Well, I once more cheated the Twelve Step Program for Recovering Fuze Buyers. ;)
Fortunately, I got off easy this time -- just a "You REALLY bought ANOTHER Fuze last night? How many do you need?"
(I am of the same opinion on this matter as the SCOTUS is on the Second Amendment, or, to snark a line from Tina Turner, "What's need got to do with it?" ;)
(Besides, when I found out they'd discontinued the Fuze, I made a point of staking my claim -- I told her I intended to get at least one more 4GB and one more 8GB Fuze, the NEXT TIME that I saw them listed on Woot. I then made sure there was no way to parse me out of it, by saying, for example, if they list a 4GB, I will buy at least one, and then, if they list an 8GB a day or two later, I'll buy at least one of those, too.)
A man learns to think ahead... (and, by buying her an Asus Notebook during the last Wootoff, it sort of made it difficult to grieve me over one piddling little Fuze).
I haven't read the thread yet, been plowing through a bunch of "life" that's cropped up, major sleep deficit. I did scan a few of the posts, and saw the usual stuff about hoping it's a V1 so that they can install Rockbox (that hasn't been an issue for a long time -- Rockbox runs BETTER on my V2 Fuzes than it does on my V1 Fuzes -- and the native firmware runs better on the V2 also -- the V1 is notorious for locking up when trying to play videos from the Micro SD card, whereas the V2 has no such issues -- and, Rockbox could care less -- its superior video playback system runs rings around the native firmware on EITHER variety of Fuze, on main, or card memory.)
I was surprised that the last sale didn't sell out -- I was really expecting it to, given the frantic "Fuze hunt" going on out in the world -- I've seen lots of reports of people depressed over being unable to find anything other than very high-priced Fuzes in the few places that still have them, and those that did have decent prices now have bare shelves.
Sansa, IMO, just pulled a "New Coca Cola" mis-step -- but, unlike the liquid realm, I don't think there'll be any virtual "Coke Classic" to sate the customers.
The type of people that the Fuze appeals to are not the type of people that the "replacement" appeals to. In fact, based on the reports I've seen, there just aren't all that many that the "replacement" DOES appeal to. The two devices are totally different critters, sharing little beyond a name.
Too sad, but, thankfully us Fuze-junkies can pick up a fix here, for the time being.
PS: On the off chance that this hasn't already been addressed several times already, for those using the native firmware, the EASIEST way to get videos converted for your Fuze is to use the free "video4fuze" program, which can be downloaded from the googlecode site (URL not handy, but you can find it in a few seconds if you look).
For those using Rockbox, the free WinFF program does the trick nicely. Free, easy to use, bereft of adware, spyware, or other malwares (BOTH of these converters).
Don't be comforted by "It uses AVI files" -- yeah, the files it uses DO end in "dot a v i" -- but, they are NOT the kind of AVI files that a standard file transcoding program will produce. (They're close enough to "normal" that they WILL play in VLC -- but then, EVERYTHING plays in VLC -- but, the inverse is not true -- if you try to play a standard AVI file, all you'll get is an error message telling you to use the Sansa Media Converter -- generally considered an exercise in futility.)
The video4fuze app does the AVI conversion, AND, it does the necessary tweaking that's required to insert the secret sauce that the native firmware NEEDS in an AVI file.
But still, the Rockbox video player is superior -- better image quality ("dithering" option to avoid banding in big expanses of smoothly gradated area), higher frame rate, MUCH better bookmarking and resume-tracking, and, perhaps best of all, NO need for ANY special converter.
Get 'em while you can, folks! (But try to leave a few more for me at the next Wootoff! ;))
