@jk98 wrote:
“But I doubt you’re ever very far away from an AC outlet to plug in a charger?”
it is not about being far from an outlet for a long time, but remembering to recharge a player with a built in battery when it needs it, and leaving enough time to do so. Some chargers will charge up to 4 AA batteries in just 15 minutes. So by your reasoning, manufacturers should design & build an mp3 player for those few who can’t remember to charge their units? Has the cell-phone industry, who sells many, many more units than the DAP industry done this? No. They and other 3rd-party vendors sell chargers, car-chargers and even protable chargers powered by AA batteries. Same with the mp3 market. What the manufacturer does not offer, opens the door for 3rd-party accessory companies; a symbiotic relationship and one that encourages free enterprise, innovation and advancement in technology.
“but even then you can carry a USB charging device powered by . . . yep, your AA batteries.”
That seems very annoying. One would need 4 AA batteries to reach around 5 volts. If one could power the player from an external battery pack it wouldn’t be so bad, but charging the internal battery from an external battery pack does not seem like a desirable thing to do. I don’t see the difference. You would be carrying 2 devices either way. And as in the point I was making above, it’s a benefit to those who happen to forget to charge their devices and get caught short. It’s not meant as an everyday, totally reliant method.
“I don’t buy this as an oversight on SanDisk’s part. A firmware boo-boo? Definitely!”
Not really, as a 4000 or so song limit seems reasonable when the player can’t hold more than 16 gigs, since most people use a bitrate of at least 128 kbps for their music. Why is this reasonable? NOT having a limit seems reasonable. A limit is so . . . well, limiting. :stuck_out_tongue: Having a 4000 or so song limit when 16 gig micro SD cards are available though, and the player could have 24 gigs of storage is not a good thing. Maybe you haven’t heard; the 16GB SDHC card is available NOW! Yet SanDisk said they did not have time to fix this in the latest firmware release for the Fuze on Friday. Users will have to wait until the next one. And what about the e200 series users? They’re in the same “4000 song limit” boat, but no firmware update has even been hinted at for this model.
"Besides, they (SanDisk) knew going into this realm that with the SDHC micro-card the possible near-future total memory capacity would be 40GB (8GB on-board & 32GB SDHC card). "
They also knew they would have firmware updates before then. Did they really? (see above)
“They should have planned (key word: planned) for it regardless!”
They did plan for it, they planned future firmware updates. Not very well, it seems! Since they are a leading maker of micro SD cards, they know exactly when certain capacity cards will be available. Exactly my point! But as in other large companies, many times “one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing”. How long are the users that are buying the 16 gig cards as we speak going to have to wait for the firmware update that will “fix” this issue that shouldn’t have been as issue in the first place?
