Trials of Technology (Part 4)

It's been a more than a month since I mentioned anything about our newMP3 players but we got one of the rebates yesterday and it reminded me.

I was having trouble using my Sansa c250 player with our library's Overdrive service. I thought it was working, except that I couldn't rewind or fast forward through the tracks. That I could have lived with, but about 3 tracks into my first book, when I started playing what should have been about 40 minutes into the track, it started from the beginning. No matter what the counter said, I could only start from the beginning of the track. That meant that I listened to the first 40 or so minutes while I was walking one day, then the next day I either had to listen to the same 40 or so minutes, or just forget the whole thing. It was rather frustrating, especially considering I don't have as much time to listen to books since Jeffrey has started walking with me in the mornings. I guess we could both listen to our MP3 players while we walk, but it's nice to be able to talk to each other. But I had a couple days to walk by myself because he was in Baraboo for work, and one of those days was a complete waste.

I have since deleted all those nice books I downloaded from Overdrive and added some from MP3 CDs I checked out of the library. I put them all on Jeffrey's player, too so he can listen to them in the car with his FM transmitter. The MP3 books work just fine.

I also downloaded a converter from Giveaway of the Day that removes the licensing from the Overdrive books and converts them from WMA to MP3, and I used that to convert a new book I downloaded from Overdrive. That works perfectly - I can fast forward and rewind if I need to, and it starts where it is supposed to. My conclusion is that, yes, the Sansa c250 player can work with Overdrive, but you will have to find a program to convert the files to MP3 first so that they will work properly. It's probably easier just to check MP3 or audio CDs out of the library and use those, but sometimes it's nice to be able to just download a book and not have to actually go to the library. Also, I have had the best luck setting the player's mode so that I can just drag and drop the files onto the player instead of syncing with RealPlayer or Windows Media Player.

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• Trials of Technology (Part 2)
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