<<
I got my Sandisk 64MB MMC Card, but now the Nike Audio Program crashes whenever I have it in there (yes it's in the right way).. Any ideas? >>
same here... i'll give you all the full story.
i picked up one of the psa[play 60's at the black friday sale at CC. CC wanted $140, this is not a typo, $140 for their Sandisk 64meg MMC card (they have since updated their price to a more reasonable amount of $80). knowing that was a LUDICROUS price for MMC i picked up a 64meg kingston card AND a Zio! MMC reader for $47 total from dell when they were having their 25% off accessories sale. the cheapest place i've been able to find Sandisk (read below for why it needs to be Sandisk) MMC memory is
buy.com at $48.95 and $5.02 for shipping.
i got it home, cracked it open and fell in love with it. awesome shape, functional design, sweet deal... i mean $30 for a mp3 player... AWESOME!!!! the headphones
SUCK, but the player is sooooo cool!!!! then the honeymoon ended.
my memory showed up from dell and i was all set to fill it up with songs. fired up the NAM (Nike Audio Manager) and... it crashed. fired it up again and this time it stayed up. but the amount of memory it was showing that i had free was wrong, plus i could only access "internal" memory. so i hit refresh and BOOM it crashed. so i thought, well, there's prolly a firmware update, better do that. i couldnt get it to work at ALL at home (WinXP Pro). tried it again at work and had no problems even though i use the same OS at work. the battery indicator showed up on the little remote (even though i NEVER use it) but NAM kept crashing whenever the MMC was inserted. i emailed tech support numerous times (6 times total now, and i havent received one response from them yet) to try and get some help with it. also, the player itself wouldnt even turn on if the MMC was inserted. if i took it out, put it back in, flipped the power switch to on and then off and then on again, i could get it to power on, but it said "NO TRACKS" even though i knew i had several on there (both in internal memory and on the card). after i took out the MMC card, ALL my songs that had been in the internal memory were now gone. so i said screw it and took it back to CC and got another one.
the second wasnt any better. STILL wouldnt recognize the MMC memory nor would it work properly when the MMC was inserted. plus NAM was crashing ALL the time. i flashed the firmware.... no improvements. i uninstalled NAM and switched to the non-nike version, with no improvements. so i decided to do a little research and found that some 75% of all the psa[plays shipped can not read MMC memory. the only brand that has had any measurable sucess is Sandisk. plus, a large portition of the players were/are having other troubles as well (batteries not fitting properly, remote fails to work after a couple of uses, etc.). so i packed it up, grabbed my MMC and Zio! reader and headed back to CC. i (politely) talked to the manager of the store and explained what was happening (he was there when i switched out the first one and remembered me). he agreed to switch me out to a third player and i got him to agree to test out the player before i left. good move on my part because he couldnt even get it to power on WITHOUT the MMC card. at first he thought it was a dead battery but after fiddling with it for a few minutes, he finally got it to power up. but, as i had experieced, he couldnt get it to do anything once he put my MMC memory in (by the way, i tested the MMC thoroughly to make sure it wasnt the memory before i even thought of taking the player back). i explained to him that i had tried multiple times to get ahold of tech support but never with any luck. so, after a little more discussion, he agreed to upgrade me to the psa[play 120 for a small fee. that way, even if it doesnt read my card, i'll have 64megs to use, instead of the scant 32. they were out of stock so they had to special order it (still dont have it yet).
i'm sure some of you are scratching your heads going "you've just bitched and moaned about how this player sucks so bad, why the heck did you get another one, even if it has more memory???" cuz i'm totally in love with it. i've looked at all the other players out there and i cant find one that i like as much (compaq ipaq mp3 player is the only other one i'd even consider). nothing comes close to it in size and portability or looks.
hopefully nike will force diamond to beef up on the tech support. out of all the psa owners that i've spoken to, the only ones who have been able to get through to tech support had to call them and experieced EXTREMELY long hold times (30-50 minutes). then, after getting through, were told that they are aware of the various problems and are working on a "fix". i think i'll buy the CC extended warranty so i wont have to deal with diamond support. if Rio/nike does get the psa[play working properly, this will be a killer player. if not... well, i guess i can listen to the same 60+ minutes over and over again during a workout
i hope this gives some of you some insight into what you're getting yourself into with this player. if you're happy with 32megs, then this is a killer deal for this player. if you're wanting one with a bit more memory, either buy sandisk or keep taking the player back to where you bought it until you find one that can actually work with an MMC (just make sure to be nice and courteous to the CSR... they'll be willing to do a lot more for you if you're not yelling at them )
i havent been able to find a good newsgroup or webboard dedicated to this player, so if any of you know one, please pm me or post in here. or if anyone hears of a firmware update to fix the MMC problem, let me know
and last, if you're thinking about using WMA files, check out
EasyWMA Convertor. it allows you to right-click an mp3 file and re-encode it to WMA and to do batch encoding. i know you can get a free WMA encoder from microsoft, but this makes transfering your mp3's over REALLY easy.