Finding a Better mp3 Player then the iPod, The SanDisk Sansa

The iPod is by far and away the most popular and intuitive mp3 player in the world. Apple has made an absolute fortune on the thing along with iTunes store. Many things have gone wrong though. Battery life has sucked lately, iPods are not to everyones taste and most people simply don’t have large libraries, but require a screen to navigate through songs. This leaves us with the iPod nano. What started with the iPod mini, Apple have done it again with the nano. Even with the nano, its features can be lacking for what some people may want, even though Apple has filled the market to just about everybody that wants to listen to music anywhere.

On my lumbering search for a simple, small and full-featured MP3 player, I found the SanDisk Sansa. I could argue all day to determine the superior player, but I wouldn’t go very far as they are both equally as good, but in very different ways.

In our superficial society the iPod is a clear winner, because of its smooth and shiny interface plus its looks and its stylish package it comes in, but it basically only plays music. Which is great for 90% of people, but I wanted something more. The Sansa has radio, video, expansion slots (ect ect ect).

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SanDisk have shown us their awesome Solid State Drives. All 64 GB of them. Considering the size of the card and the fact that you can fit (almost) everybody’s music collection on there is a massive bonus. It is only a matter of time befor they become cheap eoguh for viable consumer use.. and watch out iPod.

SanDisk finally admitted that the new Sansa View is not up to scratch. People were fairly underwhelmed with the latest offering with SanDisk, with just about everything being the second best (as they always are).
Flash memory for videos…
Non-touch screen…

Lets just hope that they will make some revisions to the design and see what comes out of the works next.

We all knew it was an inevitability that iTunes would eventually go DRM free, and that time has arrived. A new section inside the iTunes store called iTunes Plus allows people to buy or upgrade previously purchased songs to DRM free. I know a couple of months ago Steve Jobs was making comments on how he wanted to take iTunes DRM free, it looks like he finally got his wish. I just upgraded my iTunes program to version 7.2, so I’m under the impression the update to iTunes was for the new iTunes Plus store where people can buy the DRM free tracks. A fair warning to all, as of right now its only EMI’s music library that is offered DRM free, but eventually the rest of the big music companies will probably follow EMI’s example and go DRM free.

Nice work, Microsoft! You have sold 1 million Zunes, which is quite an effort against Apple’s 100 Million Strong sales. The long fought battle between Stevie and Billy have been long and argous, from Macs to iPods, From Vista to Office, It looks like Steve has finally won the battle of the Music Players.

As you can see, Microsoft are still being screwed by Apple, SanDisk and Creative.

Anybody who has or has had a Sansa either loves it, or wants to destroy it.

The Connect got some pretty darn good publicity back at CES and since has been praised by many and cursed at by the superficial of the shiny generation.

Here is a general run down of the iPod nano, Connect and Zune.

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