Samsung YP-U2JQB
March 2, 2007 - My Life
I've been using my old Creative Nomad Jukebox 20GB for about six years now, and honestly, it still does a great job. I DJ'ed my wedding from that mp3 player, and I still haven't half filled up the hard drive in that thing. And yes, it does have a spinning magnetic hard drive. I've been using this player for podcasts and audio books for years now. I used it on my 2-hour commute from Brewster, NY to Hartford, CT. I used it on my 1-hour commute from Cañon City to Colorado Springs. But it was a bit slow, and uploading new podcasts 2 or 3 times a week was a bit of a pain.
A few days ago, I got a new alternative: the Samsung YP-U2JQB/XAA. It got a decent review on Consumer Reports, and I was thrilled to learn that it works as both a 2GB USB flash drive and as a mp3 player, and that it charges while it's plugged into a USB port.
The first few days with it were a bit frustrating as I learned how to use it and how to synch it with my PC - turns out that you need Windows Media Player 11 installed in order for it to be properly recognised. I don't have to use Windows Media Player to transfer music like the manual says, but if Media Player 11 isn't installed, the device won't be recognised at all. Once it does show up, I can drag and drop mp3 files right into a folder via Windows Explorer, which is nice.
I can't queue up songs for play and reorder them like I did in my Nomad, but since I'll only ever be using this for listening to podcasts and for transferring files, that's fine. I think there's a way to set up playlists, but as I understand it, that requires Media Player, and that seems to require having your Windows Media Library configured just the way Windows wants. Forget that.
I've used it for less than a week, but so far, I'm pretty happy with it.
NGEWO - I just checked out Consumer Reports, which we have a subscription to. High-rated models with 30GB or more space were Creative Zen Vision, Toshiba MEV30K V and MES30VS, and Archos 604. Sometimes you can get a great deal with off-brand models, as long as they're rated well.
These iPods just can't compare, I don't care what the hipsters think. Would it kill Apple to let you delete a song from a playlist/album from the player? Would it?
unfortunately for me, i have over 40GB of music on my computer, and the next mp3 player I buy will need to be big. i am not a huge fan of the iPod, i have used other peoples and just can never get used to the feel.
maybe i'll look into the Zune...