When I say "trash," I don't mean it's bad; quite the opposite, actually. But at $40/$50/$70 for 2/4/8GB capacities, the Clip+ is very nearly disposable—you can knock it around or drop it and not feel bad—making it an excellent player for workouts or as a spare in case your main PMP runs out of juice on a long trip.

What's New

The Clip+, unlike the Clip, packs a microSD slot for cheap expandable memory (up to 16GB at the moment). The microSD slot also supports SanDisk's own (admittedly stupid) SlotRadio cards. The clip on the back is no longer removable, and the headphone jack has been moved to the right side of the player, away from the miniUSB port. Oh, and the control pad is now square instead of circular. That's pretty much it for new features.

Why It's Great

What makes the Clip+ better than competitors like the iPod Shuffle and Creative Zen Stone is surprisingly excellent sound quality. This little guy has some power behind it, sounding as good as my Zune with a pair of decent earbuds. SanDisk clearly knows what they've got, since the Clip+, unlike other tiny budget mp3 players, supports audiophile codecs like FLAC and OGG.

It's got an FM radio, podcast support, and a voice recorder as well. It also auto-detects OS and will choose either MTP (Windows) or MSC (everything) when plugged in, meaning it supports every OS perfectly. The two-color OLED screen is bright and readable, and the player itself is miniscule and feels very tough—I've actually dropped it twice and there's nary a scratch on it.

Flaws

In terms of controls, it's not ideal—I'd really like to see a dedicated Back button instead of having to hit Menu and then select "Back to Music List," but after two minutes of toying around with the player, you'll have it figured out. The battery life isn't thrilling, rated at 15 hours, and I would have preferred a dedicated hold switch to the Home button playing double duty. Also, scrolling through long lists of artists or songs is a little pokey—it's no problem if you've only got a few GBs of music, but if you have a filled 8GB player with a microSD card, it'll be annoying.

Conclusion

It's the best low-end mp3 player on the market, without question. And did I mention it costs $50 for 4GB? That's $20 less than the iPod shuffle and the Clip+ has the shuffle handily beat on features and sound quality. I recommend the 4GB version—it's worth the $10 upgrade from 2GB, and 8GB is really more music than the little guy is built to handle. The UI's a little dated, but it's totally serviceable, and the player's strengths more than make up for its drawbacks. I've got absolutely no hesitation about recommending the Sansa Clip+ as a workout or spare mp3 player. [SanDisk]

Tiny and rugged body

Excellent sound quality and surprisingly extensive codec support

Competitively priced

UI hasn't evolved since previous model

Harari is in a unique position, in that while his company does compete with the iPod line, they're not vulnerable in the same way your Creatives, irivers, and Cowons of the world are. Flash memory chips, not PMPs, are Sandisk's primary product, so they can get away with this kind of admission of defeat (or reality). And in fact, while Samsung, not Sandisk, is Apple's main supplier of flash chips, Sandisk still reaps a ton of money from Apple courtesy of licensing fees on its many inventions. Still, it's refreshing (bracing, even) to hear such forthrightness from a CEO. [CNN]

Piper Jaffray's biannual Teen Survey, in its eighth year, shows a serious drop off in interest for the Zune and Sansa. From last year's not-great 15% figure to this year's unfathomable 0%, it's just ugly.

But are these numbers accurate? For one, SanDisk had some decent numbers around 2007, but this survey says they peaked at 4%. It's certainly possible that SanDisk sold all of its products to adults and not teens, which would explain the discrepancy, but it still seems a bit fishy.

But in any case, Apple has just got to love seeing numbers like this. The age of iPod's total dominance over the PMP scene won't last forever, but with numbers like this it isn't ending anytime soon either. [Apple Insider via Crave]

It doesn't look like too much effort is needed, but a basic description of the build can be found in the following link if you are interested in a little DIY project. The bonus is that it is also a sure-fire way to get cavity searched at the airport—if you are into that sort of thing. [Flickr via NYC Resistor via Make]

Yes, Sandisk's newest Sansa makes acquiring music easier than ever, with 1,000 songs "handpicked from the Billboard charts" coming on a microSD card for use with the player. If you get bored of those songs, you can grab genre-specific 1,000 song bundles for $40 more.

It's a neat idea, what with the bundles bringing the costs of music down to a delicious 4 cents per song and cutting downloading out of the equation, but you've got to wonder what percentage of said songs will be ones you'll care about. I mean, I love music, but I love specific music, not just music in general. But hey, there are people out there who listen to light rock radio all day at work just to create background noise, so maybe there's more of a market for this stuff than I think. And hell, there's an FM radio integrated in there for those folks as well.

Oh, and the catch, if you were wondering, is that those $0.04 cent songs are locked to the card. No pulling them off onto your computer, no playing them on other devices, no backing up. Eep.

