So the X5L mentioned previously arrived last week. So far I like it a lot. I had to do some renaming initially as I copied stuff over, but I had to do an equivalent with the old thing anyways since ogg doesn't have track numbers but the metadata did. Anyways, I have a decent amount of stuff transfered over, and the rest has to wait until I boot up other machines (I didn't have much on the powerbook since I always had that with). Anyways, for starters the sound quality is awesome. The response curve is better than the old one, which I thought was better than a lot of other things. With a well encoded file it actually starts sounding rather similar to the original. The noise floor is awesome too. I initially didn't here it, but then I realized the background noise from the room through my earphones was just louder. There's nothing from the screen or drive though, just a very quiet hiss and a pop with the power switch. The UI takes a few seconds to get used to (a coworker said it made sense after about 30 seconds), and seems workable. The screen is bright and crisp, and easily readable from a decent distance or any angle. It doesn't take thinking and it's instant to turn the backlight on or off without affecting other things, which is nice. My only complaint is in audio mode it only updates a few times a second so the audio level graphs are kinda pointless. The thing feels slightly heavy for its size (but still reasonable), but I think that's probably due to the battery. I can pretty much unplug it in the morning when I go to work, use it all day (drive to work, work, drive home, evening at home), and not bother turning it off at all (like when I leave the office or go to lunch), and still have it barely drop off the top of the battery gauge. That is such a nice feature that way too many things lack. Stupid battery technology... Anyways, I have nothing but good things to say about it, so if you're in the market for a digital audio player, you should at least consider it.

As for the week at work, it was busy. I got power distribution for a rack moved to new circuits in one server room, and in the other one added 2 (sorta 3) new circuits. Should allow us to get everything up and running before school starts. Stuff also sorta blew up, but luckily none of it was my fault and I can't really do anything but sit back and wait for it to be fixed. I almost got another new server up, but I'm waiting for it to be able to reach stuff so it can be used. I think I finally got all the new student stuff figured out, and the system assigned permissions this morning. I still sent the list of changes it made to the student supervisors for verification in the morning since I don't know if they got me everything. I also got permissions for student workers for the rest of the school tied to contracts, which should hopefully save time for everyone (they say the access when requesting the job, don't have to think about having it added/revoked since everything's tied to contract dates and signing/termination). It'll be interesting to see how well that works after what's happened though - apparently they couldn't get contracts printed and signed in May, but had to wait until August to request them, so people may have a couple days waiting to get access after getting back and signing them. Such is life I guess, and maybe can be resolved next year.

The weekend was good, with sitting around and relaxing. First movie was Elektra which was better than expected (I had low expectations going in). Other than the intro when I put in the DVD that is. I have something funny if people want to see it. Anyways, the plot wasn't all that great, but it had fighting and martial arts and some interesting effects. Second movie was Wild Things 2. It was one of those where when I heard of it I was wondering how they could possibly do a sequel, so I had to see it. It's basically the same plot as the first one. Yes, same plot, although some of the characters have different relationship roles and some minor details are different. So yea, not such a great movie, unless you want to laugh at the movie. Third movie was Swimfan, which was better than expected. The plot was interesting, although nothing special. The soundtrack was interesting and well done technically, and they used some really interesting editing techniques. Like rather than draw out the scenes to simulate the normal emotion like most movies, there's multiple angles cut together with overlap sorta like a replay. That description actually doesn't do it justice, and it works way better than it'd seem at first. It's sorta combines a this is important with the character replaying what happened in their head to sorta make you look at it from their perspective. Yea, I'll stop before I totally mangle it. You should see if you haven't though.

So my bad luck finally managed to catch up to me. Sometime during the night last night the hard drive in my Karma managed to go into click mode, and I woke up to no music but a clicking and rather warm box. After a couple resets, hitting it on things, and letting it sit, it still isn't actually able to access the hard drive enough to boot before the bootloader times out and shut it off. I guess it's not too unexpected. I was probably lucky to have been able to get it back after the last time I had it go bouncing off each corner in turn across pavement and then rolling over a few times for good measure. Or the few times before that. That one actually involved me having to give it a drop of a few feet to unstick the heads (smacking it against hard surfaces from a few inches wasn't enough). Hard drives (even the 1.8" ones) aren't designed to take that sort of abuse, and after the last big tumble I'd occasionally notice it obviously trying to remap things on the hard drive and a few tracks suddenly being "bad". Unfortunately the drives are like half the cost of it, so I now have what's effectively an expensive paperweight.

So given the amount I use the thing, I began my quest to find a suitable repair/replacement. Repair involved hard drives, which are about as much as a new Karma, and I'd have to check compatibility and install it. eBay isn't much cheaper than new. Even though it's come down a third in price since I bought it, it's still kinda pricey for a device that's been effectively EOLed by the manufacturer. Off to the Intarweb. My main feature requirement is Vorbis support and good quality audio, with around 20GB of space being preferred (I had, while I guess still have, about 17GB on there). Those on IM were no help with suggestions other than iPod, which is out due to the lack of Vorbis and that &#!% wheel thingy. I don't like interfaces without a tactile response unless I'm looking at the screen - and for me a music player generally qualifies. The UI just seems unintuitive to me as well - I always have to use my second guess as to how to do something when I play with them. My first other idea was to use my Axim. It's handled the role temporarily before nicely, albeit the touch screen is a drawback - but at least it could have a custom interface. The fact that 8GB of storage costs over $600 and 4GB is over $200 pretty much shot that idea down though. I'm not going back to swapping a bunch of small cards again. So with my requirements I'm basically left with 4 players, one of which is the Karma.

After much reading reviews, checking comparisons, and looking up prices, I settled on the iAudio X5L. It has the Vorbis, and FLAC is an extra bonus. I don't care about color screens other than if they suck battery, as my Axim can play full xvid movies at 640x480, which no dmp can even approach. The X5L is rated for 35 hours of battery life, so that's not gonna be a problem. Reviews still place it in at somewhere over 30 hours. As a bonus the thing has a very strong, very clean audio output, with the highest S/N ratio out there. Apparently the output is very flat too, although it has plenty of adjustments. I contemplated for a second the lack of the 5 band agile equalizer and being locked into fixed frequencies, until I realized the only real use is to compensate for crappy headphones. It lacks crossfade which I'll miss. The ID3 database probably won't be an issue for me, as while Rio has awesome selection stuff in RioDJ, I never really used them. Having direct access to the files and ability to mount and generate m3us will actually be much nicer. As an added bonus this thing should be able to mount external drives to pull data across. It sounds like anything that complies with USB Mass Storage. Should be interesting to see how well it works. Theoretically it could double as a place to offload CF cards from the camera. Anyways, I'll have to post a review shortly after it arrives. Which will hopefully be early next week. I love that basic shipping from Newegg always ends up arriving the day after shipping.