Review on SanDisk 8GB Clip Player Blue by Zachary Spaulding

I got this as a gift a year ago and still love him a year later. Unlike most people, I hate having EVERYTHING connected to my phone - I don't like the fact that listening to podcasts or music means draining my battery, and when I go for a walk I like this one being able to attach tiny device to my clothes and just go. I have an iPhone and a Mac laptop and I find Apple pretty intuitive in general, but that seems to have changed in the last few years. I also look for alternatives to Apple in general as I really don't like the direction they are going (redesigning laptops/mobile phones so that it's not at all possible to replace anything like batteries, hard drives etc). Clip Jam is mostly intuitive to use - adding music and podcasts is very easy and I don't have to spend time getting frustrated with iTunes every time they update it and then spend an hour trying to figure out how I can use it again. If you're looking for a really simple, easy-to-use (and cheap!) MP3 player, you can't find a better one than this one. However, there are a few minor downsides: 1) Audio books. I didn't buy this device for use with audiobooks, but after reading about the difficulties of others I decided to give it a try out of curiosity. I copied an audiobook file from my computer that I bought from Audible. Although the file copied without issue, when I tried to run the audiobook, I received the message "Please activate your device to play this track". After some internet searching on the forums, I found out that this problem can be solved by going to the Audible website and downloading the "Audible Manager". The only problem is that Audible Manager is only available for Windows computers. Ever since I got a Mac, I've been SOL. *Later that same day, when I added the audiobook file to ClipJam, ClipJam wouldn't turn on. I went online and found out that other people had a similar problem when adding a corrupted file to ClipJam. I read what others did and followed suit - I took out the external SD card, put it in my computer, formatted it, then did a long reset (held the button for a minute), let go and Restarted ClipJam. After rebooting, I reinserted the SD card which wasn't recognized because it was formatted on the computer, so I reformatted it in ClipJam. It worked like a charm and I haven't had any issues with it since. 2) Create playlists on the go. Unlike older iPods, I couldn't find a way to create playlists when I'm not at home. However, from my computer (Mac) it is very easy to put songs or podcasts in a new folder on my desktop and then copy that folder from my desktop to ClipJam. This allows me to create playlists from my computer. That's enough for my needs. With those two caveats for a $30 MP3 player, I still think it's a great option if you're looking for a basic device for just listening to music and podcasts. Let me know if you have any questions and if you found this review helpful please leave me a review.