iPod Nano

[sphenoa]

I dont know about iPod too well so I have few questions to ask.
Can you uploade music in your computer to iPod? without using iTunes?

[Guruboy]

I wouldn't suggest using a different media player. I know there are plugins for WMP and such that allow you do upload onto the iPod but I don't see the point since iTunes is free is it not? It's available here http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

[rspassey]

When one has all their music on one player, and they can upload from it, why add more software, free or not, to me it doesnt make sense.

[Mac Medic]

personally I'd use itunes but there are alternatives, none of them free as far as I'm aware. X-Play, Anapod Explorer are 2 of the best. I would look at a fullsize or ipod mini over the Nano though. The cost per Mb is higher on the Nano and there are a lot of reports of the screens damaging fairly easily, regardless of the Ars-Technica story.

www.flawedmusicplayer.com

[Hi Ho]

Are there really pug-ins for WMP that will make it compatible with the Ipod? I don't like Itunes at all. That, along with the fact that Napster isn't compatible with the Ipod, is keeping me from getting one.

[kram 2.0]

Analysts have made it clear that what sets the iPod apart from the others (aside from the style) is the software hardware integration. Outside of the 'general style popular appeal', that is why iPod is the most popular mp3 player.

kram

[Guruboy]

There are podcast plugins but now that you mention it I haven't located any for the actual transfer of songs. I would just stick with iTunes even though for some reason it always takes like 10 seconds to open up.

[DonVito]

I really like Itunes. It makes it very easy to add and delete songs from the Ipod. You just check the songs you want on it, and uncheck the ones you dont want. I have no complaints.

[Hi Ho]

I'd rather have a choice of software and download services. Itunes does not have a very good selection of the music I want and I don't like the interface in general. WMP 10 has a better interface plus 8 music services integrated into the player. That is selection. I guess I'll be going with a Creative player.

[HAL9000]

I have to agree... I find it ridiculous having to have different types of media players. When I was fixing computers, you would log on and see Windows Media Player, Itunes, Winamp, Real Player, Quicktime, ATI Media Center... then look at browsers... IE, Firefox, Opera... I mean how many programs do you need to do ONE job??? Then people complain about bloat in their systems?

[Panama Red]

I have to agree... I find it ridiculous having to have different types of media players. When I was fixing computers, you would log on and see Windows Media Player, Itunes, Winamp, Real Player, Quicktime, ATI Media Center... then look at browsers... IE, Firefox, Opera... I mean how many programs do you need to do ONE job??? Then people complain about bloat in their systems?

I still get 'em that way, Hal. And most of the time 3 media players are running at start up as well as running the "calling home" for updates. Nice way to slow down a system.

[HAL9000]

And a billion icons in the system tray to boot... I think I have too many at 10 LOL.

[nocturnx]

My buddy who is an apple freak said they are going to be coming out with a Nano that also plays video and has more memory fairly shortly, so if you are thinking about getting one you may want to hold out or look into this.

[David M]

I saw the 4mb Apple Nano selling for $244 on Pricegrabber and the 60mb Creative Nomad selling for $256. For almost the same price and 15 times the storage capacity for me it's a no brainer as to which is the better value. I guess the Apples have become status symbols. Thats the only reason I can figure for the huge price differences compared to Creative products.

[kram 2.0]

I saw the 6mb Apple Nano selling for $244 on Pricegrabber and the 60mb Creative Nomad selling for $256. For almost the same price and ten times the storage capacity for me it's a no brainer as to which is the better value. I guess the Apples have become status symbols. Thats the only reason I can figure for the huge price differences.
What?

If you're interested in capacity, look at the iPod - with the Nano, you will be paying more per GB, inevitably.

kram

[David M]

Realized I had the wrong capacity...its even less. The least expensive 60mb IPOD I found was $360 on Pricegrabber. That makes a little more sense.

