Date: 2008-07-01 23:43:00
the continuing mp3 player saga
I'm past the point of being charitable to the cheap DSE MP3 player just because it's cheap. Over the last two days it has twice spontaneously rebooted while playing audio, it has become confused during navigation among folders and reset itself to the first track in the first folder, it nearly caused me to miss my bus this morning because it was intolerably slow while copying some tracks to it, it eaten up its first battery, and annoyed me every time I turned it on by the lack of a pause function. What a piece of junk.

So, I picked up a Creative Zen Stone Plus 2GB. So far, this player seems great. It has a functional pause, a cute little OLED display, small size and light weight, a built-in rechargeable Li-ion battery, an FM tuner, and a user interface that isn't slow.
[info]pasketti
2008-07-01T14:30:22Z
I have found that the cheap stuff is cheap for a reason, and that it's usually more cost-effective in the long run to pay a few extra bucks.

This goes double or triple for tools.
[info]ghewgill
2008-07-02T08:13:58Z
Yeah, I'm usually good about buying quality stuff when appropriate. I didn't think that they could make an MP3 player quite that bad, so I didn't worry about it. Clearly, I should have.

I bought a wood saw at the hardware store a while ago. I only needed it for one thing at the time, and I use a saw maybe twice a year these days, so I just went for the super-cheap option. The handle broke before I was finished with the job I needed it for. Pretty pathetic.

I did spent the money to move, all the way to NZ, the small set of quality tools I have collected over the years. Those continue to serve me well.
[info]banana
2008-07-02T17:33:31Z
You're expecting for too much - pause is a geeky feature that most people wouldn't understand.
[info]ghewgill
2008-07-06T10:05:43Z
Surely not - even the lowest of the low end portable tape players had a pause function!

I think.
Greg Hewgill <greg@hewgill.com>