In any case, the Sansa slotRadio will be available in "early 2009" for $100 (1,000 song card included) at RadioShack.

Hanging out at sites like Giz may have instilled in you an insatiable, pocket-emptying gadget habit. But now we're entering a new era—the old guys on the TV are saying that soon we may not even have pockets, let alone money for them. Don't panic though: You've probably got a wealth of gadgetry sitting underutilized in your living rooms, closets and basements, just waiting to be given powerful new (not exactly authorized) features. For free.

I've collected the best firmware replacements, software mods and homebrew hacks from the DMCA-flouting, EULA-hating frontiers of gadgetland that'll breathe new life into your stable of hardware and maybe—just maybe—let you feel that lusty new-gadget rush again.

Turn Your Xbox, Old PC or Apple TV into a Genuine Media Center

Xbox Media Center is about as refined as an unauthorized hack can get, playing back virtually any audio and video format, running a bevy of console emulators and still playing your Xbox games. To be honest, this should almost be viewed as a natural update for every Xbox, which at its core is a slow but functional PC with an easy TV connection. (Any actual PCs you have lying around can run a PC-ported version of XBMC.)

Boxee is a very slick fork of the XBMC project for Mac, and it's available for Apple TV. As shipped, the Apple TV works fine within the closed iTunes ecosystem, but Boxee's support for virtually every video codec and free online video like YouTube, CNN, BBC, and Revision3 will suit your new, more destitute lifestyle a bit better.

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. Installation is pretty straightforward in most cases, with simple Boxee and XBMC setup programs available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Before you load XBMC, though, you have to mod your Xbox with one of these methods, many of which require a specific game. After that it's all install wizards and lollipops.

Installing anything on the locked-down Apple TV used to take some serious finagling, but there are now tools that will create an automated Boxee installer on a flash drive. Just plug the drive in, restart and you're good to go.

XBMC Online Manual

Boxee

Make Over Your iPod, Archos, iRiver or Sandisk with Rockbox

It's hard to look at the current generation of media players and not admire their diverse capabilities and extensible software platforms. That's not to say that your 5th-gen iPod doesn't play back music perfectly well, or that your iRiver H10 still isn't a kickass media player, but they do feel a bit dated. Rockbox replaces your MP3 player's operating system with something more substantial, effectively making it a completely new device. You get endless codec support, advanced audio options, dozens of games, useful apps like a calculator and a text editor, plus you can choose from tons of different interface skins for a unique look and feel. Rockbox's tweaking possibilities mean you will earn admiring "what is that?" questions from friends, and it won't cost you a thing. If your player isn't supported yet just hold on—everything from the Zen Vision:M to the Toshiba Gigabeat S has a fairly active dev team.

Difficulty: Easy. Rockbox has an automated tool called the Rockbox Utility available for Windows, Mac and Linux. It does the work for you. Even better, it often automatically configures your player to dual boot with its original OS.

Rockbox Official Site

Convert Your PC or Notebook Into A Much More Expensive Mac

It's undeniable that Macs are too expensive. For many, they are considered a luxury item whose added cost doesn't justify the benefit. Luckily Apple's switch to an Intel platform opened up a world of unauthorized OS X installations which can turn your existing PC into a powerhouse Mac Pro workstation, or morph your MSI Wind or Asus EeePC into the Mac netbook that should be in their goddamn product line anyway. Check the hardware compatibility list to see if your PC is eligible for the upgrade.

Difficulty: Moderate to Hard. If you're not morally opposed to downloading iATKOS and Kalyway, which are pre-patched Leopard install DVDs (this is bit torrent territory), then the process is much like installing any other OS. If you insist on building your own patched install from a DVD you own, then, well, good luck. Always check hardware lists first, though, because driver support is everything.

OSX86 Project Page

Flash Your Crappy Router Into a Top-Line Piece of Hardware

The DD-WRT project exists for a simple reason: Most routers are physically very similar, but are priced differently because of functionality derived from software. The DD-WRT firmware unlocks the potential of the most basic routers out there—too many to name but damn if yours isn't on the list. As it turns out, your budget model is kind of impressive: Program-specific traffic throttling, professional level wireless security and radical signal boosting are just a few of the dozens of new features that can be enabled.

Difficulty: Easy. If you can't manage this one, then you don't deserve a router—installation just takes a few clicks on the device's default configuration pages. A word of caution, though: Make sure your router configuration page is totally compatible with your browser before the operation, as some choke on Firefox and can botch firmware upgrades. Stick to IE if you have the choice.

