after wasting money with that bullshit stunt that sony pulled making that sonicstage shit i decided i need to get something better

i was thinking about getting a 4 gig ipod for $200

i need to know if ipods are even good for listening to music
or if there even good for anything

but its the only thing i could find that you can actaully listen to more than 500 songs on one device, mp3 players can't have this many songs

and would it be good to get a used one, are those things reliable enough to be second hand items

Personally, although it it isn't as flashy but it holds more, is less limiting, and around the same price....get the Nomad Touch.

iPod Mini's are cool, not overly expensive. I have one and I say it's worth it 100%.

Comming from an owner of two iPods, get one!

forget ipod minis. The price isnt so bad now, but i still suggest a Zen Micro over the ipod mini. comparable price, more features, more accessories, more storage, better sound quality, better earbuds, looks better.

or if you want more storage but short on the $$, then ya, the zen Touch is good. looks kinda ugly and its big, but being a Creative player, the sound quality is still superior to everything else.

ive got an md and i love it
with a hi-md i can fit nearly 5 gig of music a disc, and the discs are pretty cheap

Do those things still transcode all your crap into ATRAC? I bet it does and you can't hear the difference cause the Sony headphones are so shitty.

If you get a full-size iPod, you can always take it apart and upgrade it to a higher capacity hard drive later on. You'll get sick of shuffling your collection if you've got more than just a few gigs, trust me.

If you want a player that's small and doubles as a flash drive, look no further than the Creative Muvo2 (they also sell a variant with a built-in FM tuner). Yeah, it's not as pretty as the micro nomad thing, but it doesn't require Creative's proprietary software to load music onto it. It shows up as a standard USB mass storage device and you just drag and drop MP3s and WMAs onto it. You can bring it over to a friend's house, plug it in, and umm... Use your imagination.

You can pick up 4gb Muvo2s on eBay pretty cheap. I recently upgraded mine with the newly-released 6gb microdrive that a friend hooked me up with.

It's not large, comparable to my friends Ipod.

It depends on when you plan on using it. If you will be using it during non-active times (i.e. at home or work) get a hard drive based player such as Ipod. If you plan on using it while running or exercising, get a flash drive based player. You don't want to have too much movement on a hard drive. The hard drive players give you more storage value per dollar cost though. Ipod has the best interface device of any player.

I have a Sandisk flash type 1Gb player and I like it a lot. It's smaller than the hard drive players and has FM tuner and voice recorder built in as well as the capability to store computer files.

I would recommend picking the type you want first (hd or flash) and doing a price search for some models using pricegrabber.com. If you want an Ipod, that's fine. Just don't think they are the only player in town just because they are the most famous brand name and most people have that brand. Get whatever is best for your taste and needs.

thanks guys, i'm going to look more into this stuff from creative

i basically need at least a 4gig and i plan on listening to it on the bus to and from school

Since you're considering getting an iPod...I say you should get the 30gb photo since they're so cheap now. Only $430 CDN...that's only $50 more than the 20gb iPod.

So basically for $50 CDN more than the regular 20gn iPod you get: Colour screen, 10 more gigabytes of storage,photo viewing capabilities, video viewing capabilites (if you hack).

The sound quality is the same, it depends on what you're using to actually listen.

The Creative Zen Micro does NOT look better than the iPod Mini! It doesn't look better than ANY iPod, or mp3 player for that matter.

I did a bit of research before purchasing my Creative Zen Xtra. I wanted an MP3 player but didn't want to pay a shitload of money, especially for the fucking name, ie. iPod.

Sure the iPod is flashy and is, well, called an iPod, but is it really worth the money? Here in Canada, at the time of my purchasing, a 20GB iPod was nearly $450... I ended up finding a place that sold my Zen for $299 and its 30GB.

It does look like a tape player (not QUITE as big ) but the sound is amazing and it was much cheaper.

Is air worth breathing ? Do yourself a favor get an ipod. Itunes + Ipod = Harmony. I dont even own one but I borrowed a friends for a day and fell in love. Its just so dam cool.

I have both a 3rd gen 20GB iPod and a (upgraded) 6GB Muvo2. The iPod doesn't sound as good. You notice the difference on the high frequences. The highs on the iPod are immediately noticable as less crisp - they sound muddied and a bit flangy. Also, Apple does not publish a S/N ratio for the iPod, that should tell you something right there.

The iPod also lacks a "custom" EQ setting and only allows you to select from a bunch of presets - all of which sound horribly distorted. I'm not making this up either, go on ipodlounge and read about what others have to say about the worthless equalizer feature on the iPod.

