In which I am driven into the arms of Steve Jobs

[example22]

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.

Comments

[tinyjo.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't necessarily recommend an iPod - Alex's works OK but he finds it full of frustrations in the way it syncs with his computer(s) and organises (or doesn't) his files. I liked my iRiver very much and still use it as an in car mp3 player (and you can install rockbox on them).

[example22.livejournal.com]

Everybody seems to have good things to say about iRiver, but I think I'm still going to end up with an iPod. I want a player that can hold all the music I've got, for those times when I'm away for three weeks out of four. Apple seem to have a stranglehold on the 80GB+ end of the market, apart from a few really expensive and/or obscure competitors.

Besides, my PC is already infested with iTunes and all its little helpers; might as well use them...