Help! trying to decide about IPod... (1 Viewer)

[Daren Welsh]

I just got my free iPod from freeipods dot com. It's a hassle to do their process, but if you keep after your five friends to sign up and do the free offer, it ends up costing you nothing if you pick the right offers.

 

[Ted Lee]

hey gary, just to clarify.

i've *never* had my ipod skip on me, but i was just saying that if you're out thrashing it in the snow (or whatever) that it possibly could skip - since it is a hard-drive.

sorry to be so (as usual) confusing! :b

---

side note: holy crap, there are a lot of ipod lovers here.

 

[Ted Lee]

btw, if any of you ipod users are using a dock w/line out ... would you mind reading/commenting my post?

thx!

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...52#post2533252

 

[Arman]

1647 4.5 days 6 GB / Ipod Geek since December 2004

Bought my U2 signed 20 GB ipod on my b-day (as a gift to myself err Best Buy's gift to me since I paid them using their $300+ gc/rewards )

Most played song = Amsterdam (Coldplay) 5

# of The Beatles CDs in my ipod = 6 [Sgt. Peppers (1st ever CD & song loaded to my ipod), Abbey Road, Revolver, 1, The Beatles Anthology 1, Let It Be... Naked] - Of course, I am going to load all The Beatles Cds in my ipod(s)]

Total # of U2, R.E.M and Radiohead CDs = 16

Last CD loaded = The Best of Martika

# of songs purchased in iTunes = 15

Favorite iTunes Radio Discovery = Club 80s with DJ Lex, Generation 80s Retro, EDR Club Tech, KSBR, This is Corrosion

Recently loaded CDs: Wish You Were (Pink Floyd), Led Zeppelin I & II, Disintegration, Miles Ahead (Miles Davis), A Night At The Opera (Queen), The Very Best of Linda Ronstadt, Billie Holiday's Greatest Hits, A Love Supreme (John Coltrane), Hail to The Thief (radiohead), Undertow (Tool), Are You Experienced? (Jimi Hendrix), The Best of Sade, Blue (Joni Mitchell), Heaven up There (Echo & the Bunnymen), The Flaming Lips (The Soft Bulletin), I Just can't Stop It (The English Beat), The Ramones (Ramones), The Best of Ella Fitzgerald & Lois Armstrong

Due to my renewed addiction to music listening (ipod/iTunes), bought the following CDs

Next Up: Depeche Mode Remixes 81...04, The Moon & Antartica (Modest Mouse), Join The Dots B-Sides & Rarities The Fiction Years (The Cure), Pain The Sky With Stars (Enya), The Hits 1 & 2 (Prince), Giant Steps (John Coltrane), 101 (Depeche Mode), Substance (New Order), The Best of Basia, International Superhits! (Green Day), Tales of a Librarian (Tori Amos), The Best of Miles Davis & John Coltrane, The Essential Clash, The Queen is Dead (The Smiths), The Essential Miles Davis ...

Idock is not necessary ... an Itrip is must have!

 

[Arman]

forgot - Pop Art (Pet Shop Boys) and New Order's Retro is coming!

 

[Jason Adams]

Smart man.

Since I loathe the growing ICult...

If you need something small, I would recommend the Creative Zen Micro, which holds 5 gigs, can be recognised as a removable hard drive, AM/FM radio, has sound which is widely recognised as better then the IPod, and none of those pesky DRM issues. If you want something larger, the Zen Touch is good, avaiable at 20 and 40 gigs, though it cant be recognised as a external HDD, and doesnt have the radio (without remote control, sold seperately). It does look a bit IPod-ish, I'll admit.

Thing is about Creative MP3 players, is the sucky, sucky software packaged with it. It's decent enough, but not as well executed as ITunes. I highly recommend Notmad Explorer as an alternate software for it, although you do have do pay 15 bucks for it.

 

[Scott L]

I'll get back to you on that, genuinely curious. I'm getting a Zen Micro for my sis.

 

[Christ Reynolds]

if you rip your own cd collection, this is of little concern.

CJ

 

[Jason Adams]

Isn't it true that if you use your IPod on several computers, the IPod automatically erases? Still though, thats not a prospect I want to deal with. And I know IPods are recognised as removable HDD's...just that the Micro is the first Creative player to do this, so relax my dear boy.

 

[Garrett Lundy]

Be sure to save a few pennies for some headphones. The sound quality of the white earbuds is worse than a $9 pair of Sony fold-em-ups. And, in my case at least, I found wearing the earbuds very uncomfortable (but my friend has no complaints).

 

[Christ Reynolds]

relax? i didnt realize i said something out of line or outrageous. i'm just arguing my point, like you. so relax.