DD-WRT Project Page

Download Updated Maps For Your Old GPS

I'm referring of course to capital 'D' downloading here, mainly because at the moment GPS map updates are a racket. You could spend hundreds of dollars on map data that is freely available on Google Maps, Microsoft Live and MapQuest, among others, or you can just, you know, not. Map packs for Garmin, TomTom and Magellan units are floating around torrent sites and usually don't require much more than a simple CD image mount and run routine to set up. (Guilty conscience sold separately.)

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate. If you're just running a copy of a CD, then you'll be able to use the installation wizards. Some more involved methods for Windows CE-based devices require some SSH file transfers, but these are relatively rare.

Jailbreak Your iPhone for Wi-Fi Internet Tethering

Two internet plans are enough, but to sign on to a mobile internet contract when you've already got unlimited iPhone data feels kind of stupid. Jailbreaking your iPhone is now about as easy as performing a firmware upgrade, and there are actually multiple tethering apps. PDANet and iPhoneModem both work a treat, but keep in mind that excessive usage could draw AT&T's attention and ire: Tethering is not allowed on the data plan, even though it works fine. Both apps are available in Cydia, where you can also find a limited assortment of other apps that don't have a place in the app store.

Difficulty: Moderate. Jailbreaking can be managed through the Dev Team's fantastic Quickpwn tool, but it does take a few minutes and can go wrong if instructions aren't followed closely. After jailbreak, Cydia and Installer fill the role of the gray-market app store, functioning as simple package managers that are arguably as polished as their more legitimate younger brother.

PDANet and iPhoneModem take different approaches to tethering, but neither requires more networking expertise than it would take to, say, set up a router.

iPhone Jailbreak

PDANet

iPhoneModem

Turn Your Wii Into a Free Emulation Machine

It's more than a little infuriating to have to repurchase your childhood library of console games from the Virtual Console, especially when free PC emulators and accompanying ROMs abound on the old intertubes. All you need is a copy of Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess, an SD card and an SD reader and you're ready to install A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia, which is pretty much all anyone has ever really needed since this whole "Video Gaming Television Machine" thing got under way in the first place. Throw in extended media playback and some helpful widgets for an extra value-add.

Difficulty: Moderate. This is one of the only hacks here that needs additional hardware to work, even if it's basic. The good news is that once you find a copy of Zelda and load up your SD card, the process pretty much takes care of itself. Further app installs are taken care of through a intuitive dedicated channel.

WiiBrew WIki

A great resource for similar projects is our industrious sister site Lifehacker, where you can find a veritable treasure trove of tutorials and tricks. Have you postponed any gadget purchases until you're sure your bank is solvent? Have any other budget hardware resurrection techniques that we missed? Let us know in the comments.

SanDisk itself has tried the Wi-Fi thing before with Sansa Connect (itself an acquisition), but that fell short of brilliance. We're thinking maybe this is their attempt to get it right on the second try.

We wish them luck, but since Microsoft's millions haven't been able to get the thing sorted out, and Apple's Wi-Fi Music Store has been little more than a press release, we're not certain there's a tree to bark up here. OK, that's pessimistic—the other half of me says the world is waiting for a killer app. Welcome to the... whatever. [SanDisk]

SANDISK INTRODUCES THE STYLISH SANSA(R) FUZE™ MP3 PLAYER Multi-Faceted Music Player Rounds out the Sansa Product Line

MILPITAS, Calif., March 11, 2008- SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), a
leading seller of MP3 players in the United States, today unveiled the
multi-faceted Sansa(R) Fuze™ MP3 player. The stylish music player is loaded
with capabilities and features to keep consumers well entertained while on
the go. Not only is it easy on the eye, it's easy on the pocketbook. With
availability planned for early April in the United States, the Sansa Fuze
player comes in a wide array of colors (pink, red, blue, black and silver)
and capacities (2, 4 and 8 gigabyte1 (GB)) with an expected starting price
of only $79.99 MSRP.
In addition to playing music, video, photos, FM radio and audiobooks, the
thin Sansa Fuze is packed with extras, including a microSD card slot to add
and transport content with ease; a voice recorder to capture thoughts on the
fly, and a bright, 1.9"color screen that allows users to easily navigate
their music or watch videos in landscape mode.
"The Sansa Fuze is an eye-catching player that consumers will enjoy for its
looks, capabilities and incredible value," said Eric Bone, vice president of
product marketing for Sansa, SanDisk's audio/video product line. "This new
MP3 player combines some of the best features found on other Sansa products,
including great sound quality. It's yet another strong offering by SanDisk
in the sub-$150 music player market."

A distinguishing feature of the Sansa Fuze player is its microSD™ card slot.
This memory slot provides consumers the ability to quickly add content onto
their device and expands storage capacity, giving ample space for thousands
of additional songs, hours of video and numerous photos. Plus, by using a
SanDisk microSD card, users can easily carry their music and other content
from their Sansa MP3 player to their mobile phone, or even their PC.

