back to article SanDisk forecasts memory-less MP3 player future

At a presentation in London SanDisk Director of Product Marketing Jan Hauer announced that very soon MP3 players will come with... no memory at all. But they will have Ogg and Flac support. Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? After all, SanDisk is the only music player maker that also sells removable media. Mandy Rice-Davis …

COMMENTS

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  1. bluesxman
    Thumb Down

    the jury's out

    The inherent problem with Micro-SD is that the cards are just so damn fiddly.

    It'd be all too easy to butter-finger your entire music collection 'twixt the cushions of a train seat while swapping it with another card or between devices.

    This issue is exacerbated when you've got one of those bloody spring loaded card slots!

  2. Tom
    Jobs Horns

    ...along with high-end ICE maker Blaupunkt?

    My cheap-as-chips Chav-brand/Ripspeed car stereo has an SD card slot for playing MP3s... It's not Micro-SD, but with the help of the adaptor that came with my Micro-SD card it is. So you don't even have to go high end to get such a luxury.

    I actually think SD is small enough as it is, anyway.

    Personally I welcome the idea of MP3/Video players with upgradable storage. Upgradeable batteries would be nice too. I like the idea that I could extend the life of my devices with such upgrades. It's one of the reasons that I still haven't bought (and probably won't ever buy) an IPod. That and an overwhelming dislike for ITunes.

  3. Andy
    Linux

    this has been around for 7-8 years...

    I'm still using my trusty Frontier Labs NEX IIe CF card based player (I started off with a 1GB IBM microdrive as media and currently I use it with a 4GB CF card) and my wife has a 5 year old Nex Ia+ player also with a 4GB CF card, it's a shame these players didn't get the success they deserved, it's so much handier to just plug the CF card into my PC (USB card reader) or laptop (PCMCIA slot) to copy some new songs onto it without having to use any propietary music manager software.

    After all this is how portable players have always been from the original Walkman to the portable CD players and MD players, the medium holding the data is independent of the player itself, I never understood the concept of MP3 players with fixed inbuilt memory.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    A good use for old SD cards

    Be good if it's SD cards (micro SD are WAY too fiddly). All those leftover 128MB and 256MB cards that are hardly worth using in a high megapixel camera will come into their own again.

  5. Chris P
    Thumb Up

    I never understood the concept of MP3 players with fixed inbuilt memory.

    You and me both, Andy.

  6. Monkey

    All fine and well but...

    If you don't have a really fast access card in there it will be painfully slow navigating and selecting tracks. Having owned a couple of MP3 players with card slots to get performance that wasn't slow and tedious you have to use the fastest card you can find. Even then it was much slower than when using the players on board memory.

    Couple that up to the card reader they put INTO the device likely to be only a bog standard cheapo-mart thing and it'll just compound the issue. From the off people will say "well how does it compare to my X thingy player" and find it slow by comparison, so will ignore the card only players.

    Sorry to sound like a nay sayer but things are going to have to improve dramatically from the current situation with card memory performance in media players for this (good), idea to be viable.

    I do like the idea. Hang on though... on average people change things like these every 4-5 years because they either break or new models offer improved storage. Assuming storage becomes a non-issue because of the cards, are you telling me the manufacturers are going to improve the build quality of their devices so they can indeed last 10 years to make the idea of pure card memory players truly viable?!

    Yeah right! My 8gb Sansa didn't last 18 months before the flimsy front jog dial said "fk off I'm tired" and stopped working.

  7. JB
    Thumb Up

    Old News

    Like someone said, what's the difference between a removable SD card and a removable tape/CD/MiniDisc? I remember seeing SanDisk players with SD card slots about 3 or 4 years ago. On the whole, it's a great idea, especially for all the tiny SD cards lying about in my drawer (I have a 16Mb in there!)

  8. sansa

    re: sandisk

    I think Sansa players were improved a lot lately. I just got one at http://go.shopsansa.com . I like the players for the option to boost the capacity. I have so many songs that it’s just great to keep them at one place.

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