As part of Geogad’s effort to make the Geogad Mobile Tours of San Francisco available to all types of travelers, Geogad is working with the California Welcome Center to rent MP3 players.  These MP3 players come preloaded with all four of Geogad Mobile Tours of San Francisco, the Ferry Building, Market Street, Union Square and Fisherman’s Wharf.

This new distribution channel has given me some additional practice using the Geogad tours on MP3 players that don’t come from Apple.  These MP3 players are from Sandisk and work well.  The one thing that the Sandisk players don’t have that is really missing is a really nice PC-based way to interface with your MP3 files.  In this case, you are to transfer your music using a third-party application.  I started with Microsoft’s Media Player but gave up several hours later in frustration.  For reasons beyond me, I could not get it to sync my playlists smoothly and completely. 

My frustrated self then tried my next option, RealPlayer.  I initially thought that if Microsoft’s player could not work well with the Sandisk player, that I would have even less luck with the RealPlayer.  RealPlayer proved me completely wrong.  After automatically downloading the additional files that it needed to interface with the Sandisk from the Internet, RealPlayer worked flawlessly.

For reasons like this, I will wait to upgrade to Windows Vista. 

Meanwhile, you can still rent the Sandisk MP3 players with Geogad Mobile Tours of San Francisco from the California Welcome Center at Pier 39 in Fisherman’s Wharf, San Francisco. Call (415) 981-1280 to make a reservation or for more information.     

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Microsoft Media Player, RealPlayer, Sandisk, MP3 players, syncing music, San Francisco tours, MP3 tours, California Welcome Center