The Sansa Fuze MP3 player gives users access to subscription download
services from numerous sources, including Rhapsody To Go(R), Napster, eMusic
and others. In addition, it supports playback of a wide range of popular
music formats such as MP3, WAV, Audible (for audio books) and Windows Media
Audio (WMA) in both unprotected and protected files. Sansa Fuze supports
MPEG-4 video and JPEG photos. Its internal rechargeable battery will play up
to 24 hours of audio and five hours of video between charges.2

The MP3 player works with computers running Windows XP or Windows Vista. It
also works with Mac and Linux operating systems (under MSC mode).

Expected Pricing, Colors and Availability

The Sansa Fuze player is expected to be available in U.S. stores in early
April. The music player comes in a 2GB capacity (holds 500 MP3 songs3) with
an MSRP of $79.99, 4GB (1,000 MP3 songs) for $99.99 and 8GB (2,000 MP3
songs) for $129.99. The 2GB Sansa Fuze is available in black; the 4GB Sansa
Fuze is available in black, red, pink or blue, and the 8GB is available in
silver. For more information visit http://www.sandisk.com/sansafuze/.

The player is expected to be available from retailers in Canada and Europe
in late spring, with other regions of the world to follow.

The flash-based Sansa Fuze player rounds out the Sansa product family,
joining the popular, tiny Sansa Clip and video-centric Sansa View. The Sansa
audio/video line offers consumers highly affordable, yet fun and fashionable
music players loaded with appealing extra features.

Amazon lists red, black and pink models, but there are no images of the pink or black varieties as yet. Standing in at 2.2 x 1.5 x 0.6 inches, it is a little thicker than the fruity equivalent, but if you were thinking of settling down with an iPod nano, you may want to wait for the verdict on the Fuze before you make any hasty decisions. [Amazon via DAP Review]

It's a funny little system, consisting of a video-capable USB flash drive, a dock with S-video, AV composite connectors and a power cord, and a remote that the flash drive can hug when not in use. You dock the USB drive to a Windows PC to load videos from the Fanfare service, but you can also dock it in any computer, Mac or PC, and load DivX, xVid and MPEG-4 videos onto it as a mass storage drive.Fanfare setup is extremely straightforward: you sign up for a free Fanfare account, download the Windows-only client software, browse the collections from CBS, Showtime and others (slated for heavy growth in the content-partner area, says SanDisk), and click the "plus" sign when you see something you like. If the TakeTV is plugged in, the video will begin loading. If not, you will be prompted to insert it.At the moment you can't download to hard drive, and need a TakeTV. In the future, SanDisk promises that other flash devices using the TrustedFlash DRM technology would be compatible with Fanfare downloads.

Downloads are encoded in DivX, and an hour of programming takes up just under 1GB of memory. Download time can be slow if your connection isn't up to it, but the experience wasn't unusually sluggish. A 4GB TakeTV can hold up to 5 hours of 720x480 programming.

Once your TakeTV is filled with good stuff—for now, most of it is free—you take it to your TV (like the name implies) and place it in the dock, which you connect to your TV via S-Video or composite, plus stereo audio.Immediately a rudimentary menu pops up, and shows you your content:You select a video and after a potentially long "loading..." period, it starts to play. I'm not going to lie, the video doesn't look great on a big 1080p TV. I know that's being harsh, since it's just 480i, but the Vudu box with 480p upscaled content looked damn fine, and SanDisk's Fanfare content is nowhere near that quality. Shows look blurry (as you can plainly see in the shot below), though the sound (128 Kbps) is just fine.
I had a bit of trouble with a few of the videos downloaded, but let me say that since this is a beta, I'm willing to let that slide. Of course the content on the site was sparse, and I'm willing to let that go for now, too, because I fully expect SanDisk to keep its promise of expanding options.

The beef I have now is with the hardware: the remote sucked—it was non-responsive and not terribly intuitive, and fastforwarding and rewinding were exercises in frustration. While I like the simple USB-drive technique for loading video, either with Fanfare or on your own, I think that the collection of pieces is a bit of a mess: despite the fact that the drive fits snugly in both the dock and the remote, there's no real clear way to hold all of it together in a tidy package. And if you lose the remote or leave the dock at home when you're at a friend's, you are screwed.

