RockBox

A few days ago, I got fed up with the firmware of my MP3 player (Sansa e250) acting all quirky and refusing to mount under Linux 90% of the time. I searched the Web for an alternative solution, stumbled on RockBox and promptly installed it. There are plenty of RockBox reviews around the web so it would be pointless to give my own or get into writing a tutorial, but I must say that if you even feel slightly dissatisfied of your MP3 player firmware or just want more, then you ought to give RockBox a try. Its obscenely easy to install and uninstall and using it for the first time felt like a breath of fresh air and even got me that strange empowering feeling I always get whenever I install Linux on a computer that did not know any better. It’s too bad there its not more publicized, people should be aware that alternatives exist even for their MP3 player firmware. RockBox comes with all options you could ever think of and supports a huge amount of formats. As an example, the speaker in my right ear bud is damaged and does not play as strong as the other side. I could just have thrown away the headset but for reasons I hope are becoming obvious to everyone nowadays, I had to find a way to save it and figured out RockBox would allow me to balance the sound in both ears; it did. It did also provide me with a complete five-band equalizer, faster boot time, better sound quality, better battery life, faster UI, Doom (the game) and a plethora of other options on top of being capable of everything the default firmware on the Sansa e250 is. Well, all of those features do come with a few downsides and I will admit that the main one would be that which arises from RockBox’s customizability: your MP3 player just got a lot more complicated. In my case, it’s a trade off I am willing to make , but for those that have a hard time finding their way around the Ipod interface, stay clear of RockBox. Did I mention its open-source software? Give it a try, if you do not like it, uninstall it.