If you're familiar with this iPod lunch part of the consumer electronics market, you probably know the only thing out there that stands a chance is the Sandisk Sansa e2xx series of portable music players. And you probably also know that the reason it has failed to succeed so far despite its clearly superior hardware and low price point is its incredibly awful firmware.
Well, even if you didn't know that, Sansdisk did. But Sandisk did not feel that the way to fix this problem was to improve its firmware. No, Sandisk is trying (perhaps unofficially) to fix this problem by silently cheering on the Rockbox team while it puts its best reverse-engineering skills to the test, trying to port Rockbox, the excellent alternative PMP firmware, to the Sansa. Silently, because the NDAs they signed with their suppliers prevent them from doing more than providing would-be hackers with free Sansa to crack.
I mention this today because Rockbox has just announced a CVS build for the Sansa, a big step on the way out of alpha. Small caveat: no controls, no sound, no battery meter. But do you really ever use those features, anyway?
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