Creative's players have far superior sound quality - when you compare them side by side, you can clearly hear the difference.

i was looking some of this up

zen touch = $250 but it looks like you can only listen to music, gets 24 hours of music on 1 charge

zen micro 5gb = $230 but you can do much much more, gets 12 hours of music on 1 charge

muvo2 4gb = $200 can store music, documents, photos, and presentations, gets 14 hours of music on 1 charge

which one of these would you choose, im into the zen touch for its amount of space for a low price, but i don't i'd ever be able to fill all that with just music. i also like the micro for all of the other things you can do like recording and lists and stuff
then theres the muvo, sounds pretty good, but i'm still not sure what i should get

im still also decideing upon an ipod, but after hearing more about creative i'm kinda interested in that more

I dont konw about older creative players, but it is a FACT, that the zen micro and the zen touch have higher SNR (signal to noise ratio) than any current mp3 player on the market. The sound quality IS better.

and how can you not like the look of the zen micro that clearish white finish (similar to ipods...) and that blue glow.

oh, i forgot another practical thing the zen micro has: removable 12 hour battery, and if youre lucky, you get a spare battery as well.

You can pick them up on eBay for around $140.

i found out one of my friends is selling a 60gig ipod for only $200
and he's selling cheap because he bought a psp

if he still has that when i get the rest of my money i think thats probably the choice to get

So long as it's not broken, buy it before your friend finds out about selling it on eBay. :-)

a question, are any of these, ipods and zen shit, allowed to be hooked up to a stereo or something like that

Yep they all are...
For the record I'd get a zen touch.

Meh, iPods own, the userinterface is just oh so easy, the iPod is nice and stylish, and built like a mtoehr fucker, i've dropped mine so many tims and teh HDD is still ticking away.

im very sceptical about the creative things, they just look......shit to me, i wouldn't trust tehm, with apple i know im getting a high quality peice of mechanics, i mean do you know how many 1st gen ipods are still around? shit loads, but i have never used the creative things, could be ownage.

And the bitrate the sound is encoded at also makes a diff, but really for sitting on the bus are you REALLY going to go "hmm well that bass is slightly less crisp when i play it really loud"

oh and in iTunes you can make your own EQ's and dump them onto your iPod, get over it. so sick of iPod bashers.

Get the Sony Walkman 20GB mp3 player, the software is indeed very crappy, but the hardware is far superior to that of any Ipod. I have a walkman and I love it.

Yes but your walkman is an old tape player.

If you have to choose between a 4gb mini ipod for $200, a 6gb mini for $250 or a 20gb ipod for $300...

get the full size, not much more and the size isnt much bigger,,, definately worth the extra storage

im soon going to get a Creative Zen Xtra 30GB player. Ive heard great things about it and its only around $180 if u shop around

ever heared teh saying

You get what you paid for?

Cool, indeed. We must also keep in mind however, that apple's consumer base is comprised mainly of retards, morons, idiots, and fags. Speaking of cool anyone remember when these were cool?


Well you know what they say,

Tools will be tools.

.mm. that thing is really cheap now since its really old, and its BIG. controls kinda clunky too. but its a great deal if you want big storage and good sound.

apple just has clever marketing tactics with their stupid pointless tv ads and billboards. Surprisingly so many ppl buy ipods. the product itself is nothing spectacular. i do admit they have a simple interface, other than that, pretty average. Dont even aesthetically look nice.

i dont konw about sony player's quality, but some of them look nice, but cost a lot of $$.

edit: exam season is taking its toll on my grammar.

i looked it up, it sounds pretty good, brand new 30 gigs for $220

but do i really want to trust something like this used

its worth saving the money but it would have to be reliable and all that


and another question

if i were to use this as an external hard drive and i had a file on there that i had to put on someone elses computer, would they need to have certain software installed too so they could get the file on there computer
like if the device were to come with a cd, would they need to install that cd too

i think i've made up my mind and im going to get the 5 gig zen micro (black of course)

there are reasons for gettings this
-i never plan on filling a 20 or 30 gig device with music
-and reading several reviews most people say that this is reliable and such unlike the zen xtra which after reading awhile lots of people said that it screws up for no reason
- there are also a shit load up features on that thing that i could use, which would sort of make it like a palm pilot too, and i would have plans with all those features


but i want to know if this site is any good for ordering this, i found it for $200 and free shipping
but they don't give alot of detail about it on the site so thats whats making me not trust them, who knows if they even sell you everything
http://www.digitallyunique.com/70pf108000000.html

As far as I know, Creative's MuVo series are the only players Creative makes that double as USB mass storage device drives for both music and data. Their other players, you have to use their horribly annoying software to manage and I don't think it lets you download MP3s back off the player without using a 3rd party hack. Typical company that's too big for their own good, they make one line of MP3 players that gets it right and another line that's annoying as fuck.

The iPod has a FireWire "disk mode" but it has a nonstandard connector no one ever has (unless they already own an iPod). Creative uses the standard mini usb device connection.

