i want an ipod ;(

Save yourself $100 and get a dell dj ;)

I have iPod too and I love it, but FM transmitters are illegal in my country (and others), because you have to have a licence to start your own FM sequence. But banning this gadget is pretty dumb considering it barely functions within the radar of inside your car. Alas, ordering one from USA as we speak..

ipods are crap, bloody fashion accessories

i own a 40gig Iriver, it weighs about the same size as a minidisc player and is little larger in girth than an ipod, see here(and no i dont have a huge hand). it has line record in, lineout, microphone, radio and other stuff i dont understand. its simply ace!

anyway, point is, ipods, though they are small they are plain boring and just another fad. people even wear the awful sounding uncompfy white headphones that come with it just so people can see they own an ipod. sheep.

uh, they are not uncomfy and do sound great. Boring? You have no idea what you're talking about, sheep.

no i have no idea apart from 4 years experience with mp3 players and endless amounts of headphones, youre right, my bad.

hey don't feel bad, we all make mistakes :) cheers.

He's a sheep because he's got something other than an iPod? =P

I like your logic!

maybe you should read the entire thing in context

Oic, my bad I skimmed it :)

I heart my iRiver. Can't be doing with this metrosexual white plastic bullshit :D

I have an iPod, I'm sorry. =(

But, in my defence, it was the cheapest HDD-based MP3 player when I got it. And about earphones, I've wanted to get new ones, but I'm broke and I don't know what to get. Tried a couple of Sennheisers on, but they were too small for my ears.

Recommendations would be welcome, and I'll see if I can get a pair at some point when I have money. =)

Sennheiser PX 100 is pretty much a tie with the Koss PortaPro as far as sound quality goes in a lightweight "over the head" headphone :)
They're open so they leak out some sound, but the soundstage and precision is great. and my senns have impressive bass (even on my ipod mini which is the weakest ipod when it comes to bass - they're all rather weak on that except for the shuffle apparently)

im gonna get an IPOD shuffle..

my god its beautiful..

rule #1 of being a smart shoper... don't buy something for looks unless you're filthy rich.

It has more bass than the other iPods (which is good).

it could hardly have less bass (with the standard ipod headphones)

Forgot the source so I can't say if they measured that with the normal earphones or or with more suitable devices. Also, I can't tell if you've compared it to the others on vanilla earphones as well :)

id have one if there was a display on it:(

CREATIVE ZEN XTRA.

I <3 my creative so much, best thing i've ever bought

pity about the no plug&play tho :O

i don't know what that means :(

you need to install some software first before you can put music on it

arent those things huge?

lemme measure mine...

it's about 7.5x5x2cm, so not very big at all, fits into the palm of your hand really nicely

bigger than an ipod?

dunno how big an ipod is, creatives seem to be miles cheaper though (not that i payed full price for mine)

5 finger discount!11! omg999

ipods are madly overpriced and i doubt they're as good as the alternatives (creative etc.)

They're good.

Much rather have an iriver, a sony, a creative or ANYTHING else. ipods aren't as good as the alternatives. Or at least as good for the same price.

Tell that to him, not me. I said they're good, I didn't say "they're as good as the alternatives" or "they're the top of the pop" or anything...

Ipod is too damn popular. every idiot has an Ipod. But it is a good product, I will admit that.

The new olympus "MR-100" could be interesting, if you like to be a little different :) (only 5gigs hough)

click this for info


or the new sony´s are very nice
Sony NW-HD3

Ah, one with a sexy case for a change :) (the Olympus one, although the sony is nice in a different way)
The great thing with Sony is that they now allow mp3 playback while you only could play back ATRAC on their previous players. Which was a shame because apparently they were pretty good :)

I would have seriously considered the olympus one, however the backside of the thing is pretty ugly (imo). If they would have kept the backside in the same theme as the front (black gloss) I would have purchased it. IT has a kubricky 2001 type of feel to it.

Well the new sonys are great, and I think I will pick one of them up. As soon as I get a chance to see the product in real life.