I branded this with a "wait and see" verdict because there's so much promise, but not enough delivered yet for a full-on gavel-banging judgment. My advice to you is to join Fanfare as a lurker, before you buy the TakeTV. If you start seeing content you want, you may consider TakeTV as it is currently the only way to make use of Fanfare video. Also, if you have loads of DivX vids and are constantly yearning for a way to shuttle them to your living room, here's your chance. But my early sense is, you'll have to put up with some growing pains before TakeTV is a mature, worthwhile product. [SanDisk's TakeTV Site]

The TakeTV will dock into any TV out and will provide a resolution up to 720 x 576 at a bitrate of 7Mbps. Sansa's USB 2.0 wonder will only support Windows (Vista and XP), comes with an included remote control and will allow widescreen 16:9 or standard 4:3 aspect ratio viewing. Pricing information and availability dates have not been announced, but it won't be long before buy.com spills the beans... [Buy.com]

First off, the Bloomberg article that was cited that supposedly had Bach stating the Zune was going to be number two after Christmas doesn't explicitly have him saying that.

``When we're done with the holiday, people will look and say, `There's Apple and there's Microsoft,''' he said. ``The reality of the numerics are that Apple will still be No. 1.''

You could interpret that as a declaration that the Zune will be number two. But you could also interpret that as a consumer mindshare statement, with Microsoft joining Apple as the (only) two competitors for the average person's money.

Secondly, Robbie Bach would have to accept the challenge by October 31, which also involves him shaving his head if Microsoft doesn't become #2. That's a tough bet for an offhand statement you made.

However, even if the bet is accepted, Microsoft will have a hard time unseating SanDisk because of the way the market works. Over 70% of SanDisk's players are less than $100, and most of their product line costs less than Microsoft's cheapest player, which starts at $149. If this is the case, Microsoft's trying to grab land from Apple, not SanDisk, which is definitely harder—even with a big marketing push come November.

To win, Microsoft will have to spend lots and lots on ads and really hope Apple messes up somehow, which seems unlikely now that the latter's products for this Christmas are already on the table.

Our point? It seems unlikely that Microsoft can pull out the stops this season to blast away on TV ad time, online ad space, and print ad pages to get the consumers informed and interested in the Zune, even with the new and improved features. At this point it's not a problem of building a better product, it's a matter of getting it in front of people's faces. And that wonderful strategy of giving first-gen Zunes the new features may come back to bite them as most those 1.2 million customers probably won't be buying new players.

Here's our bet. If it somehow happens that Microsoft is ends up in the #2 spot by January 1, I'm going to shave my head—not because I don't think Microsoft can do it, but because my hair is getting a little long. [ZDNet via Zunerama]

SanDisk's 8GB View will cost just $149, the price of Apple's 4GB nano.

Battery life has been confirmed at 35 hours for music, and 7 hours for video. (According to Apple, the nano can pull off 24 hours of music or 5 hours of video on a charge.)

SanDisk's two Sansa View models will both be compatible with MicroSD/SDHC for memory expansion. Since there's a tiny 8GB SDHC card on the way, you could technically jack this thing up to 24GB pretty easily, though that 8GB card will definitely set you back a few clams. (In case you were wondering, you will not be able to move files back and forth from onboard memory to MicroSD card.)

Like SanDisk's other players, the View will have an FM tuner (20 preset channels) and a voice recorder with built-in mic.

The new View is SanDisk's first serious attempt at a video-capable player, with native support for H.264, WMV and MPEG4 video. (Earlier Sansas could play video, but only if you messed with it enough to make it work.) When you are in video mode, everything automatically reorients to landscape, so you can turn the View on its side and better enjoy the 2.4" 320 x 240 LCD.

SanDisk's marketing folks say that this player is geared more towards short clips than full movies, but then at the same time admit that 16GB means the ability to store over 30 feature films. (And you could watch three of them without plugging in.)

The View is the slimmest Sansa yet introduced. At its thickest is around a third of an inch—its total dimensions are 4.29" x 1.95" x 0.35", and it'll weigh just 2.9 oz.

Interestingly enough, SanDisk isn't partnered with anyone on this go 'round. The Rhapsody friendship from the E200R days appears to have fizzled, and the Yahoo branding that appeared with the Sansa Connect is, as yet, just a one-off thing.

Speaking of the Connect, the View will not have Wi-Fi. Then again, I can hear SanDisk saying, neither does the nano. Look for it this October.

Press release:

SANDISK ANNOUNCES THE NEW SANSA VIEW: A SLEEK VIDEO MP3 PLAYER WITH REMARKABLE FEATURES AND CAPACITY AT AN UNBEATABLE PRICE

MILPITAS, Calif., September 10, 2007-SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), the second largest seller of MP3 players in the United States, today announced the new Sansa® View - a video MP3 player with a vast array of features and generous capacity, at an unbeatable price. The sleek-looking Sansa View marries the finest MP3 player attributes with full-motion video support (typically found in larger portable media players (PMPs)), a larger screen, long battery life and generous capacity—all in a thin, easy-to-carry package. Expected to be available in October, the Sansa View will carry a manufacturer's suggested retail price of $199.99 MSRP for a 16GB flash-based player and $149.99 for the 8GB, far surpassing the competition with respect to value and price.