[Hi Ho]

A 60mb player won't hold much music. :)

The Creative Zen Micro is 5 GB for $200 plus it has voice recording, an FM tuner, and compatibility with 10+ music download services. The Ipod Mini is 4 GB with no tuner and compatibility with only one music download service. To me, even though the Ipod is as sexy and easy to use as possible, the Zen Micro is the better buy.

[thefultonhow]

I have to agree... I find it ridiculous having to have different types of media players. When I was fixing computers, you would log on and see Windows Media Player, Itunes, Winamp, Real Player, Quicktime, ATI Media Center... then look at browsers... IE, Firefox, Opera... I mean how many programs do you need to do ONE job??? Then people complain about bloat in their systems?

I actually kind of have that situation. I have Firefox and then IE for when Firefox doesn't work with a page; WMP because it's built-in, Media Player Classic because it's better for videos, iTunes for playing music and iPod sync (which of course comes with QuickTime), and MusicMatch for tagging and ripping MP3s. However, none of these load on startup, so I don't really think they're affecting the speed of my system.

I saw the 4mb Apple Nano selling for $244 on Pricegrabber and the 60mb Creative Nomad selling for $256. For almost the same price and 15 times the storage capacity for me it's a no brainer as to which is the better value. I guess the Apples have become status symbols. Thats the only reason I can figure for the huge price differences compared to Creative products.

It's also because the Creative Nomad Jukebox is significantly larger than the iPod because it uses a 2.5" (cheaper but larger than the iPod's 1.8") hard drive. Some of the newer Nomads use the 1.8" drives, but they are just about as expensive as a comparable iPod, yet don't have the great design or interface or ease of use.

For what the iPod Nano is (a large-capacity flash player with a large color screen) it's actually quite cheap. I wouldn't buy one because it doesn't provide enough storage for me and because I don't need the durability of a flash player (even if it did provide enough storage I would just get the 4 GB mini), but the Korean MP3 player manufacturers are genuinely scared of it because they just can't compete on price. Apple managed to negotiate a really good deal on the flash memory used in the Nano, so really they have competitive pricing:

http://www.pricegrabber.com/p__JetAudio_iAudio_G3_2GB_MP3_Player_White,__7548695/search=2gb+mp3

That's for the 2 GB. There are actually no 4 GB flash players available on the American market yet, so the Nano 4 GB can't be overpriced, because it's alone in its class.

The Creative Zen Micro is 5 GB for $200 plus it has voice recording, an FM tuner, and compatibility with 10+ music download services. The Ipod Mini is 4 GB with no tuner and compatibility with only one music download service.

See, the thing is that FM tuners are useless (IMHO the whol purpose of an MP3 player is so that you're not forced to listen to the radio; if you want to listen to the radio, just get a $20 radio Walkman), and voice recording is not enough to make up for the iPod's ease of use. As for the music download services, I personally think that in most cases buying the CD is a much better option, because you're not needlessly limited by DRM. My dad has an MP3 player and a 160 GB hard drive in his computer for media files, but he still buys CDs because they're a much more flexible medium. He has something like 900 CDs at the moment. He has never used an online music service.

[Hi Ho]

I prefer to buy the songs I want to listen to. I don't want to buy a whole CD just to get a couple songs. When I buy a song from Napster, for example, I can do whatever I want with it. There are practically no limitations.

I know an FM tuner isn't that useful to most but I like to listen to FM talk radio and I'm not going to carry around a seperate radio just for that. It would be nice to have an AM tuner as well but I don't know of any with that capability.

The Zen Micro is very easy to use. No, it doesn't have the click wheel (which I really like a lot) but it has a similar vertical pad. If there is anything that comes close to the Ipod in egornomics, it's the Zen Micro.

[Guruboy]

The iPod is good enough for me. Even though mine's on the fritz right now. All the music on it is from CDs which really didn't take that long. I even think the 50$ extra for the U2 version was fine, because the black and red kicks ass.

Creative MP3 players are pretty much just as good. I would only get the biggest one they have to put in my car, since they won't fit in your pocket and smaller ones I don't think can compare to the iPod. MB/$ isn't everything.