Put on a belt clip and voila ;)

I own a iriver hp140 audio player, it is an incredible piece of kit but does have it cons as do ALL "MP3" players, choice of player all depends on what features you consider important.
The one thing which is consistantly crap on all players i have tested is the headphones! cheap portable headphones that i would recomend are kos portapro, sportapro, ksc 35, sen px100's.

rant..
the thing that is pissing me off about the next generation of audio players is that they are bloating out with features that i really dont need like colors screens, video playback, pictures, large heafty players with crap batterys.

to make matters worse they leave out features that would make portable players even more incredible, and probably not add much to the price like superior codec support (ogg mpc flac) gapless playback, random shuffle and ease of use.... HELLO....

all i want is a small light reliable player which plays quality music how it was intended on the go, how hard is that...

Don't the sportapros have worse sound than the portapros despite having the same drivers ? (a problem with casing acoustics I've read)

i vaugly remember reading something about them distorting or something, cant recall if it was at high volume or in a particular frequency, but i do currently use them and i would say they are more bassy, but still decent, the other cans probably are better but my hearings not so good these days and combined with todays music, i cant really tell the difference.

I hate those in-ear headphones myself. I also don't really like black headphones so I put in an order for these:

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enf...es_h%2eear

I hope they are comfy and don't push into the ear at all, in which case I will be happy. They arrive this week.

Ah they arrived today and I did some cunning grafting to get them onto my handsfree. Much more comfortable than other over-ear clippy headphones - they are extremely light and the over-ear part is made of very soft rubber and you hardly feel it. The only thing I don't like too much is that they go slightly into the ear. I'm gonna try them out for a while to see if they irritate my ear but they seem quite good so far. Sound quality is fair, probably the best you can expect from this type of headphone.

I was gonna get a Sony Network Walkman for a while, but instead decided to get the S700 phone and a larger memory card. Would have been perfect except the phone only takes 128MB duo cards and not the new duo pro (which goes up to 1GB). Hey ho, I don't listen to that much music and 128MB can do a couple of CDs.

Yeah, I bought that phone shortly before Christmas, only thing I dislike (in fact, I hate) about it, is the mandatory shutter sound. I'm on the verge of doing that DaVinci server thing and to hell if it breaks...

I've got a creative zen touch 20gb. I'm happy.

yey @ my 128 mb thingy I won, GOOD ENOUGH, COULD BE WORSE!

your mp3 player is nothink on the esr

could be worse, could be steg

stegs ego is nothink in cs:s

most players are bigger than an ipod. but lets weigh up the differences.

- ipods have sweet fa in way of features compared to almost all other players (format support, radio, recording, line in / out, digi-cam->jukebox picture transferral, battery life, support when the battery does finally die), etc etc
- ipods are more expensive than almost all other players
- owning an ipod means you have to hold it in your hand and dance down the street like every other ipod owning raging homosexual on acid! :P
- apple sucks
- you can use itunes
+ you can use itunes

really, the only real reason to get an ipod these days is for downloads from itunes.. and lets be totally honest, they're not the best for music downloads either. there's cheaper sources, and usually they offer better quality sound (160-192kbps aac / wma. As opposed to apple's 128kbps aac).

the ipod shuffle is just another example of apple's design team winning over their technical team. No display?! look anywhere online and you can get cheaper solid state players with the same or more memory, with displays, and probably with better functionality also).

So, yes, if you're a sheep buy an ipod. If you want a feature rich, cheaper, but slightly less cool looking player go for something like an iriver, creative, iaudio.. etc.

oh, i used to own a gen1 mac ipod, bought when they were first launched in the UK. back when they were cool by exclusivity. back when you had to hack them to make them work on the pc. oldskool! alas, that was many years ago and the battery died late last year. i opted for a 40gb iriver. fantastic player, and it supports OGG! teh win!