A significant step-up from the company's award-winning Sansa e200 music player series, the slim Sansa View features music, photos, FM radio and audio books, plus easy video transferring capabilities and hefty memory capabilities of up to 24GB (by using an optional 8GB microSD/microSDHC card).

"The Sansa View is a new video MP3 player that combines all of the great characteristics of a MP3 player with the video capabilities of a PMP, and packs it into a pocketable device," said Eric Bone, vice president of marketing for SanDisk's Sansa audio/video product line. "What's more, we're once again showing that category-leading technology can still be very affordable."

SanDisk's Sansa View video player innovates beyond the typical video loading procedure, making it easy for consumers to transfer videos natively using widely available software. Most popular formats are supported via embedded player functionality (H.264, WMV and MPEG4), or via a one-time software download of the Sansa Media Converter which quickly transcodes numerous video files, including DivX.

Consumers can purchase and insert one of SanDisk's microSD/microSDHC cards to play up to 24GB of music, video and photos on their Sansa View. (Today, SanDisk microSD/microSDHC cards come with capacities of up to 8GB.) In addition, the microSD card allows users to easily move their content to a cell phone or other mobile device.

A MP3 player at its core, the Sansa View device comes equipped with all the soup-to-nuts features typically found in the Sansa audio line. The smooth, backlit scroll wheel and vibrant 2.4" widescreen display make it easy to navigate to: a music library; video collection; digital photos; digital FM radio with 20 pre-sets; an integrated microphone and voice recording, and Audible audiobooks.

The device supports many music download and subscription services, including Rhapsody To Go®, Napster, eMusic and others.

The Sansa View player will come in two capacities—8GB and 16GB—and is expected to be available from retailers in the U.S. in early fall with other regions to follow shortly thereafter.

The Sansa View was first announced last January at CES. In June, SanDisk decided to re-scope the product to develop a player with new features and functionality that best suit current consumer interests.

SanDisk is the original inventor of flash storage cards and is the world's largest supplier of flash data storage card products, using its patented, high-density flash memory and controller technology. SanDisk is headquartered in Milpitas, CA and has operations worldwide, with more than half its sales outside the U.S.

Available in both 1GB and 2GB varieties the storage size is standard in the field, what is not standard is the inclusion of an FM radio, OLED screen, voice recorder and a more than reasonable 15 hour battery life. Playback formats supported will be MP3 and WMA only, but at $40 (1GB) and $60 (2GB), what are you complaining about? The small guy with big tricks is set for a September debut in those fun colours of black, red, blue and our favourite, pink. At this rate the Sansa Clip may even have a certain fatty running scared. That's right, run faster you fat-ass, Sansa's onto you! [Audio Junkies].

Being able to natively support DivX means you can go and grab TV shows/movies off BitTorrent and put them directly on your player without any time-consuming transcoding beforehand. – Jason Chen

Press Release [SanDisk]

Prototype Of Pandora Wifi Device Shown Tonight In San Francisco [TechCrunch]

You know the Apocalypse is near when you read Walt's buddy Katherine Boehret saying this in today's The Mossberg Solution column:

I really liked the Sansa Connect. It forced me to look at my portable player as an evolving, untethered device that introduced me to lots of songs [...] My iPod suddenly seemed old-fashioned.

Sure, she doesn't like the idea of subscriptions, the need for Wi-Fi for some functions or the fact that the Yahoo! Music Store only has two million songs versus five million in iTunes (come on Katie! I mean, how many versions of Elton John's Goodbye England's Rose do you want?) But overall, she seems to really dig the Sansa Connect for design, functionality, the neat Wi-Fi implementation and a good battery life. But maybe there is more than meets the eye in this review, right after the jump.

OK, let's see: Again and again Mossberg has been trashing iPod wannabes like the Zune with quite a bit of reasons.

This comes weeks after other reviews, and so far the most authoritative piece on the Sansa comes from Pogue, who is the only guy who tested it enough to realize, hey, even though there are 2 million songs in the catalog, you're actually limited to far fewer. –Jesus Diaz

An iPod Rival With an Edge [Wall Street Journal Online]

Sansa's chief ingredient: instant real-time flat-fee access to anything in Yahoo's catalog of two million songs. The spontaneity would put the iPod to shame. The song-requesting feature would put satellite radio to shame. And the Wi-Fi freedom would make the Zune crawl back into its hole.

Unfortunately, no matter what SanDisk says, you do not have access to all of Yahoo's two million songs—because the Sansa doesn't offer any way to find them. There's no Search command, no master list of bands or albums—no direct access at all.

In fact, you can download only a tiny fraction of Yahoo's catalogs: just what Yahoo decides to offer you on three sampler platters.

