I’m thinking about purchasing a Fuze. I have a View and it has to be the WORST mp3 player I have ever come across. But I want something that I can play Rhapsody music channels on and I’m pretty sure the Fuze can (am I right? I know it can play the file but I’m not sure if it can play the stations.) So my main concerns are:
Can it play Rhapsody channels?
How good it it FFW and RW for audio podcasts? I listen to a lot of them and on the View, you can’t FFW faster than you can a regular song. It is REALLY slow.
Does it have many bugs? The View is full of them.
Overall, it is a good player (sound quality, user interface, etc.)?
I’m in love with my Fuze (OK, not literally, but I do love the thing), mainly because of the Linux support, the easy to use interface, and the support of Ogg Vorbis (which, IMO, is better than MP3 because of the fact that it usually provides a higher sound quality for a smaller file; you can do a Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” search to get Ogg Vorbis support in Windoze and Macintosh OS X).
Rhapsody - Being a hardcore Linux user, I try to avoid proprietary software as much as possible, so I’m not the best person to ask about this.
FFW and RW podcasts - I listen to a few podcasts every now and then, and on the previous firmware, if you held down the RW or FFW button too long, it skipped to the next or previous episode. I haven’t listened to a podcast since the 1.01.15 firmware release, however, so I’m not sure if it still does that.
3. Bugs - If you upgrade it right away to the latest firmware using the directions at the top of this forum, all the known bugs will be listed in the first post of the firmware directions. I haven’t experienced half these bugs, but they are supposedly there.
Good Player? - Definetely, yes. I’ve enjoyed mine quite a bit, and would definitely buy another one when my current one dies (batteries don’t last forever :robotvery-happy: ) given that I had the money for one.
As for your View, perhaps you can upgrade the firmware? The directions are near the top of the View forum and can be found at http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=view&thread.id=7306 . I’d recommend giving this a try to see if things improve for your view. If you’re having problems with the battery, make sure to run down the battery all the way and charge uninterupted all the way at least once or twice before upgrading the firmware!
I’ve updated it before. With the new firmware, the battery life is WAY shorter (I think around 3-5 hours for audio). And the new firmware still has more things wrong with it. It’s best to stick with the old firmware for the view because it has less issues. Maybe if they make a new firmware for it I might keep it but I have used the old and new firmwares and the View is still a piece of junk.
The fast forward on the Fuze is quite fast. The Fuze has autobookmarking for podcasts and audiobooks. If you are only getting 3-5 hours for audio on the View, then your battery may be failing. How old is your View? The Fuze has much better sound quality than the View for music. The Fuze is quite inexpensive. I have not had any mp3 or WMA files that wouldn’t play on the Fuze, including 12 kbps WMA and 16 kbps mp3 files. Make sure not to leave the player in high temperatures for long periods of time. This will cause permanent damage to the battery in a rather short period of time, especially if the battery is kept in a mostly charged state. Never leave a player in a car in the hot weather. i still hate using a player with a built in battery, although I have not found any high quality players with over 4 gigs of storage that use a AA or AAA battery. There is the Slotdisk player, but it has no display, and sound quality lower than the Fuze.
That’s true. The View had and still has the potential to be a great product, just that they are for some reason ignoring every thing posted and every plea for help on the View forums. I really hope that this won’t happen to the Fuze.