May I point out that 2 of your - points are biased or at least completely subjective and a third one is bolllocks ? :D
(also, what does "have sweet fa" mean.. ?)
Also, it's not particularly hard to replace the battery on a regular ipod (and when it dies, usually your warranty has expired so it's not like you're voiding anything)

sure, you may point that out. :-P

i'm assuming you're meaning the "dancing like every other ipod owning homosexual on acid" point. true, this shouldn't be a bad mark against the player, but rather the person. although having said that it does seem to be more ipod owners insist on walking down the street in an overtly camp fashion holding their beloved over-subscribed bit of technology for all to see (like we care!) - infact the ipod adverts even suggest we all do that. :)
technology has a purpose, in this case to play/record media. My argument has always been that anyone who really gives a flying fuck about listening to music on the move puts their player in their pocket, allowing you to use both hands for every day use, and allows you to use the technology for what it's for. i can only imagine ipod owners prefer to hold their device because as mentioned in my first point, the player is inferior and has no display on the remote - unlike a lot of other players.

the other point about apple sucking, which i'm guessing is what you disagreed with is subjective again, yes, but it's in part due to the way apple is now resting on its laurels with the ipod instead of innovating the device in to something much better.
when the ipod was originally released it was something new, and flash. it looked great, it sounded great, and people didn't mind paying the extra cash for it (compared to cd walkmans, or flash mp3 players). also there wasn't much in the way of choice when it came to portable jukeboxes. the only other options (iirc) being the creative zen, and an archos player. both of which came with straps so you could carry it on your back like an oversized hiker's backpack.
fast forward several years and we have a large proliferation of really really good portable juke boxes that support some really great features for a low cost. Yet apple is still making practically the same device. in terms of soft features that have been added to the device since day one i can name 1 additional format (uncompressed), 2 pointless games, 2 PDA type functions (which are almost totally pointless with that interface / software support), and a colour screen which serves almost no purpose since the resolution / battery life makes it almost entirely redundant. Another great example of why apple sucks is the way they come out with the colour ipod and everyone says it's great. however they ommitted one simple bit of functionality that would've made the device simply great. A usb bridge. allowing you to copy photos from any usb camera. some irivers have it, portable media centers have it.. but not apple! it's just another example of either how shortsighted they are, or how they want to screw you over when the next gan ipod comes out. :)

you're right about getting replacement batteries for ipods. it is possible, but up until the mini, it was very difficult to get in to these devices, usually meaning the case became scratched to fuck, or warped and twisted beyond any recognisable state and that's the last thing any self respecting ipod owner wants! :>

OK I get it :) And if you take the "apple sucks" in the "they suck by not substantially improving on the ipod", 'tis very true.
I guess they'd probably have something to say about keeping it simple and stuff and they'd be wrong to some extent, as some changes are possible whilst keeping simplicity and others are some challenges they can probably take on.

About the free hands et al. , they still provide you with a belt clip :) I'd put my mini in either pocket if they weren't already busy, so I use it. I guess having the dancers hold the damn thing in their hands has other symbolic values and shows it off more ;) I wouldn't really have a use for a display on remote though, skipping to next/ previous proves sufficient in most cases

As for getting inside these bastards, from what I've seen the mini and shuffle are quite dangerous to take apart (risks of thin ribbon breakage and a few other things).

summary : the 2 subjective points were "using itunes" and "apple sucks", the fucked up is the one about the ad ;)

i mean itunes as a way of purchasing music online, and not as a media player. i'm not overly keen on the way purchased music has to be played on an ipod. okay, so you can burn it to cd, then rip it to mp3 / ogg / wma / ???... but that's not the point.

having been an ipod owner, and now an iriver owner it's just a sense of freedom i get.. use practically whatever format i want, from practically any shop i want (except itunes - not that that bothers me, coz it's expensive, and i don't like the software) :>

each to their own. at least there's a choice these days.

Yeah, I don't even consider this aspect myself cause I don't buy mp3s online - I feel I'd MUCH rather buy cds/whatever. For me it's just been a player since it came out :D The DRM limitations with it suck big donkey balls.

sweet fa = a british slang term. sweet fuck all.

Ta!