Ah yeah, I forgot abuot the free 10 songs thing. That's nice on Microsoft's part, and it's well integrated with the Live platform. I know that the WP7 UI is very similar to the Zune UI (which is excellent), and while I don't know what the media player on the WP7 phones are like, I would be willing to bet it's almost exactly like a Zune.

Dumb old OrcishGamer...always trying to ruin my fun...

;-)

That's great to know, thank you. My Clip+ just came in the mail yesterday & I discovered that even just putting my favorite songs on it...I need more than just the 2gb it comes with. I really didn't expect to fill it! So I ordered a 4gb MicroSDHC card from Amazon dirt-cheap, to turn my player into a 6gb machine...and its about the same price (total) as the 4gb Clip+, so its like getting 50% more space for free. :-D

I don't know that I wanna mess with Rockbox, we'll have to see as time goes on.

Yes, the SD slot is a great feature on the Clip+. I have bought a 8GB model, and after a few months when I ran out of space, I added a 16GB SD card. I still have plenty of free space despite putting my whole music library on it. And carrying 24GB worth of music in a device the size of a lighter is great :-)

(grumble, grumble)

I just put in a brand new 4gb MicroSDHC card into my Sansa SanDisk Plus & plugged it into my computer. Now its stuck on "Refreshing your media" & I can't even shut it off.

Help?

Ok, so it seemed the trick was to let the player shut itself off after x-amount of time not being touched (I left it on & went to bed).

Now today I can't get it to recognize the music I put on the 4gb MicroSDHC card. When I use the card with the adapter & plug it into my computer, its all there. But when I plug it into the mp3 player, mp3 player recognizes the card as empty. And when I plug the mp3 player into the computer, the computer sees the card & tells me the proper amount of space is used, but tells me there's nothing actually taking up all that space.

WTF???!!!

That media refresh needs to succeed for you to see your music on the device. I found this on a Google search but have no idea if it would help you...

"Personally I would just reinstall the newest firmware as it will force a db refresh during the update and this would cure the possibility of firmware corruption VS just a loaded file corruption.

Other than that, I believe if you connect in MSC mode and delete the following files from the Clip's root folder, this would force the Clip to rebuild at next power up

MTABLE.SYS
RES_INFO.SYS
SYS_CONF.SYS

(MTABLE.SYS is the database)"

Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong here? I've got the card, I can put music on the card when its in the adapter & plugged into the computer. But the card reads empty when its in the player itself & refreshing it doesn't pick it up either. :-(

ChaunceyK,

I know you asked about FM transmitters before, and I wanted to suggest a model that worked well for me:

http://www.amazon.com/iriver-AFT-100-Mobile-Transmitter/dp/B00067LYFW

It's an iRiver model that has two good features: a headphone jack (no proprietary hook-up for iPod or the like) and it lets you set your own presets. Which is hugely helpful if, like me, you ever need to drive around in a heavy metropolitan area (I was in Washington DC and Chicago). The models with their own permanent presets often aren't clear enough in areas with heavy radio signals.

It's $60 right now, which is about what I paid for mine a good 4 or so years ago. Still going strong.

Hope this helps!

There are Sansa Fuze's with 4 gigs, but mine is 8 gigs (plus an SD slot for 2 more). I imagine they're substantially the same, build-wise and etc. They certainly look it.

I have nothing but raves for my Fuze and the e280R, which is the Sansa model that came before it. I've dropped both and they've come through nicely, both have been well reviewed for having very good sound on the AV Forums, and both have long battery life (about 20 hours). With good earbuds, the sound is great, and with merely low to midrange ones, you can tell the difference. My Ultimate Ears Superfi 5 Pro's are dual-speaker in-ear monitors and sound fantastic with the Sansas, and my new knock-around, cheaper Ultimate Ears 500's sound good enough for the price but less fantastic, requiring fiddling with the equalizer. Oh yeah, and there's a good equalizer. So if you have good enough earphones, the Sansa will take advantage of them, and if you don't like the sound on your Sansa, it might be that your earphones are the problem.

They also come with a radio, which I like a lot, and a voice recorder, as well as video capability.

They are read in windows as separate hard disks, and work fine with Media Monkey and Rhapsody. The SD card is read as a separate hard disk, but both internal memory and the SD card come up in a unified menu without any steps needed to get from one to the other.

The price on Sansa's, like on a lot of portable electronics, varies wildly from time to time on Amazon.com, where I got both my Sansas and my earphones. Right now they are pricier than usual, by a good deal. Still, they are really good products. I've got two and I still use both throughout the week, and wouldn't hesitate to buy another.

Sorry for the delay, I'm a bit busy right now.

I'm not sure what your problem is, but here are some tips that might help you. I use my Clip+ this way and it works fine.

First, you have to understand the difference between MSC and MTP. Those are the two USB modes supported by the Clip+. Basically, MTP is specific to MP3 players (and cameras, and other devices). MSC is the standard external storage format, like USB keys and memory cards. You should choose which standard you want to use (I suggest MSC for better compatibility), set up your clip+ to use this format instead of the default "autochoose", and stick with it. Those two formats are almost like 2 partitions on the internal storage : if the Clip+ is in MTP mode and you plug it in, the computer won't see the songs that you have transferred in MSC mode, and vice versa.

Once you've transfered your songs, the player should update its database when you unplug it. If the database update crashed, try to replug the Clip+ to your computer, change something (add/remove one song, for instance) and it should re-update. Once the database updated successfully (it can take some time depending on the number of songs : mine takes up to 5-10min) you should be able to navigate your library. If not, try to navigate through your database "by folder" on the Clip+, to see if the files are present in the filesystem.

Then, to use the external SD card, I suggest leaving it in the SD slot of the Clip+. You shouldn't need an adapter, except maybe if you feel the transfers are faster, but if you run into trouble try to leave the card in the Clip+. When you plug the Clip+ to your computer in MSC mode, it should appear as two drive letters in windows : one for the internal storage, the other for the SD card. Just drag and drop some music on the SD card, exactly like you did for the internal memory, and you should be fine.

Note : I had some trouble with Windows 7 64, it did not detect my SD card when it was in the Clip+. Putting the card in an external adapter worked fine. If you run into the same problem, let me know and I'll try to remember what I did to solve this problem.

I hope this helps you.

Despite your in-depth instructions, I still can't get the Clip+ to recognize my music on the SD card. My computer recognizes it just fine, but the Clip+ continues to tell me the SD card is empty, even after refreshing. The Clip+ is also sometimes freezing up entirely when I try to use the SD card.

I'd think it was just a bad SD card, except that my computer has no problem recognizing it whether its in the Clip+ or the adapter. It seems to be just a problem between the Clip+ & the card.

I'm going to try a Sansa site for this. Thank for your attempts to help.

You're welcome. You could try the Sansa forums, there are some helpful people there.

Just a thought : you could check that the filesystem on the SD card is supported by the Clip+. I believe that only FAT32 is supported, if your SD card has been formatted in NTFS format the symptoms could match what you describe.

It is FAT32, still no luck. :-(