Greetings …
The price for the Connect has really taken a hit lately and is pushing the $100 ceiling in some places. My question for you is, if you had not bought the Connect before, with everything else there is to choose from at this $100 price level, would you buy the Connect now? What I am really asking is this … knowing what you know now about Yahoo and updating firmware, battery usage, etc., would you tell me to lay down $100 and jump into one now? Thanks …
Nope!
When it’s working, I really do love it. But the interface is glitchy to be kind. I’m tired of the lockups!
One of the kids will be inheriting this and I’m already looking at new players…
I would most definitely buy one again. I paid $149 for mine prior to the release of the new firware. I didn’t use it much until this latest upgrade. Now I love this thing.
Yes, I would. I had been a Yahoo subscriber for some time before I got the Connect. While Y! Music isn’t the perfect solution, I continue to appreciate the integrated Launchcast and subscription music service for a continuous fresh collection of music. As one of the few WiFi enabled devices, it is worth the price for me. The videos, while interesting and perhaps a necessary feature to be competitive with other similar players, isn’t of much use for me. However, as someone who has close to 1000 photos on Flickr, that feature was icing on the cake for me.
I was glad to see SanDisk put out the last firmware because the search feature and the streaming of discovery tracks was a critical need to make using it as a WiFi device practical. As far as battery life, I can get 7-8 hours of playtime in non-WiFi mode, which meets my needs for daily use at the gym, and when I’m on travel.
I really haven’t been able to justify joining the Yahoo bashers club, as I haven’t had any real problems with listening or syncing my devices. Could they be better, are there missing features? Sure, and I am sure my wishlist is as long as anyone elses. As a former Rhapsody subscriber, I can tell you the problems are the same on the other side of the street. Go try them, or just read ther support board, and see for yourself. So many of the issues are related to a broken DRM system that is unstable and poorly concieved from the start. Howerer, it IS the current platform for subscription music, and, if you love having an almost limitless library to take with you and enjoy anywhere, it is worth the pain and irritation. Further, don’t believe that it is only Y! who is watching, and potentially rethinking, their “To Go” tier option. The whole DRM landscape, fees, and future of “PlaysForSure” standard is, quietly to most, evolving and changing significantly. As it stands now, it is a questionable business model, and potential changes makes everyone reluctant to invest a lot of effort in it. Heck, even Microsoft abandoned PFS for their own Zune device.
Okay, I will stop. Suffice to say, I love my Connect, I love subscription music, and I especially like its integration with streaming music services. Evolution of business models, standards, and technology are inevitable, and I only hope that record companies and service providers figure out a viable, reliable subscription music service platform that is stable, robust, and makes for good business. For now, I’m not going to spend energy worrying, I’m just going to enjoy a great, fresh, affodable, and huge music selection, on demand, wherever I go.
No way. Yahoo music jukebox is a terrible clunky piece of software. It confuses importing music, from regular cd’s that are store bought. The launchcast ■■■■■. I picked metal genre and it played eminem. But it doesn’t let you just skip past that song. And if you close it and reenter, it picks back up and plays that song. WTF!
When you’re creating a playlist with YMJ it would be nice for it to total the amount of disk space it currently is. Otherwise when you try to sind to the sansa, it sends and then tells you it failed because it’s out of space. That also wouldn’t be too much of a problem but it sends the music files over, but the playlist is gone. Only way this thing would be worth it is to work with other software for play lists and be able to enter in any shoutcast url to listen to any shoutcast.
Yahoo should only be an option, not a condition.
Sansa should release the firmware as open source like linksys did with their routers. That way even if they didn’t want to support, at least the community could.
Oh Yes. Mp3 player with Wifi unlimited music, great photos from Flickr,photos, expandable memory, videos, lightweight, great sounds and its a Sandisk brand.
My wife loves hers. She just finds her latest favorite song and downloads it without having to hook up to the PC.
I fell in love with Sandisk after getting my Connect. HOWEVER, the features I use on the Connect are pretty much the same features available on my wife’s e250. And she has FM radio which I would like to have since I could listen to that anywhere and not just when I am in Wifi range.
I do love Launchcast though.
I just wish that you could stream any internet radio or podcast to the Connect instead of just Yahoo Launchcast. If it had UPnP compatibility it would be great.
I’m sure the people that bought a Yahoo Music Subscription get a LOT more use out of them than I do. I could have saved a lot of money by just buying a e200 series.
I already have Y! ToGo, and with the huge price drop it was a nobrainer.
The base station and iClear case were also very reasonable.
I just wish they would get the Holiday music up and running.
LOVE IT!!!
Gawd no. I bought for 150. Poor battery life, does not recharge while playing (palm tx does), so short
periods on wifi. The sd slot does not add music capacity. Wifi only has launchcast, and I prefer live
365 (which the palm or cingular 8125 can get)
Very limited device. badly executed. poor hardware, poor software. Cannot add music capacity
with sd card. the “get more music” function gives me a '" you must have a yahoo music unlimited
to go subscription to use this service" which is what I have. So get more music, does not actually
get more music, and the sd slot does not add music capacity( yes card is in correctly).
To get updates, instead of connecting to PC to get updates, have to go to wifi spot.Just weak all around. works as adequate mp3 player, but I prefer AA or AAA batteries, so not to be tied to recharger. get a palm tx.
Palm TX is considered a PDA and not an mp3 player if you ask me. Though your concerns are all
valid. I think for your demand, maybe the Connect was not an ideal solution…
Houman
Definitely. Streaming music over the Internet then WiFi is a great feature. Other portable devices may be able to do this, but they’re much more expensive. And I also like that I can access my pictures from Flicker, too.
