I own a 16GB View, and here are my suggestions:
First and foremost, fix all the problems with the firmware. I think most of the users will appreciate that more than anything else.
The SMC software for video conversion DOES NOT WORK, period! But that’s a whole other issue, which I have found and further developed a satisfactory workaround (check my other posts).
The filename duplicating thing with video files on the expansion card is more than annoying; it’s a real pain-in-the-rear. Music files are not an issue (at least for me) since I store all of my music files on the View’s main memory. This oddball and troublesome problem only occurs with video files stored on the expansion card. Check posts from others on this and other forum. This problem has been around for at least 6 months or longer. It would not be a big deal, but duplicating filenames on 20 movie files 10, 12, or more times goes beyond annoying when you have to scroll thru a bunch of files to find the one you want! You do the math.
Maybe the SanDisk people are waiting for an accumulation of other glitches to be reported for the View firmware before they’d release a fix. Or mayber they don’t feel that it would be worth it for them to spend their capital on supporting and fixing their products. Only their management knows, and they ain’t saying. But a company can’t and won’t survive if they don’t pay attention to ensuring customer loyalty.
On the other hand, if they do plan to come out with a fix, here are some other (non-fix) features that might be nice to mitigate some of the aggrevations most of us are having and have been experiencing (again, read posts from others - it’s not just me), and to keep us loyal to SanDisk’s products. But first Sansa, fix the problems so the dang thing works properly!!!
New features I (and I’m sure others too) would like to see written into the View firmware:
Make scrolling the menus circular, instead of stopping at the end or at the beginning. The older Sansa MP3 players can, and still, do this. When you have 400 or 500 files to scroll through, it’s a hazzle to backup and scroll from say X, Y, or Z all the way back to A, B, C, etc. Especially when you’re trying to find a certain song or picture by name. I have 3,500+ songs and 1,500+ pictures on my 16GB + 8GB (expansion card) View. So this would be a welcomed feature. My thumb is beginning to develop a repetitive motion disorder! LOL
Have more user customizable EQ settings. The preset EQ settings on the View ■■■■. I prefer my own EQ settings, but with only one user definable EQ setting, I would have to change the settings every time I want to adjust to whether I’m using a set of Sony earbuds, a Sennheiser closed headphones, a Klispch ProMedia powered speakers, or the Harmon Kardon stereo with big speakers. So having more than one user EQ setting would be nice.
A dimming feature for the screen would be nice for night time play (I think someone else has mentioned this before). The View has a nice bright screen, but the 1 million candlelight power (at least it seems that way when going from total darkness) is really unnecessary for paying music or the radio. There are times when I’d like to preserve my nightvision while listening to music, but when I go to change up on a song or radio station, I get blinded and would take about 5 to 10 minutes to really get my nightvision back.
Make the “Refreshing Database” user selectable. It shouldn’t have to update the database every time it powers up (well, at least from my perspective…maybe this is limited by the software code itself), since I don’t (and I doubt anyone else does either) add or subtract files to the View every time I turn the player off or on.
Oh, another nice feature upgrade would be the ability to fast forward videos in large chunks - say in 10 minute increments. Watching a full-length Hollywood movie can be another aggravating thing when the player freezes up halfway or 3/4 way through a movie. Fortunately, this doesn’t happen too often. But when it does, I’d have to reset the player, power up again, run the video and hold the fast forward button down for 5+ minutes in order to get back to where it’d stopped. And no, it doesn’t save the last played spot. When the player freezes, it does not put a bookmark where it had left off, because it just had a brain-fart!
Yes I know that it is a really small screen to watch movies with, but is passable on long plane rides, or waiting endlessly at airports. It’s nice to have 100 or 150 movies at my fingertips (on SD Micro Cards) and be able to watch videos on the View for 5 to 6 hours without worrying about dead batteries (that’s something I can’t say for my laptops or portable DVD players). The closest is my Kojinsha UMPC (about half the size of a small notebook PC), which last about 3 hours for watching video from the hard drive. But the View is much smaller, and it’s more convenient than whipping out a big notebook PC.
Anyone else has any features they’d like to see from Sansa. I don’t even know if anyone from Sansa read this forum, even though they might be sponsoring it. There is an old saying: “Spit in one hand, and wish in the other. See what you’d get first!” Of course, we can always dream!
No bull, just straight talk.
Have a good weekend everybody.
