This will sound completely strange to many people, but I’ve only had an mp3 player for three months. It was a Christmas present and one about which I dithered for some time. I wanted something small, not terribly expensive (very important), easy-to-use and of reasonable sound quality. I also wanted something with a replaceable battery that could hold sufficient music and playlists so that I could load it up and not have to fiddle with it for a few days. I settled on a Sansa 2GB player – the c250. (It was also really cheap at Costco, which was the deciding factor.)

I know myself well enough to know that expensive would have been a waste. I have a child and three dogs. Sooner or later, someone is going to tangle in the thing and kill it. I’m pretty careful, mind you, but still….

Anyway, my biggest peeve about this player is the lack of instructions. Yes, it came with an “instruction manual“(.pdf file). That piece of paper was of less value than a single square of toilet paper. Really. So here’s some stuff I’ve figured out about this player, some of which wasn’t covered in the manual.

1. This player recharges by being plugged into the USB port of your computer.
2. To recharge it, you need to disable the sleep and time-out functions under “settings”.
3. The easiest way to bypass all this is to turn the player off and then plug it into the USB cord while the player is off. Start playing a playlist and turn on the continuous play mode. Leave it for twelve hours. Unplug the headphones to avoid canine and spousal curiosity.
4. Doing step three will allow you to continue listening to the player while it charges. The constant playing will keep it from timing out from lack of use.
5. To transfer files (can’t be done while playing), turn the player on first and then plug in the USB cable.
6. It takes about twelve hours for the player to charge, roughly the same length of time as a slow trickle charge for a set of AAA batteries.
7. The USB cord is non-standard and hard to replace. Don’t lose it.
8. The battery case is tricky to open, especially with sweaty fingers. If the player freezes up, you’ll need to pop this case open, remove the battery, put the battery back in and restart the player. You shouldn’t lose any songs doing this.
9. You can find a review of it here. There are also plenty of others out there….

Laugh at me if you want, as some of it may be common knowledge to those growing up with these things, but I still think how to recharge a chargeable battery should be in there.

So it’s a decent little player for someone who doesn’t need huge storage capabilities, expensive toys or incredible sound quality. For taking to the gym or wearing around the house, it works just fine. Holds enough music (or audio books) to keep me happy, too.