[vox-tech] Sandisk sansa view review (from a linux perspective)

[Chris Horsting]

I just bought A Sandisk c140 From Fry's.  In order to get songs from my
Ubuntu 7.10 to the Sandisk, I had to install Amarok. Amarok searches for
all music files and  interface with a MP3 player. After playing with the
menu, I was able to load some MP3 files to my c140.

I learned about Amarok from Ubuntu forum.


Good Luck

Chris
    
On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 01:43 -0800, Bill Broadley wrote:
> I needed a new MP3 player my requirements were:
> * Must work well with linux and the company must not be openly antagonistic
>    towards linux (Like say encrypting your metadata database)
> * Must be relatively small, ideally solid state
> * Must have a reasonable amount of storage, at least enough for a small/medium
>    personal collection
> * Ideally would be charged over USB (less wall warts).
> 
> What I found as the most promising selection was the sandisk sansa view,
> previous models had worked with linux and the 16GB model was $175.
> 
> The out of the box experience was less than impressive, a few crashes and
> hangs, linux didn't recognize it.  I was about to return it when I heard there
> was a new firmware, which of course by default required windows (which I don't
> have).  After further research discovered you could just unzip the
> installation files and drop them in /.
> 
> Of course getting the MP3 player mounted was the next challenge, turns out
> there's a trick to enable UMS/MSC mode.  Seems like Microsoft and the
> fairplay/play for sure/whatever they call it are pressuring the mp3 player
> manufacturers to not allow folks to access their mp3 players as a storage
> device.  God forbid the heathen folks that actually own CDs play the vile and
> disgusting DRM free music on their players easily.... anyways.  It works,
> I copied the firmware to /, it recognized it, upgraded, and said it was rebooting.
> 
> With the new firmware.... no hangs.  I copied over my music, it took a minute
> or two to process and it all showed up.... except for the stuff I had
> corrected with easytag.  Turns out it doesn't like the ud3v1 tags.  I ran
> id3v2 --convert fixed it right up.  I think just unchecking the id3v1 checkbox
> in easytag fixes it as well but I haven't verified.
> 
> So in summary:
> 
> The good:
> * You can upgrade the firmware with linux
> * You can transfer music on to and *gasp* off up this unit from linux
> * Small, solid state, has normal earphone jack
> * plays mp3 and m4a files (and probably others)
> * plays videos and displays JPGs
> * 16GB for $175.
> * Sandisk forum (is somewhat helpful) and the anythingbutipod.com forum (more
>    helpful)
> * can be expanded (storage slot)
> * reasonably slick GUI
> 
> The bad:
> * the firmware sucks unless you upgrade
> * not a huge ecosystem of speakers, chargers, docks, covers, armbands, and
>    related accessories
> * Unit supports video out, but no cable yet
> 
> The unknown:
> * Generating playlists for linux (I'm optimistic and on the todo list)
> * Generating video from linux (I'm optimistic, does seem kinda silly
>    considering the screen size)
> 
> IMO, it's hard to do better for 16GB and $175 if you want it to work
> (relatively) easily with linux.  Certainly speak up if you know of something.
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