UK stockists?

[deadwrong]

Amazon just informed me that if I bought the Fuze+ from them it would be dispatched within 2-5 weeks, which is obviously ridiculous.

Are any UK residents aware of any high street retailers that stock it? I'd ideally like to pick one up this weekend, but if not are there any other online retailers that you would recommend?

Cheers.

[Grez]

Originally Posted by deadwrong

Amazon just informed me that if I bought the Fuze+ from them it would be dispatched within 2-5 weeks, which is obviously ridiculous.

Are any UK residents aware of any high street retailers that stock it? I'd ideally like to pick one up this weekend, but if not are there any other online retailers that you would recommend?

Cheers.

Had mine from base.com

They got stock on 1 Nov and mine arrived on 3rd Nov. No hassle.

Click Here

Hope it helps!

[deadwrong]

Thanks Grez. I ordered mine from base.com on Sunday and it arrived yesterday, pretty decent for free postage.

As for the player, the first 24 hours of playing has given me more frustration than pleasure unfortunately. Hopefully I'm used to it now and there'll be no more annoyance. I'll post a review soon if people are interested.

[WalkGood]

Originally Posted by deadwrong

... I'll post a review soon if people are interested.

You may want to read Grez's initial verdict thread here.

[hkmix]

Originally Posted by deadwrong

Thanks Grez. I ordered mine from base.com on Sunday and it arrived yesterday, pretty decent for free postage.

As for the player, the first 24 hours of playing has given me more frustration than pleasure unfortunately. Hopefully I'm used to it now and there'll be no more annoyance. I'll post a review soon if people are interested.

It takes awhile to get used to the UI, and there's still a serious bug where the artist field in the Songs menu may be displayed wrong, so hold on while they release some updates =\

[deadwrong]

I'm kind of used to the touch pad now (although I still don't like it). I have 3 major gripes so far.
1) Loading time. It takes ages (I've not timed it but it's definitely >30 secs) for the player to switch on, even when it's only been a few minutes since switching off.
2) Responsiveness. Particularly a problem when accessing the music library from the main menu, it takes around 5 secs for the library to display. Also annoying: the music seems to need to be paused in order to access the library from the menu, otherwise it goes straight to the 'now playing' screen.
3) Album art not being displayed. The only albums that have art are the ones that I've manually updated in WMP, the ones that are automatically updated display no art. Presumably I can fix this by putting a picture in the album file. Another hassle.

Let me know if these are normal or if the above indicate some kind of fault. Thanks!

[hkmix]

Originally Posted by deadwrong

I'm kind of used to the touch pad now (although I still don't like it). I have 3 major gripes so far.
1) Loading time. It takes ages (I've not timed it but it's definitely >30 secs) for the player to switch on, even when it's only been a few minutes since switching off.
2) Responsiveness. Particularly a problem when accessing the music library from the main menu, it takes around 5 secs for the library to display. Also annoying: the music seems to need to be paused in order to access the library from the menu, otherwise it goes straight to the 'now playing' screen.
3) Album art not being displayed. The only albums that have art are the ones that I've manually updated in WMP, the ones that are automatically updated display no art. Presumably I can fix this by putting a picture in the album file. Another hassle.

Let me know if these are normal or if the above indicate some kind of fault. Thanks!

1. Just you, I think. My loading time never really exceeds 15 seconds or so. I admit it's slow, but I think that's something that'll improve with time.

2. Yes, definitely an issue. It's reported as a current bug right now, and I'm sure they're working on it. However, I don't have a problem accessing music library. How many files do you have at the moment?

3. You might be using id3v2.4 tags. You MUST be using id3v2.3 (UTF-16 works fine) for album art and proper tags to show up. The Fuze+ doesn't support id3v2.4 yet.

[Grez]

Originally Posted by hkmix

3. You might be using id3v2.4 tags. You MUST be using id3v2.3 (UTF-16 works fine) for album art and proper tags to show up. The Fuze+ doesn't support id3v2.4 yet.

I've tagged tracks for my Fuze+ using v2.4 and they've worked fine for me using ISO-8859-1 text encoding.

[Grez]

Originally Posted by deadwrong

3) Album art not being displayed. The only albums that have art are the ones that I've manually updated in WMP, the ones that are automatically updated display no art. Presumably I can fix this by putting a picture in the album file. Another hassle.

Let me know if these are normal or if the above indicate some kind of fault. Thanks!

Are you using drag-and-drop or syncing with a media player? I only ask because I've simply placed the album art in the same folder on my computer as the album it relates to. Drag-and-drop the whole folder into the "Music" folder on the Fuze+ and the album art has been recognised and used by the Fuze+.

