Treating myself
I treated myself today.
For years I’ve wanted to get myself an MP3 player, but I’ve never been able to:
- Justify the stupid prices most of them are worth (yes, iPod, I’m looking at you)
- Feel comfortable carrying around something worth that much money
- Afford the stupid prices most of them are worth.
However, today I found a good deal so now I am the proud owner of a new baby Sandisk Sansa e140, a 1GB flash-based MP3 player. It’s an old model (which is why it was pretty cheap) but based on my first impressions, I love it.
- It’s seriously small. Not small enough that I’d have to worry about losing it, but small enough that I can put it in a pocket and not be irritated by it. It’s also light as a feather.
- The included earphones are pretty good - certainly good compared to the cheap crap I usually use, anyway. Nice and bassy, they block out a lot of external noise and they’re comfortable.
- It came with a case! I hate getting scratches and dirty marks on stuff, so the clear plastic case that came in the box was a godsend.
- It’s easy to put files on it - just drag-and-drop MP3s to it. It shows up as a normal USB Mass Storage Device (you know, like a USB thumb drive or whatever.)
- It doesn’t support OGG files, which is mildly irritating, but I hardly have any OGGs anyway.
- It doesn’t do crossfading either, but I can live with that for the price.
- The sound boosting settings are nice and work pretty well, but I would’ve liked a ‘dance’ preset on the equaliser.
- The FM radio is very handy. My phone has an FM radio but I can never be bothered to carry the special attachment you need to use it (you can’t just plug in a normal 3.5mm plug.)
- It came with the older 1.x firmware, and I haven’t worked up the courage to flash it up to the newer 2.x firmware yet.