I've recently been on a quest for the perfect music setup. As I noted a while back, I invested in a Sonos system at home, which started the whole ball rolling. It begat the purchase of a NAS device, (which then caused me to accidentally create about five copies of every song on my PC as I tried to back up all my music, anyone who has suggestion for easily removing all those dupes, please sing out). It caused me to subscribe to Rhapsody, begin thinking about putting in new speakers upstairs. So far so good. Then I was running one day and NOT LISTENING to the same music I was listening to at home, since it was on Rhapsody, and my music player didn't support Rhapsody. Okay, the search for the perfect transportable device was on.
After some research, I ordered an iRiver Clix that Rhapsody recommended. Here's where things get tricky. It's a gorgeous device, for starters. But holy cow, either I got a bad unit or iRiver really hates its customers.
Here's the chronology:
- Order the clix.
- Realize I needed to upgrade to Rhapsody to go. Somehow, I thought Rhapsody unlimited would do the trick; I guess they have a different definition of "unlimited" than I do. Oh well, another five bucks a month.
- Oh, have to redownload all the songs I thought were on my laptop if I am going to synch them to a device. Sheesh, that was harder than I thought had to reinstall the sw twice and HEY RHAPSODY STOP TRYING TO SLAM THE GOOGLE TOOLBAR ONTO MY PC okay I feel better now.
- Go home. Find box on front porch.
- Open the box. Admire the clix. Think, ooh, getting on a plane tomorrow, how cool will this be.
- Plug clix into PC. Device found, recognized. Powering up.
- Rhapsody doesn't see it. Crud. The box was really small but the instructions say install software, it's not big enough for a CD.
- Find mini CD in recycle bin.
- Realize there is no CD player/DVD player in laptop.
- Go upstairs, copy CD to aforementioned NAS device.
- Go back downstairs, copy the files, run install.
- SUCCESS. Rhapsody now sees the device. I authorize it.
- Start copying playlists.
- This can't be right, it's going to take 3 hours to move 100 songs?
- Launch chat session with Rhapsody. Oy. Much chatter. I keep asking the same question -- how long should it take to move 10 songs? On my iPod, that was about a minute. Finally, they say, yes, should be just about 10 seconds a song. Well, it's not.
- End up uninstalling all Rhapsody software, flashing the clix with new firmware (not really new, but what the heck, if tech support tells me to do, I do). Reinstall Rhapsody. Start the synch. Realize I have to get up early and catch a flight, so just let it sit all night.
- Wake up in the a.m. Tried to copy 500 tracks, looks like about 300 of them are there, 8 hours of synch time.
I'm listening now, really like the way the device works...but. Some skips in the music. Is it Rhapsody or the clix?
Jury still out here...