Today I opened up my WordPress dashboard and found out that there is now a 2.2.2 WordPress upgrade available with bug fixes and whatnot so I decided to go ahead and grab that. I’m currently running with an automatic upgrader that pretty much does all the work for me (all I have to do is give permission for the tasks, like backing up database files and downloading the latest files). So as of a minute ago, this is officially WP 2.2.2 (yays and hurrahs go here).
Another thing I “upgraded” (this time in brackets for reasons you will soon understand) recently (i.e. two days ago) was my MP3 player. I’ve been using my PSP as my all-purpose media (audio, video, and PDF) player and main gaming system for awhile now and I’ve been mostly satisfied with it. I always thought the default player for music files was extremely lacking, however, in its organization of music. Basically, the way things are organized is with folders. You make a new folder under the “ms:/MUSIC/” directory and name it whatever you want. Files placed in here will appear under this folder’s name. You can’t, however, put a folder nested within this folder (i.e. no sub-categories) to further organize stuff. This is, obviously, very stupid. I can have a “David Crowder Band” folder, but not an “Illuminate” folder inside my DCB folder.
You also don’t have the ability to create playlists within PSP’s native player. The closest thing to a playlist would be to grab all the songs you want on a playlist and slap them all into a common folder. Obviously, not a very smart way to do things as you have limited options when it comes to multiple playlists with maybe some songs belonging to both (a ny given Memory Stick Duo Pro can only fit so much).
There are, however, PSP plug-ins and custom homebrew applications that try and remedy these major flaws. Some are designed to conserve battery life by reducing the playing bitrate and include playlist building and reading functionality (the best example I’ve tried is “LightMP3″) but as with all homebrew, it’s almost always dead ugly if it’s not designed specifically for looking at. The controls for these apps are also pretty unintuitive, making for really annoying “What do I press again?” moments. There are also always many bugs with some homebrews since they are still in the BETA stages and may or may not be fully compatible with all versions of custom firmware.
These are all reasons why I, when I got back from retreat, was pleasantly surprised by long time family friends (Jason and his family) from HK when I received from them an iPod Nano from them for my now long gone seventeenth birthday (I know I don’t act it, but I’m getting old). Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been a huge fan of the iPod and all its widespread popularity (mainly because of its… widespread popularity). I mean, playing almost $200 for 2 Gigs of pretty hardware doesn’t really cut it when I could easily get a Memory Stick Duo Pro (for my PSP) with double the capacity and a fresh PSP for almost the same price. It’s a bit overpriced–try extremely overpriced–for my tastes but a free one? I’m not complaining.
This would be my first ultraportable music player (with practical amounts of memory space). I’ve gone through a good… well, let’s recap how many MP3 players I’ve had before:
- Samsung Yepp’ YP-300 (128 MB + flash card expansion slot up to 64 MB) – I dented this one a good four or five times from having it slip out of my pocket and onto the ground when sitting. This was my first player and it was decent, but it was a beast of a battery drainer and it ran on removable batteries, which I hated and still do. Also, very fuzzy sound, but that might have been a result of crappy headphones.
- MPIO FL100 (512 MB + memory stick expansion slot up to 256 MB) – I borked the expansion card slot by sticking a 512 MB card into it and frying the insides. The sound quality wasn’t amazing and it ran off of batteries like the Yepp’.
- Creative Zen Micro (4 GB) – This one was really a great player until the headphone jack started getting loose/skippy and finally the harddrive/firmware just died, so now it doesn’t boot up anymore. This one ran off a rechargeable internal battery and had a beautiful backside.
- Speed OT8 (1 GB) – This little doosy was sent to me from my dearest uncle Keith in HK and featured pseudo-touchscreen controls and MP4 playback. Not a bad little player being very portable but its life was short lived. The hypersensitive touchscreen/pad play button crapped out on me only days after I opened it up. Basically, the play button became useless as it wouldn’t sense my pressing/touching the spot and so, I had an MP3 player that wouldn’t play. Very ironic. Also very useless in this state, forcing me to switch back to my skippy Zen until I got…
- Philips GoGear (2 GB) – I got this as a gift from my godmother in HK, and it was neat looking. It was really annoying having to boot up Windows XP and be forced to use WMP 10 to sync music. The sync-ing was also buggy and tended to explode from time to time. The sound quality from the player was mediocre at best and the firmware was buggy.
After all of these (which were listed in chronological order) I’ve used and are now all retired, KIA, or AWOL. Missing from the list is my PSP (since it’s not really designed with MP3 playing as its main purpose) and the Nano I just got. I’ve already talked, probably too much, about the PSP and I’ve yet to use the Nano enough to comment. One thing though, Apple’s software is usually very pretty and intuitive and the iPod firmware is no exception. So far so good, I suppose. I don’t like iTunes (or the boring iNames for Apple products for that matter) but it’s working fine so I can’t complain. High quality gallery of the pretty and skinny Nano (before and after undressing) below. Sigh… Compared to the PSP + hard plastic shell case, having the Nano + soft Samsonite pouch in my pocket feels a lot less chunky.
