Well, with the amazingly vast plethora of suggestions I got
P), I went with
this Sandisk Sansa e130 and
this Kingston 2GB SD card with USB reader.
A quick review will have to do for now. I actually got this player for use in my car to replace my POS Koss-brand CD-MP3 player. I would have bought a deck that takes SD cards, but I don't know a thing about installing them, and I really wanted to be able to listen to music for the 7hr car trip home after the semester ends. So, in the meantime, I've at least got a portable player that reads SD cards.
Thus far:
The player only reads v1 ID3 tags. Advice: USE THEM!!! If you do not, it will not sort your files by folder. It will sort them all in one huge alphabetical list. Without reading the manual on the mini-CD that came with the package, there might not be a way of skipping ahead by folder or several songs at once, only one-by-one. With support for a 2GB SD card (or even just the 512MB of internal memory), well, that's room for a LOT of songs.
So make sure your files are tagged and organized, otherwise you'll have one big mix "tape."
It needed a firmware update right out of the box for additional file sorting capability. The firmware update adds the ability to create playlists.
It runs on one AAA cell. I like this because it doesn't rely on any proprietary battery, and the battery is easily replaceable. If it dies, no need to stop the music and let it recharge, just pop in another AAA. Head over to Thomasdistributing and take advantage of one of their deals where you buy a charger and get a small truckload of batteries free; then you're set for the next few decades.
It has a 5-band custom or preset equalizer, with gains of ± 13dB. It also has some SRS presets. Warning - when messing with presets, turn the volume DOWN when changing them. Got all the EQ bands turned down? If you switch to one of the SRS presets, all those changes are turned off. One word: ouch.
Using it in WinXP was very easy - plug it in. That's it. It appears as a new drive, and you can copy and paste with it.
Want to use it as a portable data storage device? Go for it. Copy EXEs to it, anything, it doesn't care what goes into its memory. The other neat thing - it seems that I didn't need to get an SD reader. When the e130 is plugged into the computer through its USB cable, two new drives appear - one for the internal memory, and one for its card slot. And, it doesn't need a battery for this functionality. It draws power right from the USB port. So this thing can function as a 512MB pocketdrive, or as a SD reader/writer for cards up to 2GB.
Powering it off is easy - hold down the power button, and it displays a "Powering Down" message, with 5 dots that begin to disappear. After about 3-4 seconds they're all gone, then let go of the button, and it shuts down.
The screen is nicely backlit, with what looks like that used in Indiglo alarm clocks.
The cord is short. 9". Good or bad? I don't know. The player is so light that it can just hang there off the front of the computer while you transfer files.
Included software: Don't know, haven't gotten that far yet.
It is also possible to use the internal memory in concert with the external, so the maximum memory for this is effectively 2.5GB, with the maximum supported 2GB SD card.
I still can't get over how light and tiny those SD cards are. "Feel like I'm gonna
break the damn thing!"
Negative things:
- Nothing is attached to it. There are little rubbery things that cover the SD slot and USB adapter plug. They are not secured to the unit in any way - easy to lose. Same with the battery cover.
- When using the SD card, it takes 48 seconds to "synchronize" or update its playlist.
- There's a 1 second delay between pressing a button to advance a song, and the player's reaction.
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