The first sampler is Yahoo's set of 200 Internet radio stations. These are especially cool ones, because (if you're a paid subscriber) you can hit the Skip button to start streaming the next song in the "radio station's" playlist at any time. More amazingly still, when you hear a song you like, you can download it to your player, or even the entire album, with two button taps.

Second, you can get the songs on Yahoo's Most Popular lists in various genres. Finally, you can browse a list of recommendations that Yahoo calculates on the songs you've rated highly using the Sansa's click wheel.

But worse, even of those songs, there are some that are just impossible to download for legal reasons.

Worse, a disappointing percentage of the songs and albums never arrive at all. Whenever you select a song for download, the words "Request Added" appear on the screen; confusingly, the player doesn't begin downloading immediately, but rather adds your requests to a list that's sometimes downloading and sometimes not.

You have to burrow deeply into its menus to find the waiting list. That's also where you find the folder called Unable to Download.

Yahoo explains that many of its songs are internally flagged as "not downloadable" in a complex copy-protection scheme. Fine, but then the Sansa should identify them up front instead of getting your hopes up.

Did we mention it can squirt songs, like a Zune, to other Sansa Connect players? It can. Also, he shakes his head at the Connect's lame propensity to shut down Wi-Fi if batteries drop below 60%, the lack of video capability in this day and age. What do you think you are, Sansa Connect? An iPod nano? A brutal drop-kick on the Connect, from the Pogue-ster.–Brian Lam

A Music Player That Needs Seasoning [NYTimes]

So what did the reviewers think? For this week's Frankenreview, we hit up a TON of sources (ok...10) and grabbed their best quips. Hit the jump to read what Wired, Gadgetaholic, ComputerWorld, LAPTOP, I4U, Yahoo! Tech, Crunchgear, Late to the Party and PCMag had to say about this quasi-wireless MP3 player.

(Only five of our ten use numerical scores, we weren't just being lazy...this time.)

Wired
If the Zune weren't already DOA, Sansa's Connect would totally stomp its ugly brown mug.

CNET
...tunes sounded warm, clean, and encompassing across all genres... Still, I could've done with a bit more kick on the low end.

Gadgetaholic
... the Sansa Connect can display photos. However, this one kicks it up a notch (Emeril must be proud) by allowing the user to browse the photos from their Flickr account. This works flawlessly.

Computerworld
...the first significant rethinking of portable media players — and how we acquire digital media — since Apple Inc.'s introduction of the iPod and the iTunes online media store several years ago.

LAPTOP
The Wi-Fi radio's range was adequate but not great. Over-the-air downloads of four-minute Yahoo subscription tracks took anywhere from 40 seconds to three minutes, depending on network variables, but Internet-radio playback was dropout-free...

I4U
The Connect can handle wireless networks that use pre-shared keys for security. What the Sansa Connect can't handle is wireless networks that don't broadcast the SSID.

Yahoo! Tech
Don't think about this like an iPod. It's possible, but not easy, to transfer your existing music on your PC to the Sansa. You need to use Yahoo! Jukebox and connect the Sansa to your PC to move music you already own.

Crunchgear
[Yahoo! Music] tracks are offered only through recommendations and popular music. This encourages you to rate your favorite tracks...but I can see it as being a bummer if you have a song in your head and can't get to it.

Late to the Party
Album art is shown in just about every menu, whether it is for local content, or for streaming radio stations, or for Yahoo Music Unlimited content under the "Get More Music" menu

PCMag
...comes with an AC charger/adapter (our battery rundown test yielded 6 hours and 15 minutes of continuous music playback and WiFi usage, so you'll be using this a lot)...

After checking out all the reviews, the Connect looks fantastic. But my two problems with the experience are huge in my book:
1. No iTunes or Mac Support
2. Yahoo's music service cannot be searched by song – Mark Wilson

Specs:
2.2" LCD screen
4GB of internal memory
WMA and MP3 support
Internet radio
MicroSD support for expansion
Internal speaker
View photos via MicroSD card or via Flickr account
Supports Yahoo! Music Unliminted To Go.

The 512MB memory is decent considering the sub-$50 price and expandable SD slot. But the buzz is all about a cryptic "shake" function that allows kids to interact with the music. We're guessing it makes the noise of a *gasp* shaker, but what a great, simple idea to draw children into the world of music.

