MP3 Player Recommendations
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
-
I've had three iPods and now an iPhone and I've loved them all. Got one going cheap if your interested :)
My wife has an iPod and we are starting to not like it very much. She's getting frustrated with the way it organizes artists and then tries to get me to fix it which gets me frustrated. Our biggest gripes are you can't drag and drop MP3s onto the iPod, you can't load music onto the iPod (without wiping everything that's already there) from multiple computers, and it counts tracks with multiple artists as an individual artist and sometimes as an individual album. I've been told that you can edit the id tags on the MP3 to alleviate the multiple-artist-on-one-song issue, but the other two issues are still extremely irritating on their own.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
-
My wife has an iPod and we are starting to not like it very much. She's getting frustrated with the way it organizes artists and then tries to get me to fix it which gets me frustrated. Our biggest gripes are you can't drag and drop MP3s onto the iPod, you can't load music onto the iPod (without wiping everything that's already there) from multiple computers, and it counts tracks with multiple artists as an individual artist and sometimes as an individual album. I've been told that you can edit the id tags on the MP3 to alleviate the multiple-artist-on-one-song issue, but the other two issues are still extremely irritating on their own.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
I've not had problems like that. When you first connect it to itunes it asks you to choose between two modes. In one mode it will automatically keep it synced with your itunes library (ie every song in itunes will be on your ipod) the other mode allow you to select which songs to copy over manually. I use the second mode and just drag and drop songs or albums from itunes onto the ipod and I can do this from multiple machines. The first mode ties the ipod to a single machine or more specifically to a single itunes library. This may be a part of your frustration. We also have a little logitech bookshelf system that will take all the ipods and my phone which makes a great charger / stereo I have had some hassles with cddb, things like one Album having the artist as Bon Jovi and another as Bon-Jovi. In itunes you can just select them all and set the artist. Itunes has a wierd interface which I put down to it being a direct port of a Mac app. I've never owned anything else from Apple and I wouldn’t want a Mac but the ipod is awesome.
-
I've not had problems like that. When you first connect it to itunes it asks you to choose between two modes. In one mode it will automatically keep it synced with your itunes library (ie every song in itunes will be on your ipod) the other mode allow you to select which songs to copy over manually. I use the second mode and just drag and drop songs or albums from itunes onto the ipod and I can do this from multiple machines. The first mode ties the ipod to a single machine or more specifically to a single itunes library. This may be a part of your frustration. We also have a little logitech bookshelf system that will take all the ipods and my phone which makes a great charger / stereo I have had some hassles with cddb, things like one Album having the artist as Bon Jovi and another as Bon-Jovi. In itunes you can just select them all and set the artist. Itunes has a wierd interface which I put down to it being a direct port of a Mac app. I've never owned anything else from Apple and I wouldn’t want a Mac but the ipod is awesome.
I think ours is set up in sync mode. When we visited my parents for Christmas we got several new CDs that we wanted to put on the iPod. My dad has an iPod so we used their computer. When we hooked it up it asked if we wanted to sync it and I said "No". I switched it to manual mode and placed the CDs on it that way. However, they wouldn't show up in the iPod's menu. They were there in iTunes and it said they were on the iPod, but we couldn't get to them. When we got back home we hooked the iPod up to our computer and it saw the iPod was in manual mode and after a day of messing with it I gave up, wiped the iPod and resynced with our iTunes library. Then I had to reimport the new CDs to our library to upload them to the iPod. I'll try your trick for changing the track's artist next time. Thanks!
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
FyreWyrm wrote:
Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^].
I have been a proud owner of a sony w850i[^] cellphone for more than a year and I love it. I would recommend Sony.
"It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business." - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
I have an iriver mp3 player (can't remember the model number sorry). The device itself is great: it was inexpensive; it's solid and easy to use; and the sound quality is great. The main thing that lets it down is the PC software that comes with the device. It's hard to use, slow, and the interface is a garish bright red!! :omg: You're forced to use their software too as the iriver playlists are encoded in a propriety, undocumented, binary format. So yeah, I like my iriver, but loading new songs onto the device and organising playlists is a real pain :sigh:
-
My wife has an iPod and we are starting to not like it very much. She's getting frustrated with the way it organizes artists and then tries to get me to fix it which gets me frustrated. Our biggest gripes are you can't drag and drop MP3s onto the iPod, you can't load music onto the iPod (without wiping everything that's already there) from multiple computers, and it counts tracks with multiple artists as an individual artist and sometimes as an individual album. I've been told that you can edit the id tags on the MP3 to alleviate the multiple-artist-on-one-song issue, but the other two issues are still extremely irritating on their own.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
Use WinAmp to load music. No more iTunes BS. You can use it at multiple comps just fine.
