My Sansa e200 rants and raves
As you probably guessed from my last post, I got a Sansa e260 music player the other day. Here are my thoughts.
- Size is just fine. I don't think smaller would do any good.
- The screen is pretty nice in spite of its small size. I get a freaky stereoscopic effect when looking at it, though, which goes away if I close one eye.
- You have to set the clock yourself. Why can't it do this automatically during a sync?
- An alarm clock would have been nice, until you remember there's no speaker.
- The media converter software sucks. The video is actually sort of OK, but landscape pictures always get rotated to portrait orientation on the portrait screen, which means they're very small with two big black bands on the top and bottom. Silly. I'd rather have to turn the player sideways than lose so much resolution on an already small screen.
- I have to play a song to add it to the "Go List," which is the only playlist you can edit on the device. This means the Go List is useless as a jukebox-style list. I'd like to be able to listen to music and queue up more songs as I browse, but the Sansa won't let you do that. Edit #2 9/27/2006: Close but no cigar, SanDisk. A tip on an online bulletin board suggested a way to add music to the Go List while playing other songs. This seems like the feature I wanted, but it's fatally flawed. If you add to the Go List while simultaneously playing it, the Sansa fails to re-read the list -- it plays the Go List contents as of the moment you originally started it! In order to hear the music you added, you have to restart play of the Go List. Very non-jukebox-like. My criticism stands.
- The buttons are too hard to press. They're too small and the wheel gets in the way.
- The proprietary connector makes me angry. Every other applicable consumer device I own works with a mini-USB plug.
- The proprietary connector is especially annoying because none of the e200 accessories that plug into it are available yet. And how about a second USB cable so you can sync at work and at home? Forget about it.
- The volume resets to 50% every time you power off the device. Maybe they were trying to limit flash writes for this oft-changed setting. But wow, what a price to pay.
Overall, I'm pretty happy with it. It sounds good, it's small, and the battery life is apparently infinite -- or at least longer than I've gone between charging it.
Updated 10/1/2006 to remove link to site that apparently has moronic editorial policy.
Sansa E2xx Observations
I have had my E-250 for a week now and here are a few observations.
1. Download Updater from the Sandisk website so firmware will be checked and updated automatically as new versions are released. Most units on store shelves right now are two versions behind so updating will give you the most for your purchase.
2. The media converter software works like a charm. It has converted every video type I have thrown at it ( XVID, DIVX, MPEG2) with no problem. M-JPEG is an antiquated format, quality looks good, but the files sizes are much too large. Help is on the way. Rockbox will soon be releasing firmware for the Sansa so OGG video will be avaiable.
3. Battery life is very good. I have found a new battery needs to be cycled through at least a half a dozen times before if will operate to full capacity. I am now seeing over 5 hours of video. Music over 10 hours with half a battery.
4. Many accessories are on the way. Sandisk has signed on over 40 vendors. There should be a lot available for the holiday season, including that elusive second USB cable.
5. At first the buttons are hard to get used to, but after a week no big deal.
6. Liguidmetal back. Three times tougher than titanim. No scratches here.
7. MSC mode. Drag & drop your files. I have never tried to synch with WMP10 so I cannot comment on how well this works.
8. MicroSD slot. In a year a 2 GB card will be costing around 50 bucks. Nice upgrade to keep your player feeling new.
9. FM radio and FM record. Nice.
10. This thing is a great value for the money. As more accessories become available this thing will be a bona-fide Nano killer. Not really because Nano will always have the xfactor, but this unit is clearly superior in many many ways.
Just in passing i thought i'd ask a question. Can i format my Sansa e260 to get rid of the Rhapsody junk on it or will that clean off the firmware too? email me any ideas at operator863@yahoo.com
THANKS!!
plug the player in...go to player from my computer...click on view/folder options then pick to show hidden files...delete rhapsody junk
yeah so i put the usb cable into my computer and my computer cant find it. i installed the cd and stuff but it says i need to plug the device in but its already plugged in. i have to go to friends houses to put music on it and stuff. any one know why?
>> You have to set the clock yourself. Why can't it do this automatically during a sync?
