New user with questions about Sansa Connect

Hi, I recently got a sansa connect and am very happy with it. I have a question about it’s battery life. How long does the battery last before you have to charge it again? I  sem to have to charge the battery every other day or so or else it will shut off on me. Does using the speaker use up more battery and therefore makes it run out more quickly? What are ways to maximize battery life? If the battery for some reason no longer works, will one have to replace the whole unit or can one just get another battery for it?  If I subscribe to yahoo music unlimited to go, will I be able to stream or download any song that is avilable with yahoo music unlmited for the yahoo music jukebox software or only select songs can be downloaded or streamed with the player while the other songs must be transfered to the player with the yahoo music jukebox version of yahoo music unlimited to go? Thanks.

Wow Paragraph difficult to answer all of your questions.

The connect will save power using head phones.

The Connect has about  4-8 hours streaming time

The connect has 12 hours if you turn Wi-Fi off ie Flight mode use head phones with Downloaded or transferred songs.

If you are streaming and you Zing a song for down load and the song is available for this it will enter your que which you can find under you music catalog.

You can create play lists with the Y! Jukebox you can drag and drop MP3’s directly to the sansa connect, However to create play lists you must use the juke box.

Note some songs available one day may not be the next. I used the zing feature for a guided meditation liked it wanted to buy it which was available the day before and was not the next day. That kinda bugged me enough to deide that I won’t be paying for the togo feature I will use the DRM Free MP3 DownLoads from Amazon 89-99 cents  and emusic for 10 a month for 30 songs. If I still need more MP3’s that aren’t available this way i will buy a cd.

I loved the ToGo until I lost songs that I decided I wanted to purchase and for 79 cents that was an awsome deal. Too bad you don’t know how long the songs will be available for.

If I missed a question or two of yours I am sorry. I love my connect and don’t know what I would do w/o it. Launchcast Internet Radio which is Free is worth it.

If you have a To Go account, you can download any song in the Y! library to your Connect, either by downloading to your PC and transferring it to your Connect, or, you can download songs directly to your Connect via WiFi.  Some of the features that I really love, and are unique to the Connect, is the ability to listen to internet radio, and to click the Zing button and download that song to the Connect on demand.  As the other respondent mentioned, you can create playlists on YMJ and then upload the list to the Connect.  When you do this, Jukebox first looks for all the songs in the playlist on your Connect and, if any are missing, it will send the missing songs to the Connect along with the playlist.  These playlists are found in the My Music menu of the Connect.  You can also make a playlist in YMJ without transferring the list or the songs to the Connect, and still access the list and the music as a WiFi stream.  Whenever you make a playlist, it is sent to Yahoo servers and can be accessed by clicking the Get more music menu>My Y! Playlists.  You need an active WiFi connection to do this, but it allows you to create custom music streams without having to pass all the songs to the Connect.

I really like the subscription music feature (the To Go account) as it lets me have a music library far larger than I could otherwise afford to buy (some songs I love today, I get permanently tired of, and am glad I didn’t buy).  As far as purchasing music, Sony, the final holdout among the record labels, finally announced last week that they would begin distributing digital music DRM free, that is, as an MP3.  Because of the many licensing restrictions associated with DRM protected music, I wouldn’t buy any music except MP3’s.  Y! has been a long time champion of this, and I expect that they will be converting their music store over to MP3’s in the coming months.  In the meantime, Amazon, Walmart (Liquid Audio), EMusic, and otjhers are good sources for MP3 tracks.  Y! Music is a kenote speaker tomorrow at CES - we might get more about their plans then.

Try  the other music discovery features under Get more music - they’re awesome if you like to explore the latest releases and keep your tunes fresh.

My personal experience with battery life is about 10 hours of listening to resident tracks, about 7 hours with a WiFi connection.  If you put it to sleep without using it, the battery lasts about 3 days.  You can also do a full shut down, which stops all battery consumption.  The battery isn;t user replaceable, but they claim the battery will have over 80% of its capacity after 400 charge cycles.  I would guess that you will have to send it in for battery replacement if there is a failure (but then, by that time, there will no doubt be an even more kewl gadget to replace it).

Like you, I love this device - have fun with it!

Message Edited by GnisiBrianJ25us on 01-06-2008 05:59 PM

Hi, thanks for responding. The the remote playlist feature looks awesome but it looks like it only works with yahoo music unlimited to go tracks so if my music is not from yahoo music unlimited to go then the playlist will not be accessable from the sansa. I love the ability to listen to the lauchcast internet radio as well. Because my Internet Service Provider has a deal with Yahoo, I get launchcast plus for free and have access to all the stations which is great. A featuer I would like to see if offline radio. It would be ncie to be able to download a station to your player and listen  to the radio offline.

Yes, the remote playlists is just a custom stream.  The whole scheme is very attached to Y! exclusively, but it is a great implementation for a portable device.

I also create playlists with WINAMP and Windows Media Player.

BTW W/O Y! I still own over 500+ songs legally. So not using Zing is ok I still listen to launch cast and Flikr is cool to see pics of my friends kids.

Hope this helps. YMJ is ok for playlists if you have ToGo subscription

As for battery IF THERE IS A WILL THERE IS AWAY!!!

Hi, thanks for hte replies. I would like to subscribe to yahoo music unlimited to go but am very cautious now that it might be going away all together. How much does it cost anyhow. I would really like to be able to get music wirelessly but don’t want ot put my money into a company whos future is uncertain.

startgame412 wrote:

Hi, thanks for hte replies. I would like to subscribe to yahoo music unlimited to go but am very cautious now that it might be going away all together. How much does it cost anyhow. I would really like to be able to get music wirelessly but don’t want ot put my money into a company whos future is uncertain.

If you just want to stream a set of Yahoo Music stations, all you need is a free Yahoo account.  If you want to stream a larger set of Yahoo Music stations and be able to skip songs, you need to subscribe to Yahoo Launchcast, which is $35.88/year or $3.99/month.  If you want to be able to purchase subscription Yahoo music, you need to subscribe to Yahoo Music Unlimited To Go, which is $14.99/month.

 

I’m not really a fan of subscription music, as I don’t like paying ~$15/month to rent my music.  I can buy 15 songs a month from amazon.com for the same price (more when I buy whole albums at a time), and I own them forever.  My music doesn’t become useless if a company goes under.  But, I can see where subscription music might work for some people.