MP3 Player Recommendations
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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.
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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
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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
i have ipod nano 1st gen with firmware from http://www.rockbox.org/[^]. it allows just copy mp3s on player and you can play they. also rockbox is open source project with plugin architecture. there're a lot of different plugins. check this[^]. by the way, rockbox is not only for ipod, it also supports Archos, iriver, iAudio, Toshiba, Sansa
thanks, max
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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.
melchizidech wrote:
You can drag and drop from Windows Media Player
This is one of the things that I like about the three models I listed. They all play well with WMP. I don't want to have to load their software to be able to use the player. Let me ask you this. In the menu for the Zen do you have play options like Artist -> Play All and Artist -> Album -> Play All? That's something that's missing from the iPod we have now. If you select by Artist, you have to select a specific song. There is no "Play All" option. If you select by Album, there is a "Play All", but there's no Artist -> Album drill down. You have to know the name of the album you want to listen to. Thanks for your input.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
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i have ipod nano 1st gen with firmware from http://www.rockbox.org/[^]. it allows just copy mp3s on player and you can play they. also rockbox is open source project with plugin architecture. there're a lot of different plugins. check this[^]. by the way, rockbox is not only for ipod, it also supports Archos, iriver, iAudio, Toshiba, Sansa
thanks, max
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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.
Thanks for the tip. I don't think I'm going to install WinAmp though. I don't need another media player on my machine. I've already got WMP, iTunes, MusicMatch Jukebox (which I can't uninstall for some reason), one that came with my sound card's software (Creative product), QuickTime player (thanks to iTunes), RealPlayer, and Divx. Each one (except for MusicMatch) is needed for some other program to work correctly.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
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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).
Thanks. I'll take a look at this one.
JDL-EPM wrote:
it does take a few seconds to "Rebuild Library"
Supposedly the SanDisk Sansa does this as well, but takes minutes instead of seconds. Also the SanDisk does it each time you turn the thing on.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
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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
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melchizidech wrote:
You can drag and drop from Windows Media Player
This is one of the things that I like about the three models I listed. They all play well with WMP. I don't want to have to load their software to be able to use the player. Let me ask you this. In the menu for the Zen do you have play options like Artist -> Play All and Artist -> Album -> Play All? That's something that's missing from the iPod we have now. If you select by Artist, you have to select a specific song. There is no "Play All" option. If you select by Album, there is a "Play All", but there's no Artist -> Album drill down. You have to know the name of the album you want to listen to. Thanks for your input.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
You can browse by artist, genre, album or song, alphabetically, and there's a handy function to jump down to the start of another letter (so you don't have to scroll through all the songs starting with A,B and C to get to the Ds for example). If you browse to an artist and hit play, it starts playing all the songs for the artist and you can page through that. It doesn't give you the same nice letter-jumping thing though, it just groups by album, which is a pain when I go to Led Zeppelin and hit play (As I so often do) and I have to page through about 40 songs before I hit Led Zep 4. For Kashmir I can page backwards, since it's on Physical Graffiti.
Smokie, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.
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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.
Stuart Dootson wrote:
the UI sucks rocks
I've seen screenshots of the UI on the new models and it doesn't look bad, but I'd like to be able to play with one before buying it. I've read some reviews which say the UI is difficult to use.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
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You can browse by artist, genre, album or song, alphabetically, and there's a handy function to jump down to the start of another letter (so you don't have to scroll through all the songs starting with A,B and C to get to the Ds for example). If you browse to an artist and hit play, it starts playing all the songs for the artist and you can page through that. It doesn't give you the same nice letter-jumping thing though, it just groups by album, which is a pain when I go to Led Zeppelin and hit play (As I so often do) and I have to page through about 40 songs before I hit Led Zep 4. For Kashmir I can page backwards, since it's on Physical Graffiti.
Smokie, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.
Not that there's anything wrong with Led Zep 1 2 or 3, you see, just that I like 4 best and I always wanna hear Black Dog...
Smokie, this is not 'Nam. This is bowling. There are rules.
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Thanks. I'll take a look at this one.
