iPod/MP3-Player Notes

yeah, they're starting to make those now that ipods and mp3 players are so popular. they should have made them YEARS ago.

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I've been wanting to buy an MP3 player for quite awhile now, but i'm just not sure what to actually buy.The most obvious would be to get an IPod, but is it really the best buy?
Its certainly more expensive than most of the other makes supplied here in SA, but is that due to quality or just marketing hype?Another point to consider: should i go for a flash disk type or a hard disk type? heard the HD-types sometimes skip. Is this a common occurrence or not something to worry about? It certainly would be better due to sheer carrying capacity.Anyway i basically wanna know what other brands are of comparable or better quality than the IPod.
Any advice is appreciated.

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

HD players are not very prone to skipping unless you want to use them while running or engaging in some other sort of exercise. I've never had a problem with ordinary walking. Flash players have smaller capacities, but that is improving as Flash prices come down.The iPods are generally as good as any players, but their biggest advantage is iTunes. Firstly the software is as good as anything out there - and quite a bit better than some. That's fairly important if you are planning to rip music from CDs. The other half is the iTunes store. While the AAC format preferred by Apple works on some other players, only iPods have Apple's DRM software. Nothing else can play music bought from iTunes (although iPods can play unprotected MP3 or AAC files quite happily).For other players I'd suggest looking for reviews of individual models. I've heard good things about some iRiver and Creative models but not all are equally good.

i had to take a greyhound back from helping my friend (grunwald) move. it was about the most rattled ride i've taken in a while. i thought for sure my mp3 player would skip, but it didn't once the whole 9 hour trip.hd players aren't the best choice for jogging, but for most everything else, you should be fine. the major difference is the amount of data -- how much do you have to put on the mp3 player? if it's only a gig or two, get a flash. if it's 30 gigs, get an hd. entirely subjective. i can say definitively that ipods are not right for me, but i have different requirements than most people. every player has its pros and cons. the question is really whether the cons make a big deal to you, and if the pros are important enough to make them worth it.for instance, i got an iaudio x5l 30gb. the pros are sound quality, fully-featured remote (important to me), ums capability, lack of id3 database (con for most people), and overall build quality. the cons are that you have to use a special dongle to connect it to anything, and the headphone jack and joystick are structural weakpoints and break easily. but with a case, and the remote, two things i needed anyways, those are much less likely to break.i would suggest going to cnet.com, looking through their mp3 players, and reading the reviews, especially the bad ones. drooling praise isn't worth much, but actual complaints are good to know. if the bad reviews are few and far between, it's probably a good player. from there, see if you can find a message board for the player of your choice, and lurk it for a while.

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I used a couple of different players that all broke after two weeks, or right after I dropped them. Updating music on them was a pain in the ass, navigation sucked, couldn't read them in either bright light or darkness, etc.Got an iPod. Haven't looked back. iTunes is the only music player I use now, with the advantage of being able to listen to any song on any computer in the house (that is to say, 4) no matter what computer it's on or which one I'm using at the moment. The music store is a hundred times easier than trying to find illegal mp3's, and I gladly pay a dollar for that convinence.Plus the podcast support is amazing. Every morning, if I remembered to plug it in, I've got a crop of fresh broadcasts to listen to so I don't have to waste my time listening to Glenn Beck. In my experience the iPods represent top quality. Nothing I've seen appears to come close. The iPods are polished; the competition seems cheap. They fit better into a pocket than other players. The scroll wheel is easy to use without even pulling the player out of your pocket.If you're just looking for a way to take some music with you, get an iPod. There's a reason that they're the "Dixie cup" of mp3 players - that is, the brand that has become synonymous with the product.I guess if you've got some bizzare audio need, though, like having to play Ogg Vorbis files or whatever, you need to get something else. But for the purposes of playing songs they're the best out there, when you combine all the factors.

