The Matrix Recertified

You can't teach clever like that.

This is part electronics review, part rant. The gist is that the last 3 major techy purchases I've made, to the best of my memory, have been recertified. I've been finding some decent-to-amazing prices on some stuff that I wanted to buy, with the caveat that it doesn't cost so much that an early failure won't totally screw me but cheap enough that I don't stress over it. Surprisingly, all 3 have seemed to be quality finds, at least from the recertified moniker - anything wrong with them is apparently a flaw with the equipment regardless of how new or used it is. More on that later.

First off was my Asus Eee PC 901B netbook. I determined over a period of weeks that a netbook, at a decent price, would be a good addition to my traveling needs as with a surprising battery life I could use it to watch movies on long flights (because I hardly ever go on short ones) and get online and/or write up stories during events. I figured that there wasn't much need for my bigger, more powerful laptop in such cases, as I was no longer gaming on it. When I bought my netbook, they were still gaining attention, and not yet trendy. Prices were dropping as competition increased exponentially, so I could take my time and look for a deal. Because there were a few things I was not budging on, such as a Solid State Drive for storage, and that was becoming more rare, I couldn't wait forever. I'm not sure how I came across Mwave; it may have been a website I was checking that posted netbook deals daily. Anyway, I found my netbook for about $180 as a recertify; new they ran more like $279, so I was comfortable with that. Of course, I put upgrades in that raised my overall cost to near that anyway, but I got what I wanted, which was the important thing. I started to bring it to work with me and had to adjust to the small keyboard (it is now fairly common for the keyboard to be full size). The biggest problem I had at first was brushing the sensitive touch pad while typing, which moved the cursor and got frustrating. I adapted to the keyboard but it was never fluid. Over time I found that, while my Windows install was very simple, and it responded fairly well, programs like Firefox, which are pretty quick, lagged and were sometimes unresponsive. For that I can blame the specs on the netbook, but even a 1.6Ghz CPU should handle FF just fine. It played movies well on flights, and the battery lasted a while, but eventually I think it was just...too small. I have since started to use my bigger laptop again, and uncovered far more uses for it than its original intent (to play WoW on work trips).

Next up was my car GPS system. I decided for my birthday that I wanted a simple, cheap GPS because I never find a place on my first attempt, and was sort of sick of that. It's biggest help has been locating all the work customers I've had occasion to visit, bouncing around Portland. It's a Nextar unit that I picked up at Fry's, with the whole package running $75 with a recertified label on it. I haven't used any of the accessories really. I have minor complaints: the piece that attaches to the car is a poor design, and it can be frustrating to get the unit locked in; the software occasionally crashes; and sometimes it gives weird directions. However, I have found that if I immediately enter a location instead of waiting for it to boot normally, I can usually get moving quicker than anticipated. It seemed to give more "make a U turn" directions in the past, but it's rare now. In my opinion, the best purchase of the 3.

Finally we come to my new iPod replacement mp3 player, the Sansa View. Simply put, it's junk. What I failed to do beforehand was read the Sansa forums, which are filled with complaints about this particular device and how it's almost entirely unsupported. From its inception, the operating system has been flawed, and does inexcusable things like freeze the display in shuffle mode so you can't see the name of the current song/band/album, and its responsiveness is a joke. If the display locks, you can push skip all you want, but it's a crap shoot on how long you will have to wait for it to actually do that. I have completed the song I wanted to skip, only to see the player jump from the next song, which I liked, to finally process the skip command. It doesn't seem to do this if you listen to a single band, or album, or playlist, but that's beside the point. I figured I could get a popular brand with average size and be fine (and while mine is recertified, plenty of new ones have the exact same problems), but I've found that the firmware hasn't been updated in a year, and none of the previous updates ever fixed the glaring problems that existed upon release, leaving owners to basically surmise that Sansa has stopped caring about it. I am hoping to create a playlist that just uses my entire library and bypass the shuffle problem, but that shouldn't be necessary if this thing was designed well. I am unsure presently what I will do going forward...I really didn't want another iPod, but I don't think 16GB Zunes exist.