JDL-EPM wrote:
it does take a few seconds to "Rebuild Library"
Supposedly the SanDisk Sansa does this as well, but takes minutes instead of seconds. Also the SanDisk does it each time you turn the thing on.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
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Doh! It's not supported by 2nd gen Classic, which is what our 30Gb iPod is.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
so start writing the port. :P
Otherwise [Microsoft is] toast in the long term no matter how much money they've got. They would be already if the Linux community didn't have it's head so firmly up it's own command line buffer that it looks like taking 15 years to find the desktop. -- Matthew Faithfull
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Stuart Dootson wrote:
the UI sucks rocks
I've seen screenshots of the UI on the new models and it doesn't look bad, but I'd like to be able to play with one before buying it. I've read some reviews which say the UI is difficult to use.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
I also have a Zen Vision:M 60 GB. It works great and has never given me a problem. It syncs with WMP and Vista MCE with no trouble at all. I have a couple macs at home and there is a program that will allow most of the Zen products to sync with iTunes as well. The Vision:M has a USB hard drive mode in which you can dedicate part of the hard drive to general file storage (no driver necessary I believe) and the 60 GB version can act as a USB host which allows you do connect a digital camera via USB and download your images from the camera to the Zen in order to clear the memory card in the camera.
Paul
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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
> "my songs can truly be portable and eliminate the brick I carry around every day." Get a decent MP3 playing phone. I have a slightly older Sony Walkman phone (w810i) which I put a 2gb stick into for storage. It does connect with cable USB and acts as a flash drive, but as I said it's a bit older, and I find it to be much faster to pull the stick and plug it into a separate reader. The main thing is as it's my phone, I always have my music with me. I have a cable in my car plugged into AUX on my sterio which not only allows for MP3 via phone, but also full speaker phone. An upside to this is that if I receive a phone call while I'm listening to music, it interupts the music. I'd figure the new iPhone or the newest Sony Walkman phone would both be interesting upgrades.
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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 like my Zune. It's gonna have similar "problems" that you might have with an Ipod as far as switching between computers, but I've really enjoyed mine. I was even able to install Zune software on my work PC at my last job, and I was able to add songs from my work pc as a guest user. And the Best part is, it's not an Apple (sorry, but I'm not a fan of Apple).
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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 old 256k Creative MuVo Tx and a 30G iPod (video). I put my Napster songs on the MuVo and move files around with it. I listen to a local FM station in the morning on it, too - a small thing, but there's no radio on the iPod! It also has a microphone to record reminders with. For being small and old, it seems to do a lot for me. Only caveat, it eats batteries. I love the iPod - it's cool to watch the videos, tv shows, etc - specially waiting in an airport or in-flight. And, it's easy to charge by using a provided cord and any usb port. I plug it into my MP3 jack in the car when I'm tired of CDs or the radio. My wife has the iPod Shuffle. It's so tiny I think it would be easy to lose, but she loves it. If you don't mind used, check eBay or a pawn shop, or the guy that replied above with one to sell. Good luck to you!
What does an atheistic, dyslexic, insomniac do? He lies awake at night wondering if there's a dog.
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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 use my Pocket PC for that. (HP hx2495b). Put a 4GB CF card in the thing and have all my albums with me all the time. I briefly used a Zune (which was fine) but I gave it away because it really turned out to just be an extra item to carry around - the PPC works great for it. With a nice set of Sony earphones it's like having a hi-fi in the pocket. Oh man, did I say "hi-fi"? I'm giving away my age! -CB :-D
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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 use the Creative Zen Vision:M. I have an iPod Nano, which I will only use for running. I rarely use my MP3 player for music; it's mainly used for podcasts. I don't like how iPod's do not have bookmarking features so you can track back to where you left off on a podcast when you want to listen to something else or the player needs to be reset. Another good thing about the Zen is that you can delete files from it directly rather than using the GUI to do it. Both of those probably don't matter if you're only going to be listening to music. Never will buy another iPod unless they fix those two things. Otherwise, I do like my Nano.
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I've had three iPods and now an iPhone and I've loved them all. Got one going cheap if your interested :)
It's hard to beat iPods IMHO. No player is perfect, but iPods just seem to have less wrong with them than the competition. As for MP3 and phones - I've had bad experiences (although I haven't tried a Sony). The UIs aren't very intuitive, and all the phone's I've used don't have the capacity to hold enough songs.