[Panama Red]

Another portable music alternative is the one my daughter uses. She uses her Palm Tungsten for all the normal Palm functions but it also doubles as a music player. She can load an SD media disk with whatever tunes she wants quite easily using the Card Reader on her computer and accessing our networked Jukebox computer for her music selections. The 512Mb card can then be inserted in the Palm, plug in the headphones and off she goes! Not as large of storage space as an iPod but it's one less piece of hardware to carry and less of a target for theft. Most folks don't even recognize a Palm device as a music machine.

[thefultonhow]

Another portable music alternative is the one my daughter uses. She uses her Palm Tungsten for all the normal Palm functions but it also doubles as a music player. She can load an SD media disk with whatever tunes she wants quite easily using the Card Reader on her computer and accessing our networked Jukebox computer for her music selections. The 512Mb card can then be inserted in the Palm, plug in the headphones and off she goes! Not as large of storage space as an iPod but it's one less piece of hardware to carry and less of a target for theft. Most folks don't even recognize a Palm device as a music machine.

Yeah, I usually just use my Treo plus a 1 GB SD card to play music. The iPod is only for when I'm going for a drive or a longer walk. (However, I used the iPod a lot more before I got the Treo.)

[CaptTuna]

It's just that those Ipods are darn cute.

[Litespeed]

I really like my BMW watch, mp3 player, and voice recorder. Sounds great and does every thing I need it to. I also have a ipod mini, but I find myself using my watch more. I also use it at work as a flash drive.


http://www.horchow.com/store/catalog/prod.jhtml?itemId=cprod9540014&parentId=cat2140731&cm_ven=Performics&cm_cat=I%2Dsearch%20%28Froogle%29&cm_ite=DDI%20Link

Not the best link to describe it, but you get the idea.
Now that I look back on this thread it sure has taken a turn.

[catacon]

It's just that those Ipods are darn cute.

Lol! I haven't invested in an Ipod because of the price. They are really nice, but I don't have that kind of money. I had a small 256MB one, but the volume control broke, so I may start looking at a ZenMicro or Ipod.

[Guruboy]

iPods are too cute, I want to hug mine...once apple fixes it ;) What do you all think about using the PSP as a browser/mp3 player/Palm? They're around the price of the newer iPods, but have an amazing screen, play games that could be considered PS 1.5 quality, and obviously have a web browser. There's no telling what else Sony will do with it. Plus they're sexy, like the iPod.

[colecifer]

There is a plug-in for winamp that adds ipod control, i really like it and it works well. I used it when i got a new computer, because itunes won't let you take music from the ipod to your hard drive and i didn't want to reload all of my music. The winamp program will take songs from your ipod to your hard drive.

[Mac Medic]

if you enable "show hidden files" in windows explorer and enable "disk use" on the ipod you can drag and drop the music files back onto your HDD from the ipod, no 3rd party apps are necessary for this but some of them have very handy features, such as rebuilding playlists etc...

[Guruboy]

if you enable "show hidden files" in windows explorer and enable "disk use" on the ipod you can drag and drop the music files back onto your HDD from the ipod, no 3rd party apps are necessary for this but some of them have very handy features, such as rebuilding playlists etc...

wow that's actually really cool. I should've thought of that. Makes me wonder about Apple's security when that's so easy.

[colecifer]

if you enable "show hidden files" in windows explorer and enable "disk use" on the ipod you can drag and drop the music files back onto your HDD from the ipod, no 3rd party apps are necessary for this but some of them have very handy features, such as rebuilding playlists etc...

I personally don't like that method because on your ipod the music files have no real sorting that i've ever seen. I like using a third party program because it will sort the files for you as well.

[Mac Medic]

Thats true, the file system on the ipod is a bit deranged, but, in itunes preferences you can choose the option to "keep itunes folder organized" so when you drag the music files back into itunes it will sort them into folders for you by artist and album thus saving you the time and trouble. The 3rd party apps can be good, especially the free ones, but they're not really necessary.