Hope this helps

[deadwrong]

Originally Posted by Grez

I've tagged tracks for my Fuze+ using v2.4 and they've worked fine for me using ISO-8859-1 text encoding.

Forgive my ignorance, but how do I find out/change how my tracks are tagged?

I've been syncing with WMP, I'll try dragging and dropping to see if the album art is carried over.

[deadwrong]

Well. The player is now frozen on the loading screen. Maybe it is faulty after all. I can turn it off, but when I turn it back on again the same thing happens. I've tried resetting it by holding down the power button for 20secs, but that doesn't make a difference. I've tried removing the memory card, no difference.

I miss my Creative Zen.

[Grez]

Originally Posted by deadwrong

Forgive my ignorance, but how do I find out/change how my tracks are tagged?

I've been syncing with WMP, I'll try dragging and dropping to see if the album art is carried over.

Hi, I've had a look round, and can't find much help about the tagging. Sorry

According to this page, there's been problems with tagging in WMP11 for quite a few people. The only access I have to Windows is an install of XP in a virtual machine on here. However, it only runs WMP9, and the information given about the tagging method it uses is scant to say the least - it only mentions v1 and v2, and no detail at all about text encoding.

If I need to fiddle with tags when they're not automatically added by my player on linux (called "banshee"), I use a program called easy tag, which allows you to set tags and choose the format. I've heard that a program called Media Monkey (available here) is free to download for Windows and will allow you to take control of your tags. It seems to be highly thought of amongst the Windows fraternity.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

[Grez]

Originally Posted by deadwrong

Well. The player is now frozen on the loading screen. Maybe it is faulty after all. I can turn it off, but when I turn it back on again the same thing happens. I've tried resetting it by holding down the power button for 20secs, but that doesn't make a difference. I've tried removing the memory card, no difference.

I miss my Creative Zen.

Just read this post. Sorry to hear that. A similar thing happened with my daughter's iTouch last year. We ended up taking it back to the shop. Hope you get it sorted soon.

[hkmix]

Originally Posted by Grez

I've tagged tracks for my Fuze+ using v2.4 and they've worked fine for me using ISO-8859-1 text encoding.

Makes sense. I'm Asian/listen to Asian music, so I need my Unicode. For that, id3v2.3 is still the best. It has the best compatibility right now, anyhow.

[deadwrong]

So the SanDisk technical help people told me to re-format my player, which I did. It's working fine now, it's even more responsive than it was pre-freeze and the loading time is way down. Hopefully no more problems will arise!

The controls are still annoying though.

[hkmix]

Originally Posted by deadwrong

So the SanDisk technical help people told me to re-format my player, which I did. It's working fine now, it's even more responsive than it was pre-freeze and the loading time is way down. Hopefully no more problems will arise!

The controls are still annoying though.

Definitely, I really hope they improve the controls. On a warm boot (i.e. library already updated), my Fuze+ actually loads in under 10 seconds, which is pretty good. I'm starting to get used to the rather finicky controls though (migrating from a Nano 4G, so it's kind of hard, but I'm getting there).

[Grez]

I suppose I've found it less annoying than most because it's my first decent portable player, and anything's superior to manually flipping through 300 songs to find the one you want. Now I'm used to it, I don't really find the controls annoying.

Horses for courses, I suppose!

[hkmix]

You're lucky you haven't been corrupted by the iPod UI =P

[Grez]

Originally Posted by hkmix

You're lucky you haven't been corrupted by the iPod UI =P

TBH, the amount of hassle I had with my daughter's iTouch, I wouldn't have any more of (that company's) useless junk in my house. If they were the last electronics manufacturer on earth, I'd move into a cave just to be out of their moneygrubbing reach. They're almost as bad as a 'glazed' computer software manufacturer.....

grrr

[hkmix]

Originally Posted by Grez

TBH, the amount of hassle I had with my daughter's iTouch, I wouldn't have any more of (that company's) useless junk in my house. If they were the last electronics manufacturer on earth, I'd move into a cave just to be out of their moneygrubbing reach. They're almost as bad as a 'glazed' computer software manufacturer.....

grrr

I agree with your negative sentiments completely, and though I do hate Apple as a company and all of their products for being overpriced underpowered pieces of trash, their UI in their MP3 players (in terms of, at least, song selection/menu structure) is phenomenal. I ended up returning my Fuze+ and getting a Clip+ because the controls were simply too far behind, after migrating from my Nano 4G that refuses to get recognized by my computer, even in disk mode.