Work Around for Sluggish UI

MP3 players All other MP3 players
1

Before you all get too excited, I want to say that this “solution” is not for everyone, but if you are planning on expanding your memory, it might be helpful.

My Fuze + used to be fairly loaded with a 16GB card and 8GB internal memory.  The UI was very sluggish when moving between submenus under the music heading with as much as a 13 to 15 second delay when moving between the “albums” sub menu and the “songs” sub menu.

When I got my new 32GB card, I moved everything off of the internal memory and onto the card.  And the UI was pretty much completely lag free between sub menus.

According to Sandisk, the issue occurs when the Fuze+ has to integrate internal memory and external memory, it does so on the fly, so the more evenly loaded the two memory subsystems are, the more it has to compile between the two.

The more you move to one side or the other, the less the Fuze+ seems to have to work and the UI becomes more responsive.  If you can afford it, get a new card that allows you to move everything to the card.  Initial startup will be a bear the first time around as it builds it’s index files, but after that you will notice a large improvement.

Moving forward, all my music will go on the card until I run out of space.  Only Rhapsody stuff will I put on main memory due to the faster transfer rate.

If you currently have an 8 GB card, move to a 16GB card, if 16GB move to 32.  It is definitely worth it.

Yes, Sandisk should correct this and it is on their radar to improve performance, but if you are in the market anyway, buy the highest capacity you can afford and put all the content on the card.  It definitely helps.

2

Well, The workaround doesn’t work as well as I like.

If you put just one song, on the internal memory, the UI delay is back in full force.

Luckily I have over 5GB left on the 32GB card so  I can put everything on the card for now.  I can also put Rhapsody Tracks on the card, so that is good.

Rhapsody Channels requires the internal memory but luckily the channels are not parsed in the song list so it does not affect the menu latency

For now I will keep everything on the card, but hope  they come up with a solution.  I am not sure what the good solution is.  They are talking about reparsing the list during boot, but that will add already about another 45 sec to an already too long boot procedure.   But the alternative of waiting 15 seconds to bring up the Song Menu is also not acceptable.

I think the only thing that will work is to add a another layer of menu that allows the user to choose letter groups.  This will allow the sub menu screens to scroll fine and then the user will choose a letter group for each sub-menu like below

Artists

ABC

DEF

GHI

JKL

MNO

PQRS

TUV

WXY

Albums

ABC

DEF

etc.

I think that is the best method.  Since the list won’t be built until you choose a letter, there should be no lag when shifting between the catagories.  Also the added breakdown will allow faster navigation through large lists, and Finally with a shorter “menu” to build on the fly, it won’t take as long to build it.

I got the standard boiler plate that the Fuze+ is not the “fastest” hardware, but I think if you add the “+” moniker to a model, it should be at least as powerful as your previous version.  

I will keep with this for now because I don’t like buying end of life product.  But I must admit, this is the first Sansa I have bought that I have had any real reservations about.

This unit reallys smells half baked, but unfortunately the only other viable Sansa that is not EOL is the Clip+ (which by the way is better than the original clip in almost every way)