example22: (Default)
example22 ([personal profile] example22) wrote2008-01-10 12:58 pm

In which I am driven into the arms of Steve Jobs

About a week ago, I finally installed a firmware update for my Creative MP3 player. I say "finally", because it's been downloadable for several years, but I thought I'd wait until they'd ironed the bugs out. This was a mistake, and given Creative's reputation for shoddy software I should have known that.

It's now agonisingly slow to sync; loading 40GB of files took over six hours. Not only that, but it claims to be full when it's actually only three-quarters full. There's still 13GB-ish of space left. I suspect that the clowns at Creative have cobbled together their own half-assed filesystem with an unreasonably low limit on the number of files it can store.

I've prised out the hard drive to repartition and reformat it directly. No dice. I've reloaded the firmware. Nope. I've trawled the forums, which are semi-abandoned now that the product is discontinued. Zilch. And you can't downgrade, so there's no going back. Creative are a bunch of fuckwits, and I'm an idiot for trusting their software.

I may soon be in the market for an iPod Classic. Nnngh. Grr. Hate. Hate.

[identity profile] example22.livejournal.com 2008-01-10 03:51 pm (UTC)(link)
...and if I'd read the links you gave first, I'd have remembered that Rockbox *is* firmware. Sorry for being obtuse!
ext_8559: Cartoon me  (Default)

[identity profile] the-magician.livejournal.com 2008-01-10 04:20 pm (UTC)(link)
*grin* no worries!

I loaded it onto my Archos V2 almost as soon as I bought it (as Amazon were selling them off cheap at the end of their sales life) as the firmware had settled down by then ... no regrets, though I don't use the Archos 20Gb brick, er, at all since I got the 5thGen video iPod 80Gb!

If they did a 160Gb iPod Touch I'd be in the line to buy one :-) ... but since I've run out of space on my 80Gb iPod, I can't justify getting a 16Gb iTouch (certainly not *as well*, and it isn't big enough to be a replacement). Flash storage will continue to get bigger and cheaper over the next few years, so I'll wait until I either lose/break the current iPod or for the lottery win!

(Anonymous) 2008-01-10 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)
i, too, love my rockbox player (an iriver I120). as and when it dies, i shall be looking to replace it with another rockbox-capable HDD player; i can only hope there are still some available by then.

[identity profile] teaparty.net (from livejournal.com) 2008-01-10 09:34 pm (UTC)(link)
sorry, that previous comment was mine; LJ keeps logging me out and not telling me.