One of the reasons I bought an N900 was so I could put a 16GB microSD card in it and use it as an mp3 player. The N900 has 32GB of storage–about 26GB of that are available due to the N900 needing about 6GB for system files. Adding a 16GB SD card makes 40GB total available for files such as mp3s.

I don’t even have 40GB of mp3s on this device, because I need to save space for downloaded files, photos, etc. Right now I have maybe 35GB of music on my N900, split between the internal storage and the microSD card. This, by the way, from someone who nearly ran out of space on a 120GB Zune. 110GB – all music, no videos (the Zune Pass subscription service was primarily to blame).

Right now the device has 8,465 songs on it, according to the N900′s default media player.

So my 120GB Zune broke. I admit it, I dropped it a lot. I went back to using my 80GB Archos 504, which has a few problems, but it served to remind me of all the ways it is better than the Zune. The only things I ever had against the Archos 504 were the large physical size and occasional freezes (freezes they’ve since fixed). The Zune requires Windows to transfer music, it requires it’s own software which by default overwrites all your id3 tags and cover art (it seriously, seriously fucked up my collection and I will never forget it). I didn’t like being forced to navigate music by id3 tag. I didn’t like how big of a pain in the ass it was to put one album on my Zune–something I can do in half a minute from any PC (running any OS) with my 504. This 504, by the way, is the mp3 player I used to take with me to construction sites. It’s been dropped a hundred more times than the Zune and is still going strong. Maybe that’s because it uses a 2.5″ laptop drive instead of whatever tiny custom drive the Zune has.

A few weeks ago I posted about 64GB flash players, wondering why there’s only one on the US market and why it’s an iPod. There are dozens of companies that only make flash mp3 players. Why has none of them released a 64GB model?

I think most people who follow technology have operated under the assumption that solid-state flash drives (SSD) will eventually replace hard drives (HDD). SSDs have many benefits over HDDs. They’re more energy efficient, they tend to be faster, and there are no moving parts, so they’re much more forgiving of drops and kinetic energy in general. I’ve been waiting for years for flash drives to increase their capacities and drop in price so I could finally get a nice SSD-based 60GB-120GB mp3 player.

I have a 120GB Zune right now, using 87 GB of it, yet I’m willing to downgrade to 60 GB to get a flash-based player. I’ll be honest, I want to change for many reasons not related to SSD vs HDD–the Zune doesn’t play nice with other OSs, it’s a pain to update, and I hate the interface including the fact that I have to browse by id3 tag. Since I will be changing mp3 players soon, and because flash drives are at the point they should be showing up in larger capacity mp3 players, I really want my next player to have an SSD.

There actually is a 64 GB flash-based player in the US. It’s an iPod. What the fuck?