Sunday, September 9, 2007
Do You Use Your Pocket PC As A Media Player?
Posted by Ed Hansberry in "THOUGHT" @ 03:30 PM
Pocket PCs have always had the ability to play music since including Windows Media Player on the device since Pocket PC 2000 was released. Even before that there options, including a version of WMP from MS you could install on some pre-PPC 2000 devices. I am wondering how many use it as your primary music device, and if not, why not? I don't, and for several reasons.
• No gapless playback. I have some CDs, like those from Diane Arkensone, that are really one long song. The pauses between songs is unacceptable.
• Little or no cooperation between WMP and the phone. You can go deaf if listening to music and the phone rings at the elevated volume. Ditto alarms and reminders.
• No "listening to music" profile. This sort of goes with the previous point, but even with text messages, new emails or any other new alert, like some RSS readers have. When I am listenting to music, I want everything else off. I should't have to put the phone in flight mode or disable all my other alarms and reminders temporarily. I recognize this is a user preference and you may want your alerts, but i suspect you may want to turn some off or reduce the volume to about 10% of normal levels.
There are more reasons, but the fix is to have some sophisticated profiles on the device allowing the user to configure these preferences at one time, not every time they fire up WMP, and then having to reconfigure them after shutting it down. For now, and the forseeable future, I'll have a separate MP3 player. Right now, I am looking seriously at the new Creative Zen, which should be shipping in a few weeks.
• No gapless playback. I have some CDs, like those from Diane Arkensone, that are really one long song. The pauses between songs is unacceptable.
• Little or no cooperation between WMP and the phone. You can go deaf if listening to music and the phone rings at the elevated volume. Ditto alarms and reminders.
• No "listening to music" profile. This sort of goes with the previous point, but even with text messages, new emails or any other new alert, like some RSS readers have. When I am listenting to music, I want everything else off. I should't have to put the phone in flight mode or disable all my other alarms and reminders temporarily. I recognize this is a user preference and you may want your alerts, but i suspect you may want to turn some off or reduce the volume to about 10% of normal levels.
There are more reasons, but the fix is to have some sophisticated profiles on the device allowing the user to configure these preferences at one time, not every time they fire up WMP, and then having to reconfigure them after shutting it down. For now, and the forseeable future, I'll have a separate MP3 player. Right now, I am looking seriously at the new Creative Zen, which should be shipping in a few weeks.
