Last Monday, my jacket was stolen at the bar, along with the cell phone (phone numbers!), keys, and ipod. The ipod was replaced yesterday with a 1st generation 4-gig nano from craigslist ($45). The reason I wanted one of the older ones is because they are among the latest players to be supported bv rockbox, an open-source firmware for music players (www.rockbox.org)
Apple is definitely the new Microsoft when it comes to proprietary software and compatibility. Since the original firmware doesn't support many file formats (and doesn't have video,) I wanted to give rockbox a try. The main formats I wanted were OGG and FLAC, since I have a good chunk of music stored that way. Rockbox is amazing! It totally opens up the hardware to its full potential and supports pretty much all basic file types (pictures, text, etc.)
Unfortunately, Rockbox isn't available on any of the newer MP3 players. I wouldn't even know where to start to try to give them a hand.
