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I may not be a fan of Apple's media players (though I admire their laptop design) but even I can see that we live in an iPod world. Every new media device is inevitably compared to the iPod and measured in terms of its "iPod Killer"-ness.
Even with charges by Creative Labs, Microsoft and Samsung, Apple seems to be sitting pretty. Most of the iPod competitors have invested heavily in marketing campaigns to make their devices as hip, cool and socially necessary as the iPod — Many of those same companies then build-in "features" that seem to cripple the players (DRM, clunky PC interface, etc.) — It seems that all too often the possibly usurpers of the iPod throne forget about designing devices that "just work."
— And so I've given up on media players....
Or at least I had before I got a chance to review the SanDisk Sansa Connect
The Sansa Connect is a compact media player with 4GB of internal Flash memory and a MicroSD slot for those who need expanded capacity. It's plug-and-play compatible with any XP or Vista system and it synchronizes with Windows Media Player. This means that Windows users will not need any drivers or application software to load up the player with their content. This little device has a small but vibrant color LCD screen and can play WMA, MP3s, and MPEG4 videos.
Sansa has put a lot of effort into making the Connect usable and intuitive. The menus are easy to navigate, the scroll wheel simple to figure out, the screen is bright and readable even in direct sunlight. The Connect has a small speaker embedded into the back of the device that was actually quite usable and not nearly as tinny as we figured it would be. It has a standard complement of ports and users can configure everything from search to screen brightness and volume — but it's not in the standard music player functions that give the Connect its name — for that, we look to the integrated WiFi.
SanDisk has designed the Connect to integrate with the Yahoo! Music Store. When the WiFi finds an access point, it will automatically log into Yahoo, let users see which of their friends are online, stream music directly to their players and — most importantly — download music directly to the device without ever having to plug it into a computer. — We had a blast playing with the Connect and the full review is going to show it. If you want a well-designed media player that isn't locked down like a Zune or iPod, you might want to check out this $110 player — you'll be glad you did.
You can download high resolution versions of this video at....
http://www.thetechstop.net/?page_id=9
Tags: SanDisk Sansa Connect WiFi Media ubergeek MP3 WMV WMA Wi-Fi Ballecer Catholic Jesuit Jesuits Apostolic CalProv Newman
