4 years ago I invested in my first MP3 player. I purchased online a 1GB micro-drive player from RIO. This device was perfect for what I needed. I could load up 100+ songs on the device and listen to commercial-free music where ever I went.
Early last year, that microdrive quit working. I guess dropping it on the ground a few times was a really bad idea. This was unfortunate, because I found several authors had started podcasting their books for free. Now I had a better understanding of what I wanted in a player.
For a replacement, I had these requirements:
Based on this criteria, I started shopping. I checked Target, Wal-Mart and Best Buy to see what was available. I found that seldom do MP3 manufacturers advertise 'bookmark' functionality on their devices (like the RCA Lyra). As this was key to my search, I went to searching on the web for brands sold locally.
Personally, I like using PriceGrabber.com for their search, and review options. I can filter down all my options in one search field and get the best reviewed products. Plus they often have links to sites with free shipping!! (Almost as good as buying it locally!).
Decision Time
I ended up purchasing another RIO device. I knew the RIO devices had the bookmark functionality, plus the Forge 256mb Sport, has a SD memory slot. I also loved the idea that it used standard AAA batteries, so I wouldn't need to purchase a separate charger for my car. I did purchase a bunch of rechargable AAA batteries and so far, the device has performed wonderfully. I download files to my laptop, use the internal SD slot to put them on the SD chip, then listen!
As you may already know, I use my MP3 player simply to play audio-books (aka podcasts) while commuting to work.
I use Juice (fka iPodder) to capture these files. It does an excellent job of downloading content and placing it on my machine. Once downloaded, I drag and drop the files to my MP3 player.
Unfortunately, my cheap ($5) MP3 player (Sansa 100?) sorts files using an odd technique. It appears to sort them by track number, then title. So if I have 2 active stories on my player, it will play track 1 - story 1, then track 1 - story 2, track 2 - story 1, etc. I think this is because sometimes the track number is a 'string' value?? To fix this, I cleanup the ID3 tags values.
This script utilizes the CDDBControl (from Roxio) to get access to the ID3 tags. If you have a Roxio product installed, you may already have this file. Otherwise, I've downloaded it from here. Register it like you would any new DLL on your computer.
Dim id3: Set id3 = CreateObject("CDDBControlRoxio.CddbID3Tag")
Dim FS: Set FS = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
argCount = WScript.Arguments.Count
If argCount = 2 Then
FileName = WScript.Arguments.Item(0)
strTitle = WScript.Arguments.Item(1)
set File = fs.getfile(FileName)
id3.LoadFromFile File.Path, False
track = id3.TrackPosition
If (track <> "") And Not(isnumeric(mid(id3.Title,3,2))) Then
If not IsNumeric(track) and len(track)>0 Then
do while Not(IsNumeric(track)) And Len(track)>0
track = left(track,Len(track)-1)
Loop
End if
If CInt(track)<10 Then track = "0"&track
newtitle = ucase(Left(strTitle,2)) & Track & "-" & strTitle
id3.Title = newTitle
id3.SaveToFile File.Path
End If
End If
Inside Juice, I setup an advanced option to call this script when a download finished. Cool? Go into Juice, select File, then Preferences, and click on the Advanced tab. Click the checkbox for Run this command after each download, then put in a fully qualified path to the script. Mine is:
c:\bin\scripts\JuiceUpdate.vbs "%f" "%n"
You see a short popup each time a file finished downloading and the script runs. The Title name changes to the first two characters of the name(track number) - Full name of podcast.
For example (for the Max Quick Part 2):
Title before = PB-Max Quick 2: Two Travelers - Episode 1
Title after = MA01-Max Quick 2: Two Travelers