MP3 Player Review (1 of 3)

I know I promised to write more regularly. And I shall. July is almost over, and with it Kids Camp will be finished up. That means a little breathing room in terms of free time. Nonetheless, I know that I need to devote more time to writing. Not just here on this blog, but in general. Even my sermon writing has suffered recently.

A while back, I asked what people would like to see appearing on the blog, and one of the suggestions was linux stuff. Now, honestly, as much as I like playing around on linux, that hobby has also suffered recently. Nonetheless, I still use Ubuntu as my only operating system. And so, I thought that I might share a few things about my experience as an everyday linux user. Interestingly, my first foray into this series won't have a lot to do with linux. Instead, we're going to talk about MP3 players.

Last year, while I was out working on the farm, I finally decided that I was tired with putting up with the closed nature of my iPod. I hated how difficult it was to get music onto the thing if you didn't want to use iTunes. And I hated how limited it was in terms of file format. And, though I doubt this would be an issue for many people reading this blog, the iPod is just not very well designed when you're primarily going to be using it while out on a tractor, or while tossing hay bales from a pickup truck. I don't think Steve Jobs really had that demographic in mind when he designed his player.

So, after looking around for a while, I finally settled on a Cowon iAudio 7 to replace my iPod Video 30Gb. And I was super happy with it when it first arrived. It fit all the criteria I was looking for. First of all, it was fully linux compatible. It looks like just a normal usb drive when you plug it in, and you can drag and drop your music onto it without having to resort to any proprietary programs. Also, it played just about every file format under the sun--most importantly for me, ogg vorbis and flac. It had physical buttons (albeit a little finicky) so that I could use the player in my pocket. And (as an added bonus) the battery life was ridiculous. It could easily go for 50-60 hours before it would quit on me.

Unfortunately, I broke the wonderful little player a few weeks ago. I broke the screen. It will still play music, but it is impossible to navigate, now. So, basically, I have a slightly obese iPod Shuffle.

So, about a week ago, I began researching linux-friendly MP3 players once again. I thought about just buying another iAudio 7, but after using it for about a year, I had enough niggles that I thought I could do better. Mainly, I wanted a player that truly had physical, tactile buttons. The iAudio 7 had a touch surface that was just annoying to use, and then 3 programmable buttons on the top edge. I basically used the top buttons for everything. This time around, I wanted to find a player that was designed for those of us that like the feeling of clicking in a button rather than swishing our fingers over a surface. What can I say? I'm old fashioned that way.

In addition to the Real Button requirement, I still wanted a player that could play my ogg vorbis and flac files (which was, by far, the most difficult requirement).

I ended up with the following players on my short list:
Cowon S9
Cowon D2 or D2+
Cowon iAudio U3
Samsung YP-U4
Samsung YP-P2
iRiver T7 Volcano

Now, these players all vary in price considerably. And not all of them met all of my criteria. What I ended up doing, though, was rather strange. I decided I would try out two players. One from my short list. And another one that was completely out of left field. These are the two players I bought:

Cowon D2+

SanDisk Sansa Clip

Thursday, I'll go into more detail about my experience with the Cowon D2+.