To whoever is in charge of the firmware and/or someone who can pass this along

MP3 players All other MP3 players
1

since sandisk seems to have abandoned the express (but is still distributing it to retails)

for the love of god, open up the firmware or give enough info on the chipset so people can put rockbox on it

[…]
[Wed Jul 11 2007] [20:33:31] <chrisjs169> I can’t remember who it was that was asking me if I had pics of the SE earlier, but I found them on ABi
[Wed Jul 11 2007] [20:33:36] <chrisjs169> (http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archi…mbled.php#more)
[…]
[Wed Jul 11 2007] [20:51:30] <saratoga> chrisjs169: looks like a sigmatel chipset, so probably not
[…]
[Wed Jul 11 2007] [21:11:08] <chrisjs169> “<saratoga> chrisjs169: looks like a sigmatel chipset, so probably not” <- so the SE most likely can’t be ported?
[…]
[Wed Jul 11 2007] [21:29:00] <saratoga> chrisjs169: theres almost no info for those chips
[Wed Jul 11 2007] [21:29:19] <saratoga> if that model is based on arm, it might be possible, but would likely be a gigantic effort to get working
[Wed Jul 11 2007] [21:29:23] <saratoga> so i’d say the odds are near zero

seriously, if you’re not supporting it or is not FIXING IT WITH A **bleep** FIRMWARE UPDATE, give it to the hand of people who can

2

This would be a great idea.  If they can’t be bothered doing it themselves, then they should at least have the common decency to let the user do it themselves.

3

No reply… well I suppose if you can’t properly produce a player that works then it would be too much to expect you to be able to read this forum.

Today’s express problems for me include:

  • Three random resets while trying to pick tracks
  • Invisible tracks added to the end of albums (for example, a 10 track album is listed as 15 tracks and when I try to press next at 10/15 it goes to the same track again this time listed as 11/15, and so on.  When I look in the directory there are only 10 tracks in it)
  • an empty folder that won’t delete

Oh well just more of my time wasted…

Message Edited by darcyscarrot on 03-04-2008 11:43 PM

4

If I had my dibs, I would request only ONE f/w update.  Provide an option to set the device for MSC mode, one that I could take to any computer and use the thing as a USB thumb drive.  At least then it might be useful for something.  A thumb drive with a radio.  Hmm…

5

My player is awesome it’s rotten so many people are having a bad experience with this little player but I love it, I use it for the gym and running. It hasn’t let me down yet! I was so impressed I bought a Sansa e250 aswell.

6

darcyscarrot wrote:

No reply… well I suppose if you can’t properly produce a player that works then it would be too much to expect you to be able to read this forum.

Today’s express problems for me include:

  • Three random resets while trying to pick tracks
  • Invisible tracks added to the end of albums (for example, a 10 track album is listed as 15 tracks and when I try to press next at 10/15 it goes to the same track again this time listed as 11/15, and so on.  When I look in the directory there are only 10 tracks in it)
  • an empty folder that won’t delete

Oh well just more of my time wasted…

Message Edited by darcyscarrot on 03-04-2008 11:43 PM

I’m not to sure what your expecting. SanDisk does not come over to these boards and reply to each and every request of the users of this community. The mods do what some might consider a decent job at replying to issues that are in regards to people getting his/her player replaced.

But its not like the firmware developers are going to come in and sweep you off your feet. The most that can be be done (or at least is reasonable in my opinion) is to make your post and try to get people to back you up.

Do you think Microsoft or Sony go in after every single customer who has issues with 1 or 2 of his/her product? I understand that if you had a business it might be different and you would save everyone to keep your business in tact, but the fact of the matter is that you don’t.

Try to see it from a business standpoint as opposed to just a consumers. Would it make dollars or no sense to hire a team of developers for a product that has already reached its end of production? Then you have to hire testers to make sure your not releasing something worse into the market.

All this to please to please a few hundred customers(could vary based on units sold of course, I have no idea what that number is); when it cost me thousands.

Personally, I think it would be awesome of SanDisk to release a firmware update, whenever more than 100 people jumped behind it and voted for it. But I can’t blame them for not doing it, it wouldn’t make business sense.

Besides, Its is not like SanDisk ignores its warranty on the product. Instead of, as you said, “wasting your time” dealing with it, get it replaced. There are plenty of people with an Express that works for all intents and purposes. They didn’t settle for a halfass’ed player, neither should you. Call and explain the issues with you player, call more then once if you have to.