How do you set the clock? I have a m240 that I just bought and I can't sync to a subscription service because the clock on the m240 isn't set.
my sansa e250r wont let me take any songs off it i dont know whats wrong but ever since i got the update its been screwed up
I use Windows Media Player to sync music and video to my e260. My first problem is deleting video. Windows Media Player doesnt have an option to let get to my videos or delete them. My second problem is that I dont seem to have the program to drag and drop onto my sansa, the main program for music, pictures, and video, or i just cant find it, all i seem to have is the media converter. Can someone help me out?
How do i add new or more playlists?
I'm not a tech guy so i got the sandisk with rhapsody. I hate it. The rhapsody sucks and so does the media player 11. I cant do crap on any of it, it wont read songs ive loaded on from rhapsody. and i hate the propriatary crap i get with rhapsody. I just wanted a sansa that i could use media player 10 with and not have to deal with the other rhapsoy crap. there now i've vented and now to go get a hammer from the garage and fix this thing once and for all..
i also have the rhapsody veryson of the e260, im wondering if anyone knows a way to get rid of the rhapysody crap on there because even after deleting every file on the thing plus formatting it, it still says i have 2.0gb space used on a 4.0gb mp3 player! any suggestions would be helpful!
actually ive figured it out, if anyone else experiences this, you have to delete everything on the drive (not including folders) when the mode is switched to "PlayForSure" and to get rid of all the crap that makes it the "rhapsody" version, i.e. 2gb of songs to fill the playlists that came on the mp3 player, you have to switch the mode to "rhapsody," then reconnect to your computer and open up the drive again and whack all the songs in the music file on that one.
when i put video on the sansa through the converter, i can hear the sound, but no video shows up on the screen.....anybody know whats going on?
im having trouble deleting songs from the mp3 player. i delete them from the drive when all of my folders are on my computer, but they still show up on the mp3 player. they dont play though, but they still show up.
does anyone know how i can fix this?
As weird as this sounds i have the problem the other james has(small world) and i cant see the videos i downloaded i only hear them.. Plz help
Can you add music to the SanDisk with Rhapsody, and then also add with Windows Media Player? Or will it replace the music you added with Rhapsody?
Can you add music to the sandisk with rhapsody, and then add more with windows media player? or will it delete the songs??
i just got my sansa e250r alot songs came with the player how do i get to delete them?
how do i download video onto my sansa?
please tell me
yeah when i download video i only get the sound of it. I used converter and that happened
I have had my mp3 for a few months and everything was going fine until a few weeks ago. All of a sudden, my player refused to synchronize my files. Some days it might synchronize some of them and skip others, but none of them play when i turn the player on. I am using Windows Media Player 11 and it says the error is C00D1236. I tried replacing the sync cable and that didn't work. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Had to struggle to get it working with WMP although I am no novice. It is a 4GB and somehow more than 2 GB was aready used up with the Rhapsody crap. I deleted some crap using explorer - but it still says only 1.5 gb free. I have at most copied 30 file to it. I figured out how to create playlists though. You create playlists in wmp and then sync them - which create new playlists on the sansa. Although no way to get rid of the GO list and other craapy predefined lists..
My Sansa mp3 player would not turn on, I almost returned it to the shop and bought an Ipod :o( but a friend of mine referred me to a great tech support website were I found a simple solution of how to fix mine.
Here is the page for the Sansa Support:
http://www.fixya.com/support/sandisk
I am sure it will help you guys also,
Marcella
omg i had my sansa mp3 for 4 months now and i tryed to delet a song on windows media player and it has the list in the synce part but there was no part of the list that said music (like it ussallly did) whats wrong any1 cant u help me
Dude... I feel so MP3 player dumb because I don't even know how to remove songs. Some how I downloaded all of my cousins stuff onto my Sansa and now all my memory is full, and I don't know how to remove it!!! Somebody please help...
xoxo
~SexyChocolate~
i just got a new i pod i bough froma friend and it came with songs i cant delet then cause they dont show up on my playlist. What should i do?
when I download songs to my Mp3.... and i play it back on my MP3..it says bad track even though it can play on my computer..do you kno whats wrong?..Please HELP! thx
_Veronica
i have been trying to delete videos from my sansa and i cant figure out how to do it can someone please help me?