Malix,
First of all, wow, great investigative work. Really impressive.
You mentioned ripping using iTunes. Why not “Join CD Tracks” first, so you have one audiobook file per CD? It’s a menu item under “Advanced”, where you select the tracks first, Join CD Tracks, then Create MP3 Version. With the Clip’s resume function and button behavior that you loath, there’s no advantage to having MP3 files match the CD tracks. This is what I do, no tagging work required. (I recall a while back in some Zune forum where they came to the conclusion that we should use iTunes(!) to rip audiobooks, just for this Join tracks feature, to avoid the crappy track tag that confuses MP3 players into bad play order.)
As far as your button preference, I think most audiobook users are very grateful for this intentional feature that Sandisk added. I can’t count how many times I fast-forwarded or rewound for a long time, and found my finger pressure yielding slightly below the threshold FF pressure, then slightly back above that threshold pressure, which got me incorrectly to the next audiobook part. It’s a common occurrence among audiobook listeners. Less common, but also possible, is accidentally hitting the FF or REW button. With the common length of audiobook files of about an hour or more, it’s easy to curse the old style of push=skip FF/REW button behavior. (With tiny audiobook files like one gets when ripping each CD track into an audiobook file, it’s not much of a problem getting back to where you were listening if you accidentally FF to the next file.)