Yes, that last sentence was horrid. I'm off to eat a raw steak and do other man things. I don't want kids yet. I don't want kids yet. I don't want kids yet. – Mark Wilson

Product Page [via anythingbutipod]

Here's a two-minute unadulterated feed of the newest Sansa doing its thing. Watch me get fingerprints all over the shiny screen as I wake it up, browse through featured tracks, download one, and then play it, all for your viewing pleasure. –Wilson Rothman

SanDisk Sansa Connect [Gizmodo]

First Look: Sansa Connect [Gadget Lab]
SanDisk's Sansa Connect is Here [PC World]

It's too bad the iPod Shuffle has already switched to a clip-on form factor, which is actually selling pretty damn well. If you're more into the thumb-drive shape and more worried about Rhapsody than iTunes interoperability, then this Sansa Xpress should be up your alley. – Jason Chen

Product Page [SanDisk via Chip Chick via Uber Gizmo via Crunchgear]

• SanDisk Sansa View Video
• De-Pntsing the Samsung K3 Slim MP3 Player
• Harman Kardon Drive+Play 2 and Guide+Play GPS-500
• Dirty Hands-On: Sony VIO WA1 Wireless Music Streamer (Not really a portable media player, but still cool despite the aesthetic problems.) –Travis Hudson

After interviewing a college freshman who's too busy discovering himself to admit that the iPod is a quality product, the article looks at the SanDisk Sansa e200, the Creative Zen V Plus, the iRiver Clix and the Samsung Yepp YP-T9J. All of these anti-iPods come with features that Apple has chosen to ignore, like built-in FM radio tuners and microphones. The iPod still has the edge in terms of aesthetics and is still the slimmest out of all of them.

What many people, especially tech nerds like us, claim keeps them coming back to the iPod is its interface. For a lot of folks, Apple's scroll wheel and menu structure are a perfect fit; it's the standard that others are held to, unfairly or not. The Sansa sports the best interface among the anti-iPods as it's the closest to replicating the iPod's system without creating copyright issues.

Video. Yes, these anti-iPods also play video, provided you convert the video into a format that the player can read. The Yepp handles video the best, thanks to its brighter screen. The Zen's fared the worst, due to its smaller and dimmer screen.

So, all in all, the non-iPods are able to play all your digital music, less music bought from the iTunes Store, which is all they really need to do. Oh, and they're not an iPod. Rock on, rebellious youth. – Nicholas Deleon

Singing the Praises of the Non-Nano [New York Times]

The hour-long menage a trois led to the birth of four new Sansa players. There's the 2GB e250R ($139), the 4GB e260R ($179), the 6GB e270R ($219), and the hulk-size 8GB e280R ($249). All four feature a 1.8-inch TFT color screen, can be expanded by popping in a microSD card and come pre-loaded with hours of music you didn't know you wanted. They also include an FM tuner, voice recording, and have a removable 20-hour battery (though you have to unscrew 4 screws to get inside the battery compartment).

The player is meant to compliment the Best Buy Digital Music Store with Rhapsody 4.0 ($14.99/month with $0.89-cent downloads, or free-for-all $0.99-cent downloads). We compared it to our second gen 4GB iPod Nano. R-rated hands-on pics after the jump. – Louis Ramirez

SanDisk Sansa e200 Series MP3 Players [Product Page]

The service will offer either individual song downloads for 99 cents apiece or a monthly unlimited subscription service for $14.99 per month. Good luck—that is all I have to say. – Travis Hudson

BestBuy to launch music service with Real, Sandisk [Reuters]

Product Page [TheNerds.net]

RealNetworks, SanDisk to take on iPod [Via dapreview]

The Base Station comes with all the necessary cables needed to integrate it into a home theater, like an RCA audio cable, and a USB 2.0 cable for transferring songs. Look for it this October for around $69.99. – Nicholas Deleon

Product Page [SanDisk via Fareastgizmos.com]

Best of all, the price is only $99, which is pretty good for a player with potentially 4GB of space. You'll have to add on the price of the 2GB microSD card, but you can pick that up for a few bucks online. The c200 will be available in October. – Jason Chen

Product Page [SanDisk via Far East Gizmos]

In addition to the e280 being released, Sansa is also lowering prices of its 2, 4 and 6GB players up to 30%, for an across the board slash. Check out our previous coverage of Sansa players to get a feel of what they can do. – Jason Chen

SanDisk's 8GB music player [CNET]

The SanDisk Sansa e280, a flash-based player with 8GB flash memory, is getting more official as a 360 degree demo was leaked and removed on the SanDisk site.

Anythingbutipod says there used to be a demo there, but as hard as we look, we can't find it. There's a photo of the back of the 8GB player here for you to look at, if you're the kind of guy who likes that sort of thing. The e280 is going to retail for $280, the same price the e270 launched at.

No official date has been set for the launch. – Jason Chen

SanDisk Site (Nothing there now)

The SanDisk Sansa e280 8GB Flash Player is "Official" [Anything But iPod]

Don't expect this within the next few months since SanDisk is probably waiting, along with Apple, for prices of flash memory to drop before introducing their beefier players. – Jason Chen

SanDisk Sansa e280 First 8GB Flash Player [Anything But iPod]