thinking about buying an ipod

[jeex]

i've been thinking of purchasing an ipod. i've looked on ebay and i keep seeing stuff about the 'generations' of ipods. is there any advantage to having an older one as opposed to a newer one?

are there any ipod ripoffs that are good?

i'm kinda in the dark on this..

aside from playing music on an ipod, is there anything else you can do with it?

[Hatz]

iPod is the best music player around. I absolutely love mine. If you are going to get a new one, go with the latest generation.........Gen3. These are the latest ones and have the latest firmware updates for them. They have more features then the older ones and are constantly being updated.

Im not sure when Macworld is but there has been some buzz around ipodlounge.com about another generation possibly being unveiled. Not sure if it is worth the wait or not.

The only bad thing about the iPod is the battery life........your battery will last for about 18 months and a new one is around 50 dollars or so.....and you can replace it yourself if you want. I'm sure you wouldnt have trouble with it seeing as how you are tech savvy.

Check out www.ipodlounge.com .....they have good forums and lots of knowledgable people there.

iPods also have other features such as a few games, calander, alarm clock(which I have used before..hehe), and other random stuff.

Hope this helps you with your decision.

Hatz

[rallynavvie]

The new ones are most definitely the ones to get. The old ones were heavier, had moving parts for input, and ran really hot. The new ones are smaller, lighter, run cooler, and use trackpads instead of moving parts for input. There are also newer mini-iPods or something that I saw somewhere that looked like they might be a good deal. I would love to get the largest iPod available but can't drop $500 on such a frivolous item right now

BTW you may want to get one from a reputable reseller and get a store warranty with it. There was that controversy out there regarding the battery life (all 18 months of it) and no replacement by Apple. They have since corrected that major f-up and I think the manufacturer warranty is a lot better now. Still for something that expensive I'd get the Best Buy 3-year extended warranty on it.

[jeex]

so what i've gathered so far is;

get a gen3 ipod.
the batteries will crap out on me in 18 months.. for a while, apple was screwing people over, but now they're considering it a part of the 3 year warranty?

or should i get the best buy warranty (or other retail warranty)?

is there any other cheaper alternative to an ipod that is comperable, or is the ipod in a league of its own?

what is the closest rival to the ipod and what makes the ipod superiour to it?

[Conquest10]

I have a gen3 iPod and love it. A friend of mine has an older one and it is much bigger. Its like twice as thick as mine. It doesn't have a dock connection. So if you plan on getting the media reader, its only good with iPods with the dock connection. USB 2.0 can only be used on iPods with the dock connection also. As far as an alternative, the Jukebox Zen seems like one. Don't know much about it, though.

[Devanshu]

Nice topic jeex...now I'm thinking of buying one. How much does a gen3 cost?

[Hardcoreruss]

They absolutely rule I have 1 30gb one (now discontinued)

and the missus the bitch !!!

has a bloody 40gb one !!!!!!

Get one now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hatz]

As far as alternatives go....someone mentioned the zen....there is also the new Dell mp3 player as well as the new napster one. Supposedly the new napster one isnt that bad at all. I would go to cnet.com and look at the reviews they have done of all of them. They still have the iPod as the best one around, but others are close.

I have a 15gb.....3500 songs is more than I need on an mp3 player.....and my sister just got the 10gb(2500) for 237 off of amazon. Not a bad price considering it is a reliable site.

Hatz

[slimmx]

I have the first Ipod Mac realised (5 gigs). I bought it about a year and a half ago. So far it has been working perfectly and can't complain on the battery life, you just have to take care of it and get a sleeve.

The newer smaller Ipods are smaller and slicker, but it does have a disadvantage compared to the old one. It is the battery life. The older Ipods came with larger batteries and you can squeeze more playing time out of it before you have to recharge it. I think the old ones have 15 hours compared to 8 of the new ones.

Ipods are terrific and if you decide to get it, get the newest one. I would not get the new MINI Ipod because it just doesn't worth it. Yes, it is a little smaller but only 4 gigs for $249. What kind of shit is that. You can get 15 gigs for 299. The regular ipods are small enough and mini is only a little smaller.

But if I was buying a harddrive mp3 player right now, I would not get an Ipod. For a couple of reasons, ipods are limited in features compared to it's rivals. The most important on is FM radio. Ipods got no FM radio.
Go to cnet.com and check out the reviews.

I think the best one out there right now is iRiver iHP-120. It got all the features ipod got and a LOT MORE. I have read many reviews about it and all of them say that it is not as slick as IPOD but has a ton of features that Ipod can only dream of. The people on TECHTV channel say the same thing.

http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/4502-6497_7-0.html?tag=pageNav&orderby=-7eRating&qt=

[tgpo]

Thus far I have had no problems with my battery. Plus there is now a $50 kit to replace the battery, so that's a plus.

