Cheesy Quintessence

Unfortunately, I have to retract my prior statements about Nintendo cleaning up its manufacturing process. The DS Lite I got, much to my dismay, had a screwed up control pad; it made snapping sounds and was very difficult to make work in diagonal directions. So, I exchanged it for another one, hoping that my blog post had been right.

It wasn’t. Sure enough, I found dust particles under the new unit’s screens. Lots of them, too. Luckily, the bright backlight makes them virtually invisible, so it wasn’t a big deal. However, that unit was also (seemingly) defective, as the bottom screen had a strong yellow tint to it. I’m aware that the bottom screen, being a touch screen, won’t appear the same as the top screen, but this one was strikingly different, so I returned it again.

Now I have it: My third DS Lite, and the control pad works, the screens are appropriately colored… and there are two visible specks of foreign particles on the top display. Examination with a flashlight reveals that the top screen is loaded with dust particles, and I’m fortunate that only two of them show up under the backlight. When visible they discolor the part of the screen they cover. They actually make the screen look like it has dysfunctional pixels, but the flashlight reveals that they are indeed dust.

I hate this. At least now I have a unit without other problems, so if I replace the top screen using a screen replacement kit, it would be possible to clean it out (though not in my incredibly dusty home). I found only one particle under the touch screen (which can’t be serviced by the user), so that’s a blessing.

Today I finally got into the game and bought a Nintendo DS Lite in the newly released “onyx” black color. This is only notable because it’s the first Nintendo handheld I’ve ever purchased that doesn’t seem to have dust, or other foreign particles under its screen (in this case, both of them). I’m pleasantly surprised; as many Game Boy systems as I have had to return to get one with an acceptably minimal amount of foreign material under the screens, I expected to have to go through a dozen DS systems to find something acceptable. For the record, I have possesed these devices, all of which had dust under their screens:

• Game Boy
• Game Boy Pocket
• Three Game Boy Color
• Two Game Boy Advance
• Two Game Boy Advance SP

When my Game Boy Pocket was a problem, we contacted Nintendo of America to complain. The person we talked with–who, if I recall, was highly authoratative in the company, though I can’t remember what position–informed us that there is nothing about the design to prevent foreign particles from entering the device’s screen. This has held true; all my Game Boy systems have had dust under their screens at purchase, and changing dust situations through their life. My Game Boy Advance SP even had a tiny insect crawling around under the screen once.

Hopefully this isn’t so much the case with the DS Lite, since it’s the first one I’ve ever bought without any. Now if some dust doesn’t creep in before I can actually purchase a DS game to fill its most significant orifice, I’ll be set.

I now have a 2 GB Kingston DataTraveler USB flash drive with something interesting I’d never heard of before: U3. U3 is an interface for portable applications, allowing developers to write programs that are effortlessly carried from computer to computer. Amazingly, it’s actually agreed upon and used by multiple manufacturers, such as Kingston, SanDisk, and Memorex, and is openly available for more manufacturers to use. The drive contains a ROM portion with Windows autorun information to get the U3 tray icon menu going.

This is a pretty interesting concept, I’d say, and the developers think it could evolve the way we compute. I like the idea of being able to store all my favorite programs and data in one spot and take it with me everywhere. With the absence of a registry, it would make archival extremely simple–I could just make a copy of the flash drive. However, I see one major problem: constantly rewriting to the device is bad for its health, so how will we truly be able to use any sort of program on a flash drive?

Yesterday I finally got my SanDisk Sansa e270, part of SanDisk’s fairly new e200 series of flash-based MP3 players. The e270 is notable for being the most spacious flash based player yet, at 6 GB, or up to 7 GB if the expansion slot is used. It’s quite a heck of a bargain, too, as it has a user-replaceable lithium ion battery, 20 hours quoted battery life, a scratch-resistant design, voice recording, an FM tuner, video playback, and a picture slideshow, and a fairly attractive design, for less than the cost of the 4 GB iPod nano.

Perhaps this all sounds too good to be true. Indeed, it has its shortcomings. It is a very nice music player overall, but since I don’t find it particularly innovative in many ways other than its feature set as described above, I’m just going to note my complaints:

• The wheel feels quite rough, and the middle button wiggles a bit. Doesn’t have a high quality feel to it, which is a contrast to the rest of the player.
• Nobody else has mentioned this as far as I’ve seen: the screen isn’t reflective at all; unless the backlight is on, it may as well just be blank, it’s so hard to see. This hold true even in direct sunlight.
• The wheel light always goes off after a few seconds of no wheel use, regardless of backlight settings. So, the wheel light is constantly turning on and off, rather annoyingly. I’d like to see a custom time for the wheel light, and the option to just disable it, as it’s useless.
• Leaving the now playing screen, including shutting down, when the player started with music paused causes it to forget what was playing. Avoidable by resuming playback before doing so.
• When shut off, it forgets where its volume was set. I wouldn’t mind so much if it didn’t set the volume too high.
• Certain functionality is difficult to get to. For example, to add music to the on the go playlist, you have to start it playing first. Also, there’s no way to directly browse all songs by an artist; you have to “play all,” then go to the playback list. Getting back to that list isn’t particularly intuitive either, as there’s no button to go up a menu level from the playback screen like there is from other menu screens (previous track is used to go up a level, and is used normally on the playback screen).
• The record button is quite easy to press and causes active music to stop playing.
• When browsing an artist’s albums, the album you select is saved so it can be remembered later. Unfortunately, it remembers this for all album screens. If you select Album 2 by Artist 1, then go to Artist 2’s album list, Artist 2’s second album, instead of the first album in the list, will be selected. This is fairly disorienting.
• A friend and I have both had issues with it “refreshing database” over and over. This takes forever for it to accomplish. I can’t figure out why it happens, but it seems to have something to do with certain stuff I put in the music library.
• In regard to the problem above, top rated songs seem to be lost when a refresh happens.

Obviously, nearly all these problems could be fixed with a firmware update. I’d be incredibly satisfied with the player if most of these issues were addressed. I’d have already contacted SanDisk with this list, but it seems there’s no technical support email address for the e270 in the US. Shame.

Are people really clueless? Is there some reason why the use of prerecorded audio files to serve as information feeds has been named “Podcasting”? As we all know, there are thousands of portable audio players on the market. Apple’s iPod isn’t the only way to listen to digital audio on the go, and it is even in many ways not the best; other players have superior battery life, voice recording, and so forth.

But let’s ignore competitors’ players and pretend that the iPod is the only portable music player in existence. The name “Podcasting” is still inherently idiotic because “Podcasts” can be listened to on your computer. In fact, I’d probably listen to them more on my computer than not so I’d not have to hook up my portable audio player and transfer the data.

Now that “Podcasting” has caught on, Apple is of course going to attempt to take credit for this poorly named innovation. To quote the latest Apple update email I received:

There’s a reason it’s called “podcasting.”
iPod gives you the ultimate control over podcasts, letting you listen to them anytime, anywhere.

Yes, today is the launch of Apple’s new color iPod, along with firmware updates to have a special menu item for “Podcasts.” But is that the reason why “Podcasts,” which have been around for months, are called “Podcasts”? No, it’s not, Apple.