I know some of you are not going to like my opinion, C’est la vie my friends…it’s just my rant for the day.

Message Edited by Enigma on 03-05-2008 07:39 AM

7

I was sort of being sarcastic.  I don’t seriously believe that any large company would read every single post on a support forum. I was merely bumping the thread in the hope it might get some attention.  I was bumping it in a complaining fashion, of course.

Still you’ve sort of missed the point by saying that a firmware update would be great.  At this point it’s irrelevant.  Yes, it would be great but if they just gave the info on the chipset to the proper people who are willing to give support (be it through rockbox or whatever) it would be even better.  As far as I can see it would benefit Sandisk in more than one way.  Firstly, it would be easier to get complaining people like myself off their case and secondly, perhaps more importantly, it could possibly provide a market for them to sell the rest of their stock.  It’s surely far easier to sell a product with full support (albeit hackable) than a product that you are no longer able to justify providing updates for.  Of course, this is all very much only if they are willing to give the information and if it is possible for the clever people who do this sort of thing to provide alternative support for it.

8

darcyscarrot wrote:
I was sort of being sarcastic.  I don’t seriously believe that any large company would read every single post on a support forum. I was merely bumping the thread in the hope it might get some attention.  I was bumping it in a complaining fashion, of course.

Still you’ve sort of missed the point by saying that a firmware update would be great.  At this point it’s irrelevant.  Yes, it would be great but if they just gave the info on the chipset to the proper people who are willing to give support (be it through rockbox or whatever) it would be even better.  As far as I can see it would benefit Sandisk in more than one way.  Firstly, it would be easier to get complaining people like myself off their case and secondly, perhaps more importantly, it could possibly provide a market for them to sell the rest of their stock.  It’s surely far easier to sell a product with full support (albeit hackable) than a product that you are no longer able to justify providing updates for.  Of course, this is all very much only if they are willing to give the information and if it is possible for the clever people who do this sort of thing to provide alternative support for it.

dont worry, its just my rant. Sometimes i feel the need to just get some ideas out.

In regards to giving the chipset info to Rockbox, I’m pretty sure sandisk is happy with the money its making now. And does not feel the need to give out, what I can only assme is propietary chipset information. I agree, this would make that small niche of users happy, but it does not seem to be a big enough niche to move the SanDisk business giant.

as you pointed out, sure they would get rid of people that complian (like yourself, as you so kindly pointed out) but  the only people (probably only peolpe anyway) who have to hear your complaints are limited to this forum, and the Customer / Technical Support staff.  And more often than not, they cant do a thing about it; they are just the messenger.

Message Edited by Enigma on 03-05-2008 02:46 PM

9

Enigma, i dont think you even see the problem

ALL sansa express has the same problems: randomization bug, random setting resets, the 1000+ song bug, building data base error etcetc

these are fixable via a firmware update, but sandisk isnt even doing that anymore, therefore the least they can do is to make it open source-able so the community can fix sandisk’s incompetence

now how is giving the chipset info going to going to cost them more money, IF ANYTHING, they will profit from it, after they open source the express, they can just fire the express dev/programming team

and dont give me some bs about how it will be bad for sandisk to give the chipset info, most of all the other players CAN have rockbox on it

in the end, if you dont see this as sandisk’s fault, you are completely ignorant

10

Firstly, stop taking this as a personal attack. Im just discussing it becuase its on the table. You don’t have to call me, or anyone else ignorant. Grow up and have an adult conversation…basicly, do try to restrain your personal attacks. Its uncalled for.

Secondly, although everything you say sounds reasonable from a consumer perspective, I can only assume that its a different view from corporate office. I previously mentioned that I agreed with the fact that the Express did a horrible job filling its role as an mp3 player. But this an mp3 player folks, not life or death. We (atleast I do) just  accept the fact that the player sucked and move on.

You say they are fixable, but something tells me your not a firmware engineer. Sure I can agree wtih the fact they are probably fixable via firmware update. But you nor I know how much work really goes into fixing something like. ANd considering all the things that would need to be fixed, might be more trouble then its worth.

If rockbox wants chipset info to work on the express, then they should try to contact sandisk through the means that they normally do. Or take it the same way they got e200 chipset info.

No, it wont cost sandisk a penny. But do you think they really care? They product has been removed from the market (as far as sandisk is concerned) and they are working on newer projects and players. What express dev team? I doubt there is any since the product is no longer being made, only supported through tech support and customer service.

