Amarok Blog

So, long story short, or maybe long, we'll see after I've finished writing this:

I had been looking for a new portable music player for a while. My old one was crappy, to say the least. Incidentally I had talked about this on IRC, and fellow KDE developer Will Stephenson said he was also on the look for a new player. So we googled a bit. I had some special wishes for my "ideal" device, and Will eventually found one that exactly fitted my needs. What I needed was this:

Small size of the device. With a bigger device, I might as well carry a smartphone.

Rugged and water proof. I'm an avid jogger, I run in all weather conditions, and I sweat a lot while running.

Flash based. For jogging I need the device to be shock resistant, HDD is out of the question.

Supporting all formats. I don't want to transcode constantly, so I need MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, etc.

Usable with Amarok. What Amarok does really well is MTP, so I wanted that.

Not made by Apple. For various reasons (ethical, reality distortion field, etc) I boycott Apple products.

No fancy schmancy video features. I need the device to do one thing well, that is playing music.

Long battery life. Preferrably easily chargable with the my PC.

As it turned out, the Sansa Clip is exactly the device I had dreamed of. Impatient as I (notoriously) am, I had to head out instantly and buy the thing (4GB version costs about 60 USD). Loaded some music on it, went on a jogging tour today, and what can I say: The thing rocks I'm a happy camper now. The Clip worked out of the box, the original firmware from Sandisk supports all formats I need (including OGG and FLAC), so I didn't even have to upgrade it (or install Rockbox).

Additionally, I bought these sweet headphones, cause the bundled ones didn't really cut it for sports. They have a fancy name, "Skullcandy Chops", and their sound quality is fancy too. Also ideal for sports, as they are not classical earbuds, but instead they are worn close to the ear, which I like. With standard earbuds the things tend to fall out of my ears, apparently I have weird ears or something.




Disclaimer: I do not work for Sandisk, nor do I work for Skullcandy. They did promise me a "really cool holiday" though for making some promotion. We'll see about that.