For her 15th birthday my daughter asked for an iPod. The following Christmas she asked for a Creative Zen, giving her iPod to my wife. My daughter is very happy with her Zen.As near as I can gather, the reason she turned on the iPod was because of short battery life. It could only go a couple hours without a recharge. Since she can't afford to buy music she has to steal it all, so though she was using iTunes, she didn't have anything in a proprietary format or that was secure against other players. I would have gladly let her load my music onto her iPod, but she'd rather die.My iPod that just died was a newer model by a few months and seemed to last about 5 hours. The new iPod I just bought claims it lasts 20 hours.--Percy

My old iPod Mini (gen 1) is at the point where it won't work at all unless it's plugged into some kind of power source (and not even then unless I let it charge for a while first). I don't use it much. I'm probably gonna crack it open and solder in a new battery, if I can find an appropriate one.My new Nano goes for days, seems like, no matter if I'm listening to podcasts or just songs. It's the lack of a hard drive, I imagine. I have the 1 gig version and I think it's right in the sweet spot between size, battery life, and price.

Reality check for us peons: my computer only has 10 gig.
I can't imagine having more than a gig of MP3s. Further considerations:I don't worry about skipping. I'm smoooooth. I don't worry about robust construction. I've dropped my cassette Walkman more times than I can count and it still works fine. (Yes, I would still have a Walkman gramophone if they existed.)I do not want an FM tuner. FM is a vast wasteland.I don't need "features". All I need is something to play MP3s five miles from my house.And it should be dirt cheap.Any ideas?

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One of the smaller Flash players should fit the bill. Just check for reviews of the software and consider buying some better headphones to go with it. It might be a good idea to get one that accepts replaceable batteries and a set of NiMH batteries to use in it.You can still get refurbished iPod shuffles from The Apple Store, if you want to use iTunes. They are absolutely minimal on features (NO display !) but they've got a reasonable battery life and they play MP3s.P

wow, and i thought i was in the dark ages, computer wise.(my computer over there has optional external hard drive, sold separately, that's 45 megs... and it's maybe 10 inches across...) do you have physical music? if i were to record every vinyl record i own, not only would i go crazy, but i'd p robably have several hundred gigs... most of the people who buy these things are buying them to replace cd collections -- and the people getting the 60 giggers are generally concerned about audio fidelity, and are using expremely large files. yeah, mp3 players don't work that way. you drop it, it's broken. well, except the one i have, apparently. it's actually made of metal. i'm a junky for things actually made of metal. both of my cameras are old metal monsters. we have a good station or two down here. but that's not the real reason i need and fm tuner. i'd really like an am too, but those require longer antenae or something. the reason being that we get hit with big nasty hurricanes here, and the radio is pretty much the connection to the outside world for a week. i agree, features be damned. i don't need id3 databases, i don't need video, i don't need most of the crap these players come with. there are a few dirt cheap sandisk players. not very high capacity, kind of shitty build quality, no fm tuner, just what you're looking for. grunwald has one. 50 bucks for half a gig, 70 for a gig.cowon also has the g3 and g2 for close to same price for a gig, but it's better build quality and comes with a radio.

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I don't have a big CD collection (and I don't feel like ripping much from tape). I mostly have individual songs ripped from CDs and acquired from *ahem* other sources. Typical file size is 5 or 6 meg.Also, a couple of hours play time is lots. All the more reason to buy a cheap one and treat it like a disposable. Thanks for the info (and thanks to PaulK too).

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i totally understand. i have a gigantic vinyl collection, but i find it's easier to download than to record to vinyl onto my computer. sounds better too.

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There's nothing like starting from scratch every time a new technology comes along.

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oh no, vinyl's all my fault. i started collecting it well after cd's came out... i just like it so damned much.

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Yup THe creative Zen players do have a GOOD battery life (I get a good 17-20 hours out of my Zen Touch) .The are known to lock up ocasionally but carriying a opened paper clip and knowing to re-set and go into the service menu and re-build the libary tends to sort that out. (note : had the machine two years and it's locked up twice.)The only other down side to the zen touch is that it is not directly recognised as a removable hard drive like the iPOD meaning you have to have the drivers on each PC you connect it to. (not too arduoius but does make things tricky for quickly sharing data with your firends machine.