On Sun, 21 Oct 2007, Aman Singer wrote:

> Hi, all.
> I'm on the verge of suggesting that a friend buy the Sandisk Sansa
> for use with Rockbox. My knowledge lies entirely in HD based players, I've
> never used a flash based player with Rockbox before. Is anyone out there
> having trouble with the Sansa's use? Specifically, are there any issues in
> playing OGG and MP3 files with Rockbox.

Like the others who have replied, I have had no particular problems
with it, playing mp3 and vorbis.

I have a Sansa e280 and an IAUDIO X5L, and those are really the only two I
can compare.

I love my e280. It's really not perfect, but oh it's really rather small!

The sound quality is a bit inferior to that of the x5, but it's not really
a problem for me. Admitedly I mostly read books with it. The maximum sound
volume isn't as high either: in noisy places I have wished for higher
volume once or twice, but it wouldn't have been good to my ears anyway.

8GB is nowhere near enough for my entire music collection, but for books
and podcasts, it's plenty.

The buttons are much much better, than on the X5.

One detail I like and haven't seen mentioned elsewhere: it has what I
believe is called an eye loop, so you can attach a neck strap or safety
tether.

It's really small enough that I can carry it with me everywhere I go,
which wasn't really true with the x5. So I really recommend it for
portability. I might not recommend it to an audiophile, and I still bring
my x5 on car trips.

> She's also going to be using the
> speech extensively, so any trouble with that on the Sansa would be good to
> know about.

I use speech too, actually I hack on the voice UI. It works as well on the
Sansa as on the x5, in fact perhaps a bit better.

> I have looked at the ports page, but all I can see that might be
> a reason to avoid the player is that the power handling isn't optimal and

Oh it's decent enough in my experience.

> that voice recording is only available through the microphone. I'd be most

Note BTW that it can record from the radio.

A friend of mine has had trouble with the original firmware corrupting the
file system. I wouldn't recommend the Sansa without Rockbox. With Rockbox,
I love the thing.

-- 
Stéphane Doyon
<s.doyon_at_videotron.ca>
http://pages.videotron.com/sdoyon/