Get the Iriver H320 its a 20 gig player plays all formats ogg, mp3, wma, etc... plays pictures, has radio, built in voice recorder and record off radio and shit, very good sound quality with built in equializer and you can change to the hacked firmware which plays movies full length I have about 12 movies running on mine with about 2000 mp3's. And its only 300 bucks. or you can get the h340 which is like 400-500 bucks but has a 40 gig.

the zen micro does have mass storage capabilities without drivers/software.

however, the catch is, you need to format a dedicated part of your HDD space just for it. wont play music that goes in there. and software cant access it.

Unfortunately, not as many as you might think. The main problem with the first gen ipods was that they had a non-replaceable battery pack that ran out after about 1.5 years of usage. It was a huge flaw that they later corrected on the newer gen models.

alright guys i went ahead and ordered a zen micro for about $220 with shipping and all

from here http://www.pcmall.com/pcmall/shop/detail~dpno~520558.asp

i was in deperate need of something right away and it should be at my house either tuesday or wednesday

i hope this place is good for it


and thanks guys i was really hoping that there was something else out there besides the ipod because i thought the ipod was the only thing that could let you do all this stuff

i'll let you know how this thing works out
cheers

nice selection. i barely even knew that an mp3 player that wasnt an ipod existed, cus every other kid at my school has one.

I'm glad you were wise enough to take the time to ask around and do a little research before buying one. There are many different brands/types out there and because everyone's needs and situations are different, some would be a better fit than others. You were smart enough to get one that fits you rather than have a "me too" attitude and get an ipod just because everyone else has one. Good luck and have fun with your new player!


I guess the preference differs among the demographics. I'm sure most school kids have ipods. Most of the people I know, who are mostly techies, have some other brand. I only know one person who has an ipod.

This is like a blood transfer for an iPod

That right there will fix your Ipod up Real good, fuckign cheap too. But to ship it to australia is like $30, fucking more than im paying for teh product

Its still a life saver, and with reports of getting over 24 hours on the extended batterys for first gen, its fuckign schweet!

Suprised no one has mentioned dells mp3 players....they have made many improvements since the days of their fist gen ones.... right now the prices are 179 for a 5gb mini....smaller than the ipod mini.....249 for a 20 gb which is a bit bigger....or 259 for a 30 gb which is the same physical size as the 20. Personally i like ipods...but they are quite pricey still in canada at least...im buying a used one....for 150-70 for a first or second gen one....sure im getting ripped but i neeed my muuuusic...(md player died)

i got my zen micro yesterday

this thing is pretty bad ass

not only can i hold all my music, but a major thing is i can transfer up to 2 gigs of data files on this, so this makes times that my brother gets files i can put them on this thing instead of burning a cd every time

the fm radio is alright, i wish there was a way to select your own radio station instead of just autoscanning everytime, and it doesn't pick up 97.9 which is the only half-way decent radio station in this hillbilly land i live in

the built in recorder makes good use when recording myself when playing guitar, it sounds way better recorded on this thing than my tape recorder

and i wish i had MS outlook so i could do the other things, it can i my computer when i bought it but they want a cd code, why the hell would they put something like that on my computer when i can't use it




the one thing that i'm not sure about is playing games on the zen micro, you can play real shitty game but still some what ok on the ipod
is there a way to get games on your zen micro
and if so where can you get them




other than that this was a great purchase, i plan on getting a tape adaptor (if they sell any) so i can listen to this louder while in the car

I AM A CHEAP SKATE! So I was thinking about getting an Ipod shuffle. I know they've got no display and are only a gig but they are so tiny! The size of a pack of chewing gum! Anyone have any experience with one? Are they any good?

i dont understand the fascination with this thing. for the same price you can get a different flash player with an FM tuner, voice recorder, display, and the same storage size. what the hell is the incentive to get this shuffle thing?? i mean sure its small, but zero functionality in all practice.

Indeed - if you want to get a small memory MP3 player get the Creative Muvo.

Incidentally, I just got an ipod mini today...its bloody brilliant

I don't understand why there are people who will ravenously defend the iPod Shuffle. It has none of the user interface qualities that define the iPod line. In fact, there isn't a user interface to speak of! When it comes to flash players, Creative's MuVo line is far superior.

once you use the shuffle you really see tehre is no need neded at all for a screen of any type, its funny, people LOVE to absh iPods dont they.

I own an iPod... The battery meter is flakey, the EQ settings are all worthless (they all cause clearly audible clipping) and it can't play WMAs. Its saving grace is the fact it's UI makes finding a specific album, or track, by browsing incredibly fast. I've used the Nomad touch, it's close, but not nearly as good.

An iPod without a screen is just a crappy MP3 player with an Apple logo on it.