The Sansa is Pretty Awesoma

Update 8/19/06
Okay, so after some extensive use I realized a few problems/comments that I feel I should tell you.

Sure the Sansa has a scratch-protective back...but the screen scratches so darn easily! I mean most of the scratches aren't noticable when the blacklight is on but a few are!

The firmware also crashes and the like but I think I may have a slightly bad sansa since I had a couple issues from the start that nobody I know has reported. I'm just too lazy to head over and get it replaced.

The battery life on this thing is amazing. I work in a quiet work environment (a laboratory) so I can put the volume really low and I get insane battery life even with low volume. When I fully charge it, work for 8 hours, listen to it for about an 1 hour the metro rail, I still have half a battery bar!

The FM tuner is also okay. You pretty much need to be near no trees and a window for it to work...which is really helpful if you have a multi-story hourse or work in a multi-story building. The FM tuner is really nice especially during work.

The Sandisk tech support is great! Wait times are practically none and rather than replace your Ipod...they try to make that a last resort unlike Apple whose tech support is basically "Swap support."

I am still happy with my purchase.
End of Update

Back story and why I bought this player
So I was working out at the gym, and then suddenly, I got home and I couldn't find my Ipod Mini!?!?!? I don't remember ever losing such an expensive product after my Nintendo DS and before that I can't even remember doing such a thing! So I did some research and I remember all these horror stories I had with Apple tech support since we have two Ipods. Now let's clear something up...Apple tech support isn't good and neither is Apple's durability...in my opinion it just gets applause for the fact that it's available any time and frankly, if they didn't have tech support available at their stores and if you combine that with the Ipod's shoddy makeup, then the Ipod would fail.

Now before you start going crazy about what I'm saying about Ipod's durability just take these points into consideration which happened to me with our two Ipod minis.
1. When the mini was first released, there were static problems...Apple even made an official recognition of the problem so I got mine replaced.
2. The replacement had static problems so I got another replacement.
3. The replacement's replacement had static problems so I got another.
4. My Ipod's battery life got to 2 hours and it costs a lot to replace it.
5. After my bad time with my apple product, I was practically forced into buying their applecare plan.
6. Our second Ipod mini's battery life was literally minutes and the "genius bar" (how pretentious is that?) said they tested it and the battery is fine.
7. Same problem, and the tech support gives the same response.
8. Same problem, and when they try to give us back the Ipod and not replace it, we get angry until they agree to completly replace it...and behold! we haven't had that issue with the new Ipod.

This may just may be bad luck, but I think it's time for a change so I do some research and I see the sansa e260 with great features.
-4 GB of space
-A flash player (This is very important for athletes as a moving hard drive mp3 player can suffer damage. The distance between a hard drive laser and the hard drive discs are less than paper thin; therefore, if you are a runner, you create the possibility of the laser scratching against the disc and damaging the hard drive)
-It can play videos
-Has the ability to show photos
-It has a voice recorder inside of it
-It has an FM radio and you can record from the FM radio!
-Rather then completely replacing the player once the battery dies, you can just buy a replacement for it and install it yourself.
-If you want more space then pop in a memory card!
-It is reasonably priced compared to more popular players

Performance and navigation
The navigation is where this player needs some slight improvement. The player's firmware is somewhat clumsy in the respect that there are 6 buttons and I'm fairly certain they had no idea what to do with an extra button so they altered their firmware to make another button useful, because otherwise their is no necessity for that 6th button. The buttons go as follows
-Play/plause
-forward
-reverse
-big center click button
-Power/menu button
-weird quasi-menu button which I can't really put in words but if you look at a picture of this player, it's right below the navigation wheel (this is the unnecessary 6th button).

So now let's say you are browsing through your music so you go from Music >> artists >> Goo Goo Dolls >> Dizzy Up the Girl >> Iris.
Now, to go back to the artists list, here is what you have to do: Press the awkward quasi-menu button, select "Go to music list," press the back button, press it again, press it again. There really should be no reason to have to "Go back to music list" method but like I said, I'm pretty sure they stuck in a 6th button for symmetry and the firmware development team had no idea what to do. Now you may be asking, "So what?" Well for us runners, changing songs can be a bit hard as you are in a constant state of movement and this does nothing to facilitate the process. I suppose in retrospect, this isn't that big of an issue as you get used to this but SanDisk really should update this in their next firmware version.


