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Sansa Usability Issues

Don’t get me wrong. I like my Sansa. It’s no iPod, that’s for sure, but it’s not bad.

But there are a few things about it that really bug me. Like what happened this morning. Yesterday, I turned off my Sansa while I was in the middle of listening to a podcast from SXSW. I plugged it into my PC, then deleted a few podcasts I had finished listening to and uploaded some fresh ones.

Guess what happened when I turned on the Sansa this morning. It was still paused, but now in the middle of a different podcast. WTF?!? I mean really, WTF? That is a BUG.

So I had to search around to find the podcast that I had been listening to and then go through the painful process of cueing through it to find my place. Which brings me on to my next peeve.

Cueing is by the now-unfortunately-widespread method of pressing and holding the skip button. I know it means you need less buttons or modes on your device, but it has great potential to be infuriating. Why? Because:

  • It’s too easy to accidentally give it a single press instead of a sustained press, which brings you to the next track. If you have just spent several minutes cueing and just stopped to listen for a few seconds to get your bearings, this is super-annoying.
  • It is SLOOOOOOOW. That’s OK for a music track (though I never understood why you would use it for music). But for a podcast, it is horrible. It should work like on DVD players, where once you are cueing, you can press the button again to speed it up. Or it could speed it up automatically after the button has been pressed for a certain amount of time. There is an alternative cueing mode that uses the wheel, but it feels just as slow as using the button (and there is the additional navigation excise of four button clicks to switch to this mode).

And if you have to do all this while driving, it is even more frustrating.

I have other peeves, but this post is starting to get long. Maybe I’ll post a sequel soon :)

just get an iPod already

you know you want to ;-)

  • By matt at 2008-04-20 01:28
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Yeah, but...

...those things are expensive.

Seriously, though. I have learned my lesson. Next time, I’ll buy an iPod.

  • By martin at 2008-04-22 10:50
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Much cheaper now

Seriously, they’ve come down a lot in price. Jenn got me an iPod Classic 80Gb for Christmas, and it’s the best thing ever (apart from my iBook). I have it loaded with loads of music, tv shows, movies and podcasts (audio and video). So anywhere I go, if I’m stuck waiting at all I can always be entertained. And now you can buy an attachment that will allow the iPod to play DAB radio too.

  • By matt at 2008-04-28 09:22
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Yes, but

An 8GB Sansa costs 515 shekels.
An 8GB iPod Nano costs 987 shekels.

That’s double.

Yeah, I know you have the whole ecosystem around the iPod. iTunes, the iTunes store, etc. So that makes it a lot easier than non-iPods.

But we can’t buy music from iTunes in Israel, so that kind of makes it less useful.

Who knows? Maybe when my Sansa conks out in a year or two, I’ll get an iPod. Or maybe by then we will all have iPhones :)

  • By martin at 2008-04-28 10:02
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