Problems and Annoyances, DJ player

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs.

Rev A2, November, 2005

Problems and Annoyances

DJ player

I’ve found the DJ to be very reliable and durable. In fact, dropping it from a height of 3+ feet hasn’t caused a problem, even when the unit was powered on and playing. I’ve done this at least four times in the past six months (not on purpose, of course!) and no doubt I’ll continue to do so.

While I really like the scroll-select dial which is very convenient for one-handed operation, the first unit that I had was too sensitive and the act of pressing down to select an item often caused the dial to inadvertently move to another selection. This is exacerbated when I use my left hand. I had occasion to replace the player (see below) and although the new unit is much better in this regard, I still have the occasional problem with incorrect selections. [Note: The first unit that I had was the Model T (rev A00) the replacement was rev A04.]

At power up, the unit sometimes performs housekeeping that causes a (frustrating at times) delay in startup by a few seconds.

During the first month’s operation, the DJ performed flawlessly. In the second month, the unit locked up a couple of times (i.e. would not respond to any buttons including power off). Both times I had left the player in direct sunlight. When all is said and done, the unit is really a computer and is thus prone to any computer problems. Fortunately, there’s a reset button that fixes such problems (accessible via a small hole in the bottom of the unit; operated by a straightened paper clip or the like).

On a rainy day in the field, I inadvertently got the unit very wet and it died. My fault entirely, not a problem with the unit. Fortunately, I had purchased a one year “no questions asked” replacement warranty good for any failure. At $29, it was a good investment. Now I’ll be a more careful! When I received the replacement unit, it was satisfying to reap the rewards of my efforts in creating an organized library -- I was able to transfer the entire contents to the DJ in one fell swoop.

Musicmatch Software

Musicmatch is in the business of selling downloadable music and I very much suspect that the (free) software is a necessary evil for them. Although Musicmatch version 10 is feature rich, it crashes far too often for my liking. Fortunately, however, like any reliable database software should, data is saved as it’s created and doesn’t require explicit saves. Consequently, I haven’t lost any work because of the instability. They have balls though -- the conversion speed of the free software is deliberately slowed so they can charge $20 for a “high speed” version. Do you think I can get away with finding birds slowly so I can charge more to find them quickly?

The inability of the software to support more than one library meant that I had to sacrifice the “Genre” tag to create pseudo libraries. In my case, this didn’t result in any lack of library organizational ability but may be a problem for users with more sophisticated requirements.

The software has a background process that keeps the database open at all times which prevents my backup software (NTI Backup Now) from backing up the database. I have disabled this process from starting when the system boots, but it still starts whenever I use Musicmatch. Before running my daily backup on days that I’ve used Musicmatch, I use the Task Manager to stop the process. However, if I forget, I’m obviously exposed.

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