What I do like about the navigation wheel is that you don't have to put your Mp3 player on hold. If you have a touch-sensitive wheel, like the one on the Ipods, then when you run or lift weights you pretty much have to put your player on hold because your leg brushing against your touch wheel. The navigation wheel on the e260 could be a little less stiff though, but you will get used to it. On some other mp3 players, the faster you scroll your nav wheel, the player will realize that the song you want is probably at the bottom of the list so it will start scrolling unproportionately fast. Sadly, the e260 lacks this so it is a pain to access the very last song so I would also like to see that in their next firmware improvement.

The performance of this tiny little device is top notch! For those wandering if it is just as good as the nano, I would say it's better. The FM tuner is so-so as you need to be fairly high up in a building or house to get reception. The 1.8 screen is large for an Mp3 player of this size and you can choose the setting on which to have it backlit at, which makes the screen even more attractive! The video quality was muuuch better than I expected it to be as a fullscreen DivX video seemed like DVD quality on this tiny player. And yes, the player plays the movie sideways on the player so you have widescreen viewing :)

Software
SanDisk chose Real's Rhapsody as their default music transfer and let me tell you, I haven't been a fan of any Real products as they use up useless RAM, and constantly embed themselves in your computer startup sequence...but Rhapsody surprised me. The software is simple and straight to the point so you will have no trouble at all figuring how to transfer songs; just drag and drop. I did encounter one problem with Rhapsody, however.

Rhapsody seems to enjoy making copies of songs in my Mp3 player and I didn't really know why...okay well now I figured it out but it's something any transfer software should detect. If you update something in your library, you have to reload it into your playlist or the song will be copied twice when you add the playlist and your songs from your library.

You can pretty much use any software with this device and that's what makes it great! You aren't tied down with any single piece of software *cough*Itunes*cough* as you can use Winamp 11, windows media player, Rhapsody etc. to transfer your songs.

If you want to add photos or videos you have to run them through SanDisk's media converter which isn't so bad at all and a 1 hour long(400mb) show took roughly 33 minutes to convert and transfer to the player (I have a 2.4ghz computer with 768mb of RAM).

Look and Feel
Ah...the aesthetics! This player has a nice sleek design which scratch resistant cover and back. The screen is the most prominant feature with it being very bright and measuring 1.8 inches. The navigation wheel turns a bright attractive blue when moved and although some may say the buttons surrounding the wheel are a bit small, I have to disagree that they are nuisance. You may have very large fingers so I reccommend that you go out and try this product physically first. The record button is on the upper left side of the player, which makes it very convenient for voice recording.

Tech support
Their tech support is one of the few that actually work! So, I'm a pretty nerdy guy and I know my way around computers so I know a lot of the steps standard tech supports do. I messed around with the firmware in my player by trying to update was already updated and somehow this created an odd bug in my player. I called tech support and immediately I was like, "ugh....this is a waste of time," but I was wrong...OH so wrong. They fixed it! They even went through steps tech support teams rarely go through such as messing around with the registry! Of course, I bought Circuit City's extended warranty after my previous mp3 player experiences.

Overall
The added features and price really do make up for the software and navigation. I realize I made the navigation and software seem really bad, but honestly...you get used to it. This little device will make it big if people just open their eyes up to different players rather than the top dogs (although I think you can consider this player a top dog now). The video quality is excellent, way better than I expected, and the same can go for the sound quality. The FM tuner could use some improvement reception wise but I'm sure they did the best they could with no antenna.

Questions that I had about the product that you will probably have yourself

Does the player play movies sideways since the screen is taller than it is wider?
Yes! Sandisk realized this and took care of it so the player takes full use of the screen. For widescreen dvds, the black bars on top and bottom are still there(I didn't test this out myself but I did read it elsewhere about this player).

How long does it take for the battery to get a full charge
2-3 Hours...yes that is amazingly fast!

Is USB the only way to charge this thing?
Yes, I don't know of a wall adapter that works. This player's dock closely resembled the IPOD but the IPOD wall charger didn't work for this little device so I don't know how to charge any other way but plugging it into your computer.