I just saw a cool open source product to freshen up an old mp3 player from Rockbox. It is a firmware product to improve the user experience if your outdated player needs a kick and it is free of course. It supports a lot of Apple’s players obviously but also does not leave out the less popular players which is a huge positive for me. I have a Creative Zen which is not on the list yet but my daughter has a Sansa which is possible to upgrade. My experience has been that the player may die before I get tired of the firmware but I am very rough on my players. To be honest though, I have never even thought about the possibility of changing the firmware on a player. Good thing this internet thingy is still around for ideas to flow every which way. There may even be a different firmware that is available for my Zen so I will have to start a search. I am pretty happy with what I have but there is no harm in window shopping.
All this being said, be careful & if you don’t know what you are doing you should leave well enough alone. It can void your warranty but chances are that it is out of date anyway if you need new firmware. True geeks won’t have much fear though. Some of the screenshots I saw over at Lifehacker were very nice. So give this software a try on that old ipod that is collecting dust in your drawer. I think I will experiment on my wife’s Nano today since it is jacked up anyway and will not turn off.