… I’ve been on the MP3 bandwagon for quite a while now. I’ve been ripping and downloading MP3′s since way before Napster ever came on the scene. So when I decided to purchase a portable MP3 player, I decided to go with a player that could handle my vast collection of tunes. After months of comparison shopping I decided to go with the iRiver H140. It seemed to fit my style and I’ve completely loved it (even if the 40gb hard drive is getting a bit crowded).
Anyway… I recently decided to combine my audiophile habit with something else I love… reading. I figured audio books would be a great way to pass the time during my commute to and from work. I spend about an hour our of every day in the car so I thought that time would be well spent catching up on my reading. And so I was introduced to Audible.com.
