MP3 Player Recommendations
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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
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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
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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
That's actually the perfect reasoning for removing all those other programs and installing winamp. FWIW, I like the Sansa. I haven't used the specific models you posted in your original message, but I have a Creative Zen V+ & a Sansa Clip, and have owned or used other players in the past. So far the Sansa Clip is my favorite as far as it's flexibility, ease of use, and overall look/feel. Not much of an ipod fan, myself. Another nice thing about the Sansa is that it does not require any software to be installed on the computer (drag and drop functionality in explorer) and playlists & organization can be managed from a media player application like WMP or, if you're not fond of frustration & suffering that WMP can provide, winamp.
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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 actually like my Zunes. The computer software needs some serious help (hopefully they're listening to all the complaints), but I've not used a player I like more. I have a friend who uses a Sansa. She loves it.
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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).
Problems switching between computers? I haven't seen any. I use mine with four computers (home, work, laptop, friend's) and actually use the Zune to sync files between the computers. It's annoying that you MUST use the Zune software to sync to/from the hardware, but you can use other tools to manage the tags (like WMP) and create playlists (as long as they're .m3u). I do miss autoplaylists, though.
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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
Has anyone out there have any experience with the Archos 605? I've been really interested with this unit. I've been getting mix reviews when I do a search. It seems as if only the technically inclined individuals are the people that gave it a good review. Do anybody here have any pros or cons about it?
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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
Hallo. I also haven't worked with any of those specific models, but I've always had good luck, performance, and reasonable cost with the SanDisk products. Small, light, reliable, and easy-to-replace headphones with something that doesn't look like the muggable white iPod earphones (my Sansa came with white earphones). If you have any issues when you get the SanDisk (like mine had a little gap in the instructions about recommending that music NOT go in the top-level directory), the website FixYa has good techs who've worked with SanDisk and really know their way around. Good luck! :cool:
_________________________________________________ Have a great day!!! -- L.J.
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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
Flash drives, whether they be standalone or as part of an MP3 player, use the FAT32 filesystem, which has a 4GB file size limit. If your database is already 3.5GB, and it might grow to over 4GB, then a USB flash drive of any sort is not going to be a long term solution for you. The only MP3 players that _might_ not use FAT32 would be the Apple iPods. If you absolutely, positively, must have an MP3 player that you can use to keep those DB backups on, check to see if the iPods will do it for you. As for player comparison, iPods are nice & easy to use, but have no built-in FM radio (important if you want to watch the TV at most gyms). Sandisk ones are easy to use, and have a built-in radio, but you may have to upgrade their firmware before you can use them as a USB harddrive -- they made a marketing booboo and removed the USB flashdrive support, and then immediately put out a firmware upgrade to fix the mistake. There's also the MS Zune. The rest are typically too small for your entire music collection, but are not as bulky.
patbob
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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 to say I love my Zune, however it certainly wouldn't meet your needs as Microsoft (in their infinite wisdom) do not allow it to (easily) host as a standard external hard drive. As a media player, I wouldn't have anything else.
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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
FyreWyrm wrote:
Artist -> Play All and Artist -> Album -> Play All? That's something that's missing from the iPod we have now
With my 5th gen iPod (60GB), I can do that by selecting the artist/album & just hitting play. And you can drill-down through artists into the artist's albums.
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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
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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
Unless Sony have seriously cleaned up their SonicStage software which is needed to transfer music onto Sony devices I'd stay well clear of them. Very frustrating because in terms of hardware and interfaces Sony have it spot on especially when it comes to ruggednesses and battery life. I've been very happy with my Creative Zen player. Supports drop and drag via a variety of Media Players and File System Explorer. Mine also has a line in and built in microphone which I have found many great uses for. Nothing is Impossible you say?......Try slamming a revolving door!
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Unless Sony have seriously cleaned up their SonicStage software which is needed to transfer music onto Sony devices I'd stay well clear of them. Very frustrating because in terms of hardware and interfaces Sony have it spot on especially when it comes to ruggednesses and battery life. I've been very happy with my Creative Zen player. Supports drop and drag via a variety of Media Players and File System Explorer. Mine also has a line in and built in microphone which I have found many great uses for. Nothing is Impossible you say?......Try slamming a revolving door!
Member 4095976 wrote:
Sony have seriously cleaned up their SonicStage software
Not only have they cleaned it up, they threw it away! Their players are now Plug-and-Play compatible with Windows. You can drag and drop files directly to the players.
"How come you can't taste your tongue?" - Jon Arbuckle
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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 Insignia 8Gb. It has builtin Bluetooth, handles videos, and holds a lot of music, or in my case I listen to a lot of books, I can load my entire library of Heinlein books on tape at once. I think this is a Best Buy brand and only available there, but have had this since last Nov and using Jabra Bluetooth headphones is a great pair. Somebody's got to do it.
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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 a chinese clone called a Meizu. Its great, plays videos, no DRM so i can just drag annd drop mp3 files and videos to it which is the biggest pain in iPods. http://en.meizu.com/ sensitive to the touch though.
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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
Unistall all of that. Install Winamp, install k-lite mega codec pack. That will sort out most (if not all) of your movie and music requirements. Winamp is better for ipods then iTunes. For DVD's I find Nero Showtime to be the best, after you install k-lite codecs WMP will play DVD's.
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Unistall all of that. Install Winamp, install k-lite mega codec pack. That will sort out most (if not all) of your movie and music requirements. Winamp is better for ipods then iTunes. For DVD's I find Nero Showtime to be the best, after you install k-lite codecs WMP will play DVD's.
But you can play DVDs winth Media Player Classic (wich comes with k-lite codec pack) or BSPlayer And I agree that you'll need nothing else as far as movies and music goes (unless you like more your products). Alot of mp3/mp4 players out there made from companies located on china/taiwan (ie. clones and unknown brands) allow for drag&drop functionality in explorer. When you plug the mp3 player it will be reconized by your cpu as a usb stick drive. You just load your mp3s on it and you're set to go. And winamp detects many of them and asks you if you want to "manage it" with winamp. Its worth a try, and i hope the info is helpfull :)