I have used it for some time, so I can give a better 2c on this…
I’d give it probably a 4/5, would I buy it again, sure with some reserves.
-
The Yahoo unlimited to go with Connect is pretty nice, though there are some albums that
I wish Yahoo to go had (like Dave Matthews Band or Evanecence, etc), but overall it’s pretty
nice. -
The Wifi option is very good, but @ home or @ work, I usually just use the PC client to
listen to music, but it’s neat to go someplace with open wifi and just use the device. -
The Battery is pretty bad, I guess that’s where the lost one point is coming out, I mean
in sleep mode, with wifi turned off, the battery drains, which is not good. I have a Nokia
N80 phone which is supposed to be very bad in battery when sitting idle (it has mp3 playing,
wifi, etc as well), but it can hold more battery charge over time. I just wish the shutdown
was done faster (get rid of the 20 second timer in an advanced option), and maybe boot
faster coming from shutdown.
But overall, I like this player a lot… with its ties to the Yahoo service, though I probably
won’t recommend it if you’re not going to use the Yahoo service (would recommend
going toward an Ipod or Iriver or the new Zune)
my 2c
Houman
I wouldn’t buy this MP3 player again. Bought one for my husband and liked his so much I went and bought one. We were able to download music from Napster-To-Go and then it stopped. I called Napster since Sandisk said this MP3 was compatible with Napter. That’s a lie. Even Rhapsody doesn’t show the connect as compatible.
So now we have two MP3 players that we can use. Sansa should be exchanging them for MP3s that do work on these various sites. We’ll probably have to eat the cost of these two MP3 players.
mermaid55 wrote:
I wouldn’t buy this MP3 player again. Bought one for my husband and liked his so much I went and bought one. We were able to download music from Napster-To-Go and then it stopped. I called Napster since Sandisk said this MP3 was compatible with Napter. That’s a lie. Even Rhapsody doesn’t show the connect as compatible.
Have you called Sandisk and described the problems you’re having?
Sandisk claims, on their website, that the Connect is compatible with Napster (which can be used with more devices than Napster-To-Go), and Rhapsody To Go. If you’re sure that the problems you’re experiencing are due to a lack of compatability, rather than problems on your PC or with your DRM licenses, it’d be interesting to hear what Sandisk has to say about this.
Rhapsody offers two formats for their unlimited downloads- make sure you change it to WMA first.
If they fix the license bug where the Connect thinks all WMA DRM’d content is owned and licensed by the Yahoo subscription service, requiring me to have a music subscription to listen to my PlaysForSure audiobooks. I described this bug in the thread “Yahoo! Music Subscription service discontinued”, though I’m a new user and maybe I’m still doing something wrong. Summary of the bug: 30 days passed, so naturally my Yahoo subscription music wouldn’t play, but neither would my legal audiobooks, giving the same “license expired” error.
I saw this player advertised for as low as $85 (after I bought it).
- 4 GB flash for OverDrive Media audiobooks from my public library and for purchased PlaysForSure music (or not, if the above bug is still there after Yahoo Music ends).
- Proper resume (until the Connect goes into full shutdown). This is good for audiobooks and podcasts so you don’t lose your place.
- On-device deletion. Nice for getting rid of podcasts you’ve already listened to.
- microSD slot is nice for playing AM or FM radio content recorded by my Radio YourWay MP3 player/recorder–just take the card out of the recording device, put it into the Connect. No fussing with computers.
- Same video apps used as for my Sandisk e200-series player–no learning curve.
- Why oh why is there no scroll wheel consistency between the e200-series and the Connect for scrolling around an arc of choices? One direction for the e200-series, another direction for the Connect. I haven’t scrolled the Connect correctly even one time yet. For shame, Sandisk UI Engineers.
- speaker even comes in handy sometimes.
- 3 or 4 months still left to experience this wonderful wireless Launchcast Music player and downloader.
= a buy.
Or if the bug isn’t fixed, and we have this artificial crippling of PlaysForSure capabilities just because Yahoo goes out of business
= never.
jj2me, did you call Sandisk and ask them about this?
PromisedPlanet,
Thanks for the suggestion. I just called them. A knowledgeable person answer and listened to all my followup questions. He gave one possibility that it may be a glitch related to other connection problems I was having as a newbie. He documented the call, giving me a case number to refer to if I see this problem again.
Unfortunately, I don’t want to retest this now, because it would require one month of non-use out of these precious four remaining (and as a newbie, these are the *only* four months of wireless I’ll have). I only have three songs on it, so I need to connect. If this bug occurs after Yahoo leaves, then I’ll use the case number and hope Sandisk fixes this.
If anyone else is planning on not re-licensing for a month (e.g., going on a trip without the Connect), I can give you access to OverDrive Media audiobooks for this test. This may be a real bug that never got noticed because it’s so easy for us to re-license via wireless.
mermaid55 wrote:
I wouldn’t buy this MP3 player again. Bought one for my husband and liked his so much I went and bought one. We were able to download music from Napster-To-Go and then it stopped. I called Napster since Sandisk said this MP3 was compatible with Napter. That’s a lie. Even Rhapsody doesn’t show the connect as compatible.
So now we have two MP3 players that we can use. Sansa should be exchanging them for MP3s that do work on these various sites. We’ll probably have to eat the cost of these two MP3 players.
Actually, many of our customers have reported success in using this player with Napster, and we have tested it in the past. It fully supports PlaysForSure, so it shouldn’t have any trouble with PlaysForSure subscription services. I would recommend creating a new thread to discuss your issue in more detail with your fellow users, or you can just contact us directly and we’ll go over it with you ourselves. You can reach us by calling 866-726-3475 or you can email us at support@sandisk.com.
