I have a refurbed 8Gig View and I’ll have to admit that when they first came out they were the absolute worst piece of junk SanDisk ever put on the market.
However, the last firmware upgrade for the View has made it at least tolerable to use. Unfortunately, that firmware came out 10 months ago and there’s been no word from SanDisk if they are even working on anything for it anymore, or if they’ve just dropped it as a discontiued product.
That’s kind of sad because there’s only a few bugs that I think they could easily fix. And, of course a few enhancements that should not be very hard to add (like being able to scroll up to get to the bottom of a long list). Since all these fixes and changes seem like they should be pretty easy, I really don’t know why SanDisk hasn’t bothered doing anything. The View _could_ have gone from their worst to one of their best products, but apparently the just don’t care.
Compared to the Fuze, the one main thing I like better about the View is its larger screen and video capabilities. I don’t need to use the Sansa Media Converter software (which don’t always work, and even when it does may not produce very good video or end up with sound out of sync). I usually can just run almost any video thru the Any Video Converter software set for MP3 h.264 with AAC audio at 320 x 240 resolution. Then just copy the file(s) onto the View and the play back looking fantastic.
Some MP4 files I don’t even have to convert if there in the right format and a resolution that the View can handle. Had to hunt around on Anythingbutipod.com to find a list of the resolutions the View can handle though.
I’m thinking of getting a video out cable to TV, but I may have to up the resolution of my files to 640 x 480 so they look a bit better on a TV.
Other than the video though side of things the Fuze is a much better product overall otherwise.