I've never made a secret of the fact that I've always been a bit of an anti-Appleite; proudly waving the flags of Creative and SanDisk when it comes to discussing the MP3 player market. I'd never buy an iPod*, mainly out of principle than anything. But also partly because of the way that Apple loves to bottleneck your enjoyment of music by locking files down to one machine and one music player.

The neverending popularity of the iPod is also a bit of a turn-off for me; I've always assumed that the sensation of buying an iPod would be like that vague uncomfortable feeling you get when sitting on a seat which is still warm from somebody else's bottom.

And so the solution to me was that I always loved Creative's Zen MP3 players, and so owned several generations including the original Jukebox, the Zen Extra, Zen Touch and the Zen Vision:m. But these days my pocket is parked permanently at SanDisk central; my eSeries Sansa is my favourite thing in the world.

It's small, looks great, has an absolutely terrific interface (way better than the iPod and the Zen), has its own version of the clickwheel, it sounds great and of course, it's not made by Apple.

And so since the day that SanDisk stole my musical heart with the e270, I've been spreading the word to all who will listen:

" The power of Christ compells you! Snub the iPod, buy a Sansa e270!"

It's with great satisfaction that one Sansa which I had a hand in delivering out into the world recently has had babies! It's loving new mother took it into work, wrapped up in swaddling, to show her colleagues. This event provoked these kind of noises from one unsuspecting former-iPod enthusiast:

" Aaggghh my word it's wonderful!"

And these noises of worship from a group of awestruck monks:

" Pie Iesu Domine, Dona Eis Requiem" [Bonk]

That Sansa has had a ripple effect in the small community in which it lives. The outcome is that there have been a minimum of eight new Sansa purchases in the last two weeks as a result of that one demonstration, testament to the fact that once someone has used a Sansa eSeries MP3 player, it's impossible not to fall in love with it.

And there's no sign that SanDisk is letting up the pace either: it's bringing out a super new wifi-equipped 'Sansa Connect' later in the year, as well as a fantastic-looking widescreen video playing Sansa. As Phil Tuffnel would say: Happy days!

*it has to be said that an un-DRM'd, freerange, wifi 6G iPod with multi-touch interface would have a good chance of winning me over to the dark (white) side...

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Go back to Rungsberry HOME

Or try these other entries...

Rungsberry: The first entry

Aeulogy for a dead MP3 player

Savethe children: kill webspeak for good!

MP3sare great, just give them a chance!

Mybrick phone makes telephone calls

Make Mine a Rungsberry Ripple

Are iPods better than money?