I prefer the Apple firmware.
I had rockbox on my 30GB iPod Video last year and I uninstalled it. I'm not an RB fan, here's why.
1. I don't like how rock box is a directory structured software. Sure I have all my music organized into folders and whatnot, but sometimes it took a while to find a certain song I wanted to listen to. I also never figured out how to get the voice box script to create clips for any new music I put on my iPod after the first time I ran it. I find it much easier to just plug my iPod in and have iTuens sync anything new over to the iPod
2. To me at least, I found the click wheel on the iPod to be a bit too sensitive for my taste when using rockbox. I often found myself scrolling too far in a menu, and it took a few times to get to the choice I wanted. This would probably not be as big of an issue on a different player, since it would most likely have a directional pad or a stick, like some Nokia phones do.
3. I hated having to switch back to the Apple firmware to play any songs I bought off iTunes, of which I have alot. I like having them shuffled in with the rest of my music.
4. Maybe I've been spoiled by iTunes, but IMO if you have an mp3 player like that that can hold alot of material, you should be able to use a library type interface rather than just a foler/file structure. This is how the iPod works by default, and I like being able to go through my music by artist/album/genre or even just by song title. This is done by reading the tag info in your files...and I can't stand having my files tagged wrong. Supposedly the PAC Mate Omni will be able to build a library via this info, so I am very excited about that. I heard there is a way to use the tag info in rockbox, but I never figured it out, and you have to live with it spelling out all your songs, which gets really annoying really fast. I think that with mp3 players being able to hold as much as they do, then they need a screen reader...plain and simple. That's why I'm excited about the PM Omni...because you can just use JAWS to read you the info. I can probably throw 5GB of music on my 8GB compact flash card, or just buy another card for music, or even an external hard drive because my library is almost 17GB right now. The only drawback to that though, is the PAC Mate isn't exactly small, so it might not be good to take some places. Someone needs to come up with a smaller mp3 player, like the size of an iPod, and put some kind of screen reader on it. Prerecorded stuff just doesn't do it for me.
Cool if you like rockbox though...alot of people do. LOL I'm just the odd guy out who doesn't.
Just my $00.02
Brian
