Disapprove of New Sansa

MP3 players All other MP3 players
1

Ok, so here’s some “food for thought” on the new sansa that I hope SanDisk will fix before the new players come out in the future.

  1. Fuze+ is WAAAAAY to sensitive.  The songs literally change as I run.  I can’t even place it in my pocket, I have to make sure it’s carefully nestled someplace where nothing can touch it.  It’s a huge pain.

  2. I know everyone’s jumping on the “touch pad” phase, but when I have 1000+ songs it’s very unpractical for me to scroll by repeatedly flicking my finger down across the player (which I have to do about 100 times to actually get to the BOTTOM of my playlist).  It was MUCH more practical when you could just rotate the disk in the middle of the player.

  3. You need to fix the fact that when I’m listening to a song and hit “back” it doesn’t always go back to my song list.  Sometimes it just shows me the album artwork (which, really I couldn’t care less about) and then I have to tap THAT twice to get back to the song list.

  4. The menus and interface on this one PALE in comparison to the old fuze in terms of ease of navigation.  Took me a LOT longer to get my bearings with this one than the last one (which was so easy a monkey could’ve used it).

  5. This may just be a glitch with my particular sansa, but I’ve noticed that when I sort songs by “artist” I sometimes find songs uner the wrong person… even though when I sort them by “songs” they have the right name underneath.  In any case, just thought I’d add that.

If anyone from Sandisk reads this, I will send you my Sansa+ with $50 cash if you will just PLEASE send me one of the OLD sansa fuzes (with the large screen and the rotating button in the middle that I loved SO much).  I hate this new touch pad wannabe and would very much like my old sansa back that I’d come to love (before it broke…after 5 years of heavy use).

Respectfully Yours, 
            VERY unsatisfied customer.

2

Have you read the manual?

3

@alanj wrote:

Have you read the manual?

Well, having read “Very unsatisfied customer’s” post a couple of times, I would say that items 1,2,3 and 5 have nothing to do with reading the manual.

As for item 4, the whole point is that you didn’t need to read a manual for the Fuze, you turned it ON, and Away you went - It’s called INTUITIVE.

“Very unsatisfied customer” - try downloading and installing ROCKBOX (discussed elsewhere in these forums) - http://www.rockbox.org/

RB cures a number of issues with the Fuze+, and makes it almost useable. Not necessarily intuitive, but worth it just to solve the hyper-sensitive touchpad problem. At least I no longer have the urge to fire the thing across the street evry time I use the Fuze+.

I too much preferred the wheel on the Fuze, and I really wish Sansa would just give us a new improved View or Fuze, with larger capacities (32GB), and faster processors, without the pseudo-iPod ■■■■ of touchpads.

4

i agree, it is too sensitive, but having a small device with touch control

probably makes it unavoidable i think (the concept is flawed to begin with)

as in, i mean a lot of devices have a huge screen to use and this one only has the

touchpad below the screen area in a small little box.

in response to “1”

I’m wondering how you could have that problem if you updated your firmware ?

Turn the lock button on and it shouldn’t do anything in your pocket…

Although that comment makes me miss my old Creative ZEN, it had buttons on it

and i could navigate blind folded or in my pocket while riding a bike down the road

I prefer buttons over touchpad ■■■■ any day !

in response to “2”

I’m not sure why you would want to create a play list with that much.

I’ve had my fuze+ for a long time and never used a playlist once.

i hate them !

And as an alternative i would use the shuffle feature, but i don’t use that either.

in response to “3”

Album art is a very high priority to me and people who use the player like i do

as in, people that listen to albums and not just random songs in a play list.

I’m curious have you experimented with the view modes by hitting left/right ??

in response to “4”

Menu navigation ? i dunno if this one is that bad but i like my Creatvice ZEN’s

navigation layout / functionality better, that device was just flawless as far as i’m concerned.

in response to “5”

You didn’t state what formats your using… And have you used any tag’ing software ?

If you collecting music from random sources the tags can be pretty badly messed up

and i have seen a bug with flac files too, if artist and album artist tag fields both exist

it causes a bug where it says “Album Artist=” as the artist name.

I have not seen that bug with any mp3 files though.

Also i use Tag&Rename and have 0 problems with ANY artist names with my music collection

(i have about 30,000 songs - each track with the tags edited and verified proper by me)

so i think as long as YOU make sure your files are good then the fuze+ will handle them just fine.

NOTE: this info assumes people already know that fuze+ reads so called “tags” from music files.

so it is not gonna matter what the file name is, if the tag is broken it will show up broken in

the viewing area in the fuze+ plus (i wanted clarify that for people who don’t know)

edit: fixed my horrible spelling lol

5

Agree with GypsyRedHawk and others. SanDisk really botched this one bad. I can’t keep mine in my pocket because the touch - pad is too sensitive. But redesigning the interface? Seriously!?! I have an e200, and had an orignial Fuze (failed, which is why I ended up buying the Fuze+). This thing is the worst. Forget the user manual. I didn’t need it on the other two, and I’m not reading it on this one either. The two older ones were intuitive; this one is garbage. I threw the Fuze+ away and bought a cheap player from WalMart just so I could find the song I want to hear. Sorry SanDisk, you might get me back with a new device, but you can be sure I won’t go on your name, because you violated my trust in your product. I’ll need to check and verify that you have a decent product before I go back.

You know the really funny thing? The only thing anyone I have ever really talked to ever wanted from the old interface was to be able to sort songs based upon id3 tag fields. That is the ONLY complaint I have ever heard. You couldn’t just listen to your customers?

6

It seems to me that Sandisk just wasn’t willing to put too much effort into this thing. According to Rockbox developer Pamaury, this thing most likely has a third-party RTOS, which Sandisk probably tried to port to this device. I’m guessing they were thinking this would be easier than creating custom firmware. The result is overly bloated, very laggy, highly glichy $### which I’m sure has caused the downfall of the Sansa series’ reputation.

Also the physical construction seems to have taken a backseet, as well. The old Fuze had a metal construction, with a nice feeling cloth-like material covering the back for easier grip. With this one, they slapped together the cheasiest plastic they could. And this thing is heavier, too.

Personally, I think Sandisk just stopped caring. That might explain why there is no successor to the Fuze, even after two years (and counting) after initial release. Sure, they released the Clip Zip, but I’m thinking that’s going to be it. I wish they would visit these forums, and make announcements when they discontinue firmware updates for there products, but it doesn’t seem like they ever will.

To put this in perspective, if you were to ask Sandisk about how glitchy the firmware might be, I’m guessing they would probably say it’s quite stable. The Rockbox website, run by people who AREN’T looking to make a profit, say the’re firmware is “unstable”. Now this morning I tried listening to an album on the bus. The OF crashed three times before I gave up, and listened to the same album with Rockbox. I then began listening to several other albums, as well. Eventually, after about an hour or so, Rockbox crashed once.

So, I think it’s safe to say reading the manual won’t help you unless it tells you either how to install/use Rockbox, or how to become a software developer, and fix this firmware, thus doing Sandisk’s job for them (which is exactly what Pamaury has been doing for about two years! ).

7

I’ve had my Fuze+ for about a year now and use it regularly, it’s never crashed. Then again, I haven’t put Rockbox on it.

8

@alanj wrote:

I’ve had my Fuze+ for about a year now and use it regularly, it’s never crashed. Then again, I haven’t put Rockbox on it.

You lucky, lucky person! I had to put Rockbox on it BECAUSE of the crashes (and also because it’s so slow).