And when I say change, I mean it’s time to get the party started again. Yes, I have wandered away from the site for way too long. The reasons for it are partially my fault, and partially just a matter of life intervening. But now I have a plan for a return to “business”. Read on for more details, and a story about some of the woes that have beset me in the past few months.
But, now I have started working on new material for the site, including:
- Ten new reviews. Eight of which are completed, and the remaining two just need some final tweaks.
- Several new essays. These are mostly some pieces that I worked on as background material for a book I am working on… However, with a little revision they should be worth posting here.
- Plans to work some of the material from this site along with more material into a second book. This second book I expect to actually have finished by early next year.
Part of the reason that I have been away is that I haven’t been able to listen to as much music over the past several months. Not that I haven’t been listening to any music at all…however I’ve really only been able to listen to music at home most of the time. But wait, didn’t I review three Cowon iAudio devices just a few months ago? Why yes, I did…and now it’s time to tell you a short story I like to think of as: The Rise and Fall of the iAudios.
Basically, all three devices are no longer functional, and the fact that the headphones I use are still functioning is something of a miracle.
Device #1 — the iAudio U5. I stated before that I liked this device for use at the gym where I would typically have some podcasts and music loaded on it, and listen to it while I was walking or biking. Since my workouts were nearly daily, the rate of churn on the device was very high. It’s downfall? The rate of churn. This takes a bit of an explanation…
Unlike most of my readers, I don’t use the standard software for managing these devices because I run Linux on my computers. Fortunately, the Cowon devices do not require that I use some special software with them. I can just copy files to them just like you would a USB stick. Now, around this time I had installed a new version of Linux of on my system… And since it was fairly new, I was trying to give all the original applications and tools that it had configured. Admittedly, I should have known better. Almost everything that came with the Linux installation was excellent, except for the File Manager (Linux equivalent of the Windows Explorer) application. I should have known better: I had used the File Manager before, and had issues with it.
And, that indeed, proved the be the case…again. Several times when I used the File Manager it ended up not copying files correctly to the U5, and wouldn’t allow me to remove the U5 from the system. A couple of times it caused problems that required me to erase all the files on the system, run a checking program to find things that were broken, and then reload.
Then the fateful time: it corrupted the storage on the U5 so bad that it could no longer start correctly. It just hangs during the start up. When I plug it in, it gets partway through the start up, then restarts itself. It does this over and over again.
I don’t know if the device can be repaired. I need to contact Cowon to find out if I can send it in for repair – but at this point I’m pretty sure it’s toast. The repair would be to replace the system board in the device, which is basically the same as buying a whole new device…
Device #2 – the iAudio 7. This is the one device that I may be able to repair myself — if I can find a screwdriver small enough to remove the screws. The story of what happened to this device is the simplest: I went to see the recent Sherlock Holmes movie at the theater one night, and had the iAudio 7 in my jacket pocket. As I went to sit down in my seat it fell out of my pocket onto the floor of the theater (fortunately this theater is really good about cleaning up between shows, so I didn’t have to worry about getting sticky gunk on it).
I picked up the device and put it back in my pocket, making certain that it would not fall out again. After the movie was over, I went to use it, and found that that the power switch was broken. It’s extremely loose, and doesn’t seem to be engaging the switch. So, I think it’s just an alignment issue. If I can open it, I might be able to get it fixed.
Device #3 – the iAudio 9. This is probably the most pathetic of all three of these stories. I’ve had a bad habit of not always checking my pockets before washing my clothes. This has led to my washing my earphones four times at this point, and even putting them through the dryer once, and maybe twice. Remarkably, the earphones still work.
However, the one time that I missed the iAudio 9 in the pocket of my cargo pants it was the end of it. I found it when the wash was done, I tried to dry it out and see if I could get it working, but it was not to be.
So, that’s the story of the demise of the Cowon devices. Fortunately, I think one of them is recoverable. And, in the mean time I have had another device come to my rescue: my Android phone. So now I’ve been using my phone for listening to podcasts and some of the new music that I download from the net.
Well, that’s all that I have for this story. Time to get to work on finishing up the rest of the materials to post over the next few weeks. I’ll be writing a few more posts in the next few days regarding the upcoming reviews and maybe a few surprises.
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