You say most of all the players can have rockbox on it, but again… i get this feeling as if you never did any of teh devolpment yourself.

If I was on a rockbox team, I would be too busy making rockbox for players that people actually use. There are 101 other mp3 players that would do better with rockbox on it. And I’m sure there isn’t this endless supply of rockbox devolpers, or atleast not enough to drop everything and do what it takes to please you and your needs.

Be realistic. Compare how many people actually have this player in there hands and are actualyl experiencing problems, to the other more popular players with there own “problems”. As a rockbox devolper and marketing person, wouldn’t you want to get your name out more by working on players that would please a larger consumer base?

Yes, SanDisk dropped the ball on the express. We live and we learn. I have had tons of sony products, and even had a few messup on me terribly. Did i swear off sony products? No. Becuase its a top name brand and regardless of my bad experience, they do a (generally) goodjob making the products they make. (w00t for the psp)

So you can go ahead and swear off sandisk and purchase whatever tickles your fancy, the guy that won’t pay 20 dollars for an upgrade to his itouch firmware will just replace you in the consumer line.

Again, I’m not trying to be a jerk and rain on your parade, I’m just giving an honost view on things. Most people don’t like that… ■■■■■ for them, nobody is making them read this.

And finally, Yes… I think it would be a wonderful idea for SanDisk to bite the bullet and devolep newer firmware for the express. As a consumer, it would gain a few more sansa fans and gain back some of its customer base. Without a doubt.

Unfortunately, SanDisk, nor Apple, Microsoft, or Sony is in the charity business.

Message Edited by Enigma on 03-07-2008 08:13 AM

11

it wasnt really a personal attack, and this is an adult conversation, i’m making a list of known problems, and trying to get answers

and fyi, though i’m not a ‘firmware engineer’ i’m in ECE, and i have a programming background, and let me tell you RANDOMIZING A LIST (a list of songs) is not a hard thing to do
if the randomization of the current outputs the same list over and over again, it defeats of purpose of randomizing isnt it, clearly this is a software related issue

which is part of the reason i’m angry, this is fixable like i said, if it wasnt fixable, you’d think i’ll come here wasting my time complaining

and i dont know when they discontinued the product, but i bought this in january and still see it on retail shelves being restocked

12

Its on shelves because its old stock that retailers still have. SanDisk doesn’t make any of these anymore, nor sells them.

But of course as a retailer, you want to get rid of oldstock, so naturally… people can still buy it.

Goodluck on getting heard on your complaint… wouldn’t hold my breathe. Regardless of the list of issues you or anyone else makes, sandisk isnt going to start up a devolepment team to address it. If you can convince them to give it to rockbox (who I also doubt would work on it) then go for it.

13

If I could chime in for a second, I totally hear where you’re coming from, Enigma, but I think you are really underestimating the real damage to their consumer mp3 player business Sansa has done through the general extremely poor quality of the Express and their neglect of it. I’m generally not somebody who goes around with an axe to grind, but with the Express, Sansa has made an enemy out of me. If I see a review of a Sansa mp3 player on another site, I am now extremely likely to leave a comment on it saying basically how bad the Express firmware was, how Sansa never fixed the problem, and advising people to go look at the official Express forums and the anythingbutipod ones before they make a purchasing decision.

I’m not on some crazy vendetta against them, like I won’t go out of my way to look for Sansa reviews and trash-talk them, but where before I was neutral about the company, now I feel like I have an obligation to warn people away because my experience was so bad. And if people do their research, they will see the kind of messages about bricked players, broken shuffle routines and discontinued firmware updates that are all too common on this forum and others.

And, frankly, I hope they will then come to the decision that it’s not worth the risk of buying a Sansa player that might end up being crippled by buggy firmware. Because Sansa deserves to be punished in the marketplace for putting out an bad product, not fixing it, and stopping all development before the thing is fixed. In the long term, I’m guessing that that kind of damage to their reputation will wind up costing them far more than the cost of finding competent firmware and QA engineers.

14

Just reading the Creative fiasco and it reminded me of this thing. I bought my SE only to find out a few weeks later the firmware bugs wont be fixed not even the 999 songs problem. Why would anyone need a player with expansion SD slot that can only play 999 songs? Oh well I guess its spring cleaning for junk hardware this year. Once bitten twice not!