Blogging Ottinger (tim)Rockbox
I thought that Linux on an iPod was pretty cool, but maybe RockBox is an even cooler thing. It’s a total replacement for the iPod’s software… or ArchOs, or just about anything you can upgrade through flash. If that’s an overstatement, it’s not all that much wrong.
The idea of having RockBox is almost enough to get me to sink my hard-earned sawbucks into an iPod. Right now, I already have ogg playing on my Zaurus, though it’s not as big on storage (flash only : cf and sd) and I can’t do fast-foward within a song (only jumps by songs). So I have some incentive to move up to a hard-disk based player. Now I have another good reason.
I’ve researched the gamut of hard-drive mp3 players. I settled for a 1gig flash-memory player for several reasons. One in particular was the unwanted momentary freeze-ups which happen when walking or running. When you think about it, really, how can a mobile device with an internal spinning drive NOT freeze up at some time. I went with the iriver http://www.iriveramerica.com/prod/ultra/t10/T10-1GB.aspx because I wanted the ability to switch out batteries for cheap and get the longest life out of a battery. That’s another thing to consider …embeded batteries break more frequently than one might like.
Comment by G. Jensen — 2006-April-15 @ 09:45
Thanks, George. I’d not considered that. Having only had small flash-based players, I’ve never had the problem with freeze-ups. Of course, I don’t get nearly enough of the physical activity that causes the freezing. I should work on that.
Comment by Tim — 2006-April-16 @ 10:50