Thursday, June 05, 2008

Trials of Technology (Part 3)

After I figured out how to get my audio books onto my new Sansa c250 player, I started listening to a book. It sounded really good, and the part I really like is that, when I stop the track and turn the player off, when I turn it back on, it's in the exact same place. With my old player I had to remember where I was on the track and then fast forward or rewind to get back to where I had left off. With normal audio books taken from CDs, that's not a big problem because the tracks are pretty short. But with the Overdrive books, the average track is an hour long. Usually I walk half an hour, meaning I finish about half a track. Then I have to remember next time - was I 33 minutes into this track? 15 minutes from the end? I kept planning to write it down, but I never did. With this new player, I won't have to remember, so that's nice.

What I don't like about this player is that I can't fast forward or rewind through the Overdrive tracks. I was listening to my book, and I got to a good stopping point, so I thought I'd just rewind a few seconds, stop the player, and be ready to start the next time. I ended up accidentally going to the next track so I had to mess with it. I kept rewinding and fast forwarding and trying to get to the right place in the track. What I found out was that, no matter what the counter said, when I started playing the track, it always started from the beginning. 54 minutes into a 1:04 long track, and it starts playing from the beginning. I don't know what kind of hoodia voodoo this is, but it fast forwards and rewinds just fine through the music tracks I put on the player. I have yet to try it with an audio book taken from a CD, but I'm hoping it's just an Overdrive problem. In the meantime, I will have to make sure I'm paying close attention when I listen to my books, since I can't back up just a little bit if I miss something.


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