Found on Bash.org [erno] hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
Peace sir, I STRONGLY recommend the Trekstor Vibez! This thing ROCKS! It is a dedicated audio engine with no frills to play videos, etc. It looks sleek, and certainly different than what anyone else has! As far as sound quality goes - It beats 'em all - HANDS DOWN! This thing comes with 200Mhz of dedicated audio processing power! OH, and mind you, it plays both Ogg Vorbis and Flac. Additionally, it is backwards compatible with mp3 and wma(with drm support, too!). 12GB mini HD based player it is, sir. TrekStor vibez 12 GB MP3 Player The battery life is good enough. You get funky little osilometers, too! Fairly intuitive player as far as the user interface is concerned. And, Trekstor(German Company(and thus, the German Engineering Advantage)) regularly updates their bios and system features. There's software out there that allow you to personalize the themes, as well. I'M VERY HAPPY WITH THE PRODUCT! I think it looks Great! :-D I do hope that this has been helpful! God Bless, shree
-
Peace sir, I STRONGLY recommend the Trekstor Vibez! This thing ROCKS! It is a dedicated audio engine with no frills to play videos, etc. It looks sleek, and certainly different than what anyone else has! As far as sound quality goes - It beats 'em all - HANDS DOWN! This thing comes with 200Mhz of dedicated audio processing power! OH, and mind you, it plays both Ogg Vorbis and Flac. Additionally, it is backwards compatible with mp3 and wma(with drm support, too!). 12GB mini HD based player it is, sir. TrekStor vibez 12 GB MP3 Player The battery life is good enough. You get funky little osilometers, too! Fairly intuitive player as far as the user interface is concerned. And, Trekstor(German Company(and thus, the German Engineering Advantage)) regularly updates their bios and system features. There's software out there that allow you to personalize the themes, as well. I'M VERY HAPPY WITH THE PRODUCT! I think it looks Great! :-D I do hope that this has been helpful! God Bless, shree
oh, and with the Vibez, it's completely plug and play! NEVER A NEED TO INSTALL A DRIVER! You can connect it in mp3 player mood, or in usb hard drive storage mood. Anything will do. Additionally, you can transfer music to it with winamp, Windows Media player, or anyother media library software. It connects to pcs, macs, and Linux machines right out the box. All in all, a marvel of technology; German Enginuity, if ya' like...
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
80Gb iPod Classic. You can download a heap of programs to help you use your iPod in a more flexible way. Floola (i think) is one of them. You can also use your iPod in disk mode as USB Storage for when you're stuck in a pickle. I haven't had any problems with the way artists are ordered, so long as their meta tags are setup properly. Adios
-
FyreWyrm wrote:
Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^].
I have been a proud owner of a sony w850i[^] cellphone for more than a year and I love it. I would recommend Sony.
"It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business." - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
How does i connect to a PC? Can it act like a generic mass storage device (like a USB stick), that hooks up without driver installation?
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
How does i connect to a PC? Can it act like a generic mass storage device (like a USB stick), that hooks up without driver installation?
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighistpeterchen wrote:
How does i connect to a PC? Can it act like a generic mass storage device (like a USB stick), that hooks up without driver installation?
Comes with a USB data cable. Driver installation is required.
"It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business." - Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
-
Use WinAmp to load music. No more iTunes BS. You can use it at multiple comps just fine.
Found on Bash.org [erno] hm. I've lost a machine.. literally _lost_. it responds to ping, it works completely, I just can't figure out where in my apartment it is.
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
If you're really, really dead set against an iPod (I have one, I love it - as Josh said, you need your iPod in manual sync mode so it doesn't restrict what you put on it), then I'll put in a good word for the Zen. I have one[^] (had it before the iPod) - it's old, big and the UI sucks rocks, but it gets the job done. I currently use both the iPod and Zen, for various reasons, and if you can get over the Zen's UI, it's a perfectly adequate mp3 player.
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
I have to put my vote in for an iPod, classic/touch depends on your needs. But if you really don't want one, please steer clear of sony, their phones are unreliable (had 4 faulty K850i before changing model) and have owned a 1st Gen walkman, forced me to use some garish thing called connect player. Imagine iTunes in purple, commandeering your taskbar, guzzling more memory and taking forever to auto name imports.
