Brad, On Tuesday 08 February 2005 09:15, Brad Bourn wrote:
Make sure it support being a USB harddrive. That *should* make it Linux compatible. I have seen some players that act like a HD, but only for storage, not transferring mp3's.
That's highly debatable. MP3 players are not primarily portable hard drives, they're audio appliances that happen to be implemented using a compact hard disk drive. Design criteria for an audio appliance are very different from those for a general-purpose computer peripheral. The FAT file system is contraindicated in such applications. I have a Rio Karma, which is an outstanding player, but it does not have a FAT filesystem. I defended the designer's design decision in this regard. But we had extensive debates about this among the user and developer community on the Karma bulletin board. The Karma has both an Ethernet and a USB interface and a 3rd-party developer (who also worked under contract to Rio on other player software) provided open-source Java software that replicates most of the Windows-only host-based software plus adds some very interesting additional functionality. E.g., a network-based (TCP/IP/HTTP) server for the content stored on the Karma. This makes it possible to use the Karma as a jukebox in home networking environment. Before I got the Karma I made the mistake of buying the Polaroid JukeJam (actually made by a Taiwanese firm and sold in other markets under a different name, which I no longer recall). It seemed better on paper, but which was distinctly inferior in practice. It used a FAT file system.
...
B-)
Randall Schulz