CJ

 

[Scott L]

Hell no, but there's a rumor on the Creative forums that it self-destructs and explodes after you've listened to your entire collection. And for the record, DRM was never a problem for me either.

Garret- I've heard headphones that are worse than Apple's but I definitely agree about the comfort issue. My bulky Sennheisers feel better on the ears.

 

[Chris]

Not in my experience. My wife & I have our own Itunes, and we've used her Ipod with both machines with no problems thus far.

 

[Chris Farmer]

No, iTunes will not erase your iPod if you use it with multiple computers. What WILL happen is it will overwrite the files if you try to autosync it to multiple computers. iTunes has a Palm-style "synchronization" feature. That is, you plug it in to your computer, it launches iTunes, and any new songs you've added to your collection are transferred to the iPod, as are songs that you've modified, like changing the playcount, rating the song, or correcting tagging errors. In addition, any songs you've played on the iPod since you last synced it have their playcounts combined with those on the computer to keep the tally accurate. The obvious limitation of this is it is entirely automated and based on your library. If you try to synchronize multiple libraries automatically, the previous library will be overwritten by the new one. So, the simple solution is to autosync the iPod to one library only, and add or remove songs from it manually with any other computer you plug it into. Problem solved.

As for DRM, the iPod's only DRM is that you can't transfer songs off the iPod onto your computer from within iTunes. There are a bajillion programs on both Mac and Windows that will do this for you instead. Other then that, the only other DRM to be found comes from songs purchased on the iTunes Music Store, and that's gonna be true with ANY on-line music store and iTMS has about the least restrictions of any format out there.

What can I say, I absolutely love my 20 GB 3G, and recently bought a 512 MB iPod shuffle to take to the gym with me. That thing is so tiny and light that once it goes around your neck, the only reminder you have that it's still even there are the ear buds and music coming out of it.

There are good and rational reasons to pick something other then an iPod. If you have a massive collection of .wma files, iTunes will convert them for you, but lossy to lossy is never a good proposition, and it won't work at all with any WMA files that are DRMed, like the ones you get off Napster, BuyMusic, or MSN Music Store. But to reject it just because it's popular and you don't like the 'iCulture" is to foolishly deny yourself the chance to even look at what is inarguably one of the better digital music players on the market, and arguably the best for the majority of people.

 

[Ted Lee]

well, not really ...

as far as the earbuds go, i actually like the stock ones better then my wife's shure e3's (which were like super expensive) ... so go figure.

 

[Gary->dee]

Ok now I gotta few more questions.

1) What is DRM?? For example Chris wrote: "and it won't work at all with any WMA files that are DRMed". What does that mean?

2) Is iTunes something like the native operating system for the iPod?

I'm a bit concerned about the synching matter with the iPod and a computer. Not the multiple computer aspect, but more along the lines of having to rely on anything that's automatic that could possibly screw up or overwrite a music file down the line.

4) Could I just manually dump all my MP3's on an iPod without having to use iTunes or synchronize anything?

5) This might be conected to my previous questions: How difficult is it to transfer an entire CD library to an iPod? Could I do a direct CD-to-iPod transfer or would I still have to dump the files for conversion onto my computer first?

 

[Chris]

It's a Digital Rights system.. btw, to say the PC based players are devoid of it is also not quite true; a big part of WMA is also to allow for purchased media (wma) complete with Digital Rights that do the exact same thing as Apple's AAC method, which is pretty much the only way to make it work (selling music online)

(3) Yes. You can. Just turn off auto-sync and manually add files. That's what I do.

(4) Depends on how big your library is

(5) Haven't had to do that yet, so no idea. I'd think it'd be possible.. the Ipod mounts as a normal drive in WinXP for me, so using Itunes or anything else to rip directly to it seems fully possible.

 

[Craig S]

The method I quoted above is the dump-files-onto-computer-first method. As Chris says, it's theoretically possible to rip directly to the iPod - you'd have to tell iTunes to keep its library on your iPod mounted drive. But if you do this (and it actually works), you wouldn't have a backup of your library.

 

[BrianB]

Not true. For example, eMusic & Bleep. Neither is "mainstream", but both are legal & DRM free.

 

[RichP]

Jason,

It's usually a good idea to have some knowledge of the product you are bashing, otherwise you simply come off as an uninformed, raving iPod-hater instead of an educated consumer that made an alternative decision.

Perhaps in the future, you'll refrain from the ridiculous hyperbole and ignorant speculation and instead base your counter argument on a more solid foundation.

I have no problems with anyone that chooses a Creative Zen over an iPod -- that's why competition exists -- but you really are only making yourself look foolish when you make statements like these. Just trying to help.