He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
-
I have an iriver mp3 player (can't remember the model number sorry). The device itself is great: it was inexpensive; it's solid and easy to use; and the sound quality is great. The main thing that lets it down is the PC software that comes with the device. It's hard to use, slow, and the interface is a garish bright red!! :omg: You're forced to use their software too as the iriver playlists are encoded in a propriety, undocumented, binary format. So yeah, I like my iriver, but loading new songs onto the device and organising playlists is a real pain :sigh:
I also have an iRiver (Clix2). It has great sound and a lovely OLED screen. It syncs with its own or Windows Media Player s/w. It's very quick to sync. Once synced, it does take a few seconds to "Rebuild Library". It doesn't take over the machine like Apple's stuff. I dumped my iPod in favour of it. I'm really pleased that I did! P.S. Technically, it's an MP4 player, does pictures & video (drag & drop).
-
Ok guys (and gals), I need some advice. Well, I need opinions at least. Backstory: For the last year I have carried a 40Gb USB HDD back and forth between home and work. At work the hard drive serves two purposes; holding my ~6Gb MP3 collection, and a "sneaker net" between two computers at work that are on separate networks and can't talk to each other. At home and on the commute between home/work the HDD serves no purpose as I have my CDs at home, and can't plug it into my car stereo. I have a brand spankin' new USB stick that I can use for file transfers at work (although the stick is only 2Gb and today I had to transfer a 3.5Gb database backup file). What I'm wanting to do is get an MP3 player so my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day. Conundrum: There's so many choices for MP3 players, that my head is spinning. So I thought I'd get some real-world opinions from the only people online that I trust. Well, trust you as far as I can throw you anyway. ;) Which is more than I trust some of the people I work with! Really I'm torn between the Creative Zen[^], Sony Walkman[^], and SanDisk Sansa Fuze[^]. If anyone has any personal experience with any of these I'd appreciate some input. If you have something else you'd like to recommend I'd like to hear your opinions too. If anyone recommends an iPod :mad: or Zune X|, I'll 1-vote you.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
I have a Creative Zen 8gb, and I love the thing. I have two gripes; the lack of a funky scrollwheelthingummajig like the iPod, and; The software that came with it. It took half a frickin hour to install on my (admittedly already quite slow) laptop. And at first it tooootally sucked. But I would say three things about the software - 1. it was easy to switch off the listener processes and have it not affect my system at all, unlike iTunes, which will leave little startup helper processes lying around every damn time you start it up. 2. It's updating itself and actually the software is getting better and less buggy. 3. You actually don't need it to use the Zen. You can drag and drop from Windows Media Player, which you can find on any PC. Playlists and all. That's actually the way I use it most. I rarely boot up the Creative software package unless I need to convert a movie for viewing on the Zen, which is once every few months when I have to get a flight somewhere. On every other measure I think it's great. It's flexible, goes for ages on a full charge, great sound quality, intuitive and fast interface (although the iPod does a bit better here, most people I think will agree). It's pretty cool looking as well and you can get a clear plastic impact case to show off the machine as you carry it around while keeping it scratch free. I got a 2gig memory card for storing other stuff, which brings total capacity to 10gigs. I have a friend who owns the Walkman, and he's envious of the Zen. He doesn't give me specifics, just that his has less capacity, although I think you can buy a bigger one, and the battery doesn't last. I will say that any Sony product I ever owned was extremely well made and lasted for ever. Their sound is decent as well. No experience of the Sandisk, sorry.
Smokie, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.
-
I have a Creative Zen 8gb, and I love the thing. I have two gripes; the lack of a funky scrollwheelthingummajig like the iPod, and; The software that came with it. It took half a frickin hour to install on my (admittedly already quite slow) laptop. And at first it tooootally sucked. But I would say three things about the software - 1. it was easy to switch off the listener processes and have it not affect my system at all, unlike iTunes, which will leave little startup helper processes lying around every damn time you start it up. 2. It's updating itself and actually the software is getting better and less buggy. 3. You actually don't need it to use the Zen. You can drag and drop from Windows Media Player, which you can find on any PC. Playlists and all. That's actually the way I use it most. I rarely boot up the Creative software package unless I need to convert a movie for viewing on the Zen, which is once every few months when I have to get a flight somewhere. On every other measure I think it's great. It's flexible, goes for ages on a full charge, great sound quality, intuitive and fast interface (although the iPod does a bit better here, most people I think will agree). It's pretty cool looking as well and you can get a clear plastic impact case to show off the machine as you carry it around while keeping it scratch free. I got a 2gig memory card for storing other stuff, which brings total capacity to 10gigs. I have a friend who owns the Walkman, and he's envious of the Zen. He doesn't give me specifics, just that his has less capacity, although I think you can buy a bigger one, and the battery doesn't last. I will say that any Sony product I ever owned was extremely well made and lasted for ever. Their sound is decent as well. No experience of the Sandisk, sorry.
Smokie, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.