[jeex]

thanks for the info guys.. i went and got a 15gb ipod.. the itunes software is a bit confusing (probably so simple that its fooling me)..

from what i've read, there is a way to make the ipod as as a firewire harddrive. can i just copy mp3's over to it instead of going through itunes? i only plan on using this to play mp3's (no itunes store stuff).

its pretty neat, once i get a bit more acclimated to using it i think i'll enjoy it alot more.

[MrMungus]

Is it true you can't replace the batteries on an ipod?

[Conquest10]

I'm not sure about dragging the songs straight to the iPod. I know you can use it as a hard drive. I used to use it but got one of those usb jump drives so don't use it as much anymore. In iTunes all you have to do is import your songs into the program and create playlists. Add songs to the playlists. Then just drag the playlists into the iPod icon.

[DereX888]

The only reason IMO to buy any ipod toy would be for its capacity. That is its only advantage over any portable discman (cd player). And a cool leather case
However I cannot imagine too many situations when having equivalent of ~10 albums in MP3 format on a single CD-R or CD-RW loaded in a cd player wouldn't be enough - unless someone is going on a long long trip to some God-forgotten places without internet and cd-burners...
Personally I wouldnt have any use for none of the ipods regardless of its capacity since I mostly listen to CDDAs. I rather wait for new portable cd players able to read any kind of music files of off any kind of current recordable medias (including mp3 on DVD-R/RW and DVD-A discs) to arrive in America; iRiver supposedly is going to introduce one such player soon. Now if it will support .shn and .ogg files - that will be something worth buying IMO.

[Hatz]

Jeex, go to www.ipodlounge.com for good forums and firmware/software packages. I use a program called ephod 2.0

It allows me to simply transfer songs from my hard drive either through a playlist i've created in winamp or by adding a directory, or indifidual files. I don't use that iTunes stuff.

They also have a program on there that allows you to send files back to the computer so you can use it as a hard drive and swap music between diff computers.

The musicmatch software is junk.....I still think the Ephod 2.0 is the best program.....and plus its free.

Hope this helps. If you need anything else just let us know.

Hatz

[rallynavvie]

I know why an iPod is infinitely better than a CD player: absolutely no skipping. I don't care how good a CD player says its skip-protection is I'm sure it won't fly in my car. Since I don't have a CD player in my car I'd actually like to be able to plug the iPod directly into the head unit and use that as my non-AM/FM audio player. However I just don't listen to music that often in my car to warrant the cost of any MP3 player. But if I got one as a gift I sure wouldn't turn right around and sell it.

[Hardcoreruss]

Convert your files to aac, 64kbps sounds exactly the same (if anyone says they can tell the difference they must have ears like dumbo) as 128kbps so this means your 15gb ipod is really 30gb.

[slimmx]

What program can I use to convert to aac?

[Conquest10]

What program can I use to convert to aac?

iTunes

[Hatz]

I have all of my music at 192kbs. I mean come on......do you really need more than 2500-3000 songs at once? There is always some of those songs that you put on there and end up never listening to. Just like cd burning. There is always a few fillers you put in there and end up skipping when listening to it......hehehehe.

AAC isn't a bad idea though.....but just not worth my time. I know it doesnt take long but I am a lazy lazy man.

Hatz

[slimmx]

I have all of my music at 192kbs. I mean come on......do you really need more than 2500-3000 songs at once? There is always some of those songs that you put on there and end up never listening to.
Hatz

I can't agree with you more. I have about 3 gigs of music on my ipod but I only listen to like 40 songs, only to the new stuff.

Isn't Itunes only for Mac and I got Windows. I would just like to know which prog does the conversion.

[Conquest10]

iTunes is for Mac and PC.
Link

[DereX888]

slimmx wrote:

Hatz wrote:
I have all of my music at 192kbs. I mean come on......do you really need more than 2500-3000 songs at once? There is always some of those songs that you put on there and end up never listening to.
Hatz


I can't agree with you more. I have about 3 gigs of music on my ipod but I only listen to like 40 songs, only to the new stuff.

Thats exactly my point.
Why would I need few thousand songs in mp3 format to carry it with me - if practically I listen to max. ~40-50 songs, skipping the rest of the songs on my single CD-RW with mp3s in my old iRiver discman. And it takes no time to add/remove songs to this CD-RW since it is packet-writing formatted. Did I mention it has a radio tuner built-in as well?
Again - only iPod's cool leather case is what I envy, but IMO its just not enough reason to buy it.

@rallynavvie
As I said I listen to CDDAs mostly and none of my discs ever skips, no matter where I drive, walk or jog. It just never happens. If 40sec buffer on CDDAs (or 2min+ buffer on mp3s) doesn't work for you, then I dont know... do you take karate lessons with your headphones on or something? thats the only possible situation I can think of when discman would skip, either that or you must listen to music while riding horses, driving in some really bumpy off-road country or mountain areas, or treat your CDs with sand paper or something?