MP3s for me!

[Strike For The South]

Well Im thinking about buying one of these but before I blow all my stocking money on one piece of electronics I wanna know if its worth it. I really like the Ipod touch but its got a lil price tag on it. My brother has a zune and I dont like the interface....so any suggestions?

[TevashSzat]

IMO, the iPod touch is just basically an iPhone except without the phone part and all of the really important stuff that you would want an iPhone for.

I think just an iPod classic or nano would be fine and they're I think somewhat cheaper than the touch

[naut]

The Touch is weak and easily broken. A friend of mine has (or had) one. Dropped it once and the screen broke. The Classic on the other hand is a bit more sturdy, plus cheaper, plus more space.

[Lemur]

I'm a fan of the iPod nano. Relatively cheap, no moving parts, almost impossible to damage. I've got one in the car and one on the stereo, and it doesn't even matter if the kids grab one. They can't break them.

-edit-

Stay away from the Zune if you value your sanity.

[Mikeus Caesar]

Or look outside the narrow view that most people have of MP3 players, i.e beyond Apple.

Creative make some pretty nifty stuff. I've got two players from them, for different uses. A small 1GB one, which combined with the rubbercase it came with is near indestructible, and perfect for when you're out and about, and a larger 60GB one which has my entire music collection on, a bunch of films and the first series of Daria, very useful for long journeys and when i'm on break at work. Not as indestructible, but still very resilient.

[Che Roriniho]

I'm also looking for one. Big HDD, Wi-Fi, and that's about it really. Looking at the Zune.

[Lemur]

Buy the Zune if you absolutely have to, but let me tell you that I know a guy who won a unit in a contest and he still wound up getting an iPod.

Remember, you're not just buying hardware; you're also buying into a software platform. And Microsoft's sucks large donkey eggs. iTunes is not the be-all end-all of music and video management, but it's lightyears better than anything Microsoft has put out.

[Puzz3D]

The Sony NWZ-A728BLK (8 MB flash memory, street price $170) will provide better sound quality than either the Zune 8 or iPod Touch. The player comes with good quality ear buds, and has a 5-band customizable equalizer with a 6th low bass boost slider. The battery life is over 30 hours when playing music. File transfer is performed by using drag & drop in Windows Explorer. I've had mine for about 6 months and it has worked flawlessly. One downside is that there is no protective case available for it.

[Incongruous]

I have an iPod touch, and it is indeed pretty sweet, It is way easier to navigate through somgs. It also has some really nifty features such as wireless internet, weather updates, google earth and youtube! since you are at uni, you should have free access to wireless internet, its sooo sweet.

[pevergreen]

series of Daria

I support the Creative comments, but just with that quote...If that is that cartoon TV show...An hero. Now.

[Ja'chyra]

I'll thirdeding, or whatever, the Creative comments, I have had two now with the only reason for buying the second one was that I ran out of space on the first.

I have the 30Gb Vision M and only use it for music, the battery life is good with one charge doing me a weeks worth of trips to work at 75mins each way, it's easy to use and the software for managing your music is straight forward.

I don't know about buying mp3 tracks as I get all of mine from err other places, Russia to be precise, mind you I haven't downloaded any in months so no idea if the site is even still active.

[Hosakawa Tito]

I'm currently in the market for an IPod for my 16 year old step-daughter. Looking to next year she will be taking some college level courses *at a local university* as part of her junior year of highschool curriculum, so WiFi will be available to her. I know nothing about Ipods or MP3 players, but I want to give her something more versatile than just a music player.

I have an iPod touch, and it is indeed pretty sweet, It is way easier to navigate through somgs. It also has some really nifty features such as wireless internet, weather updates, google earth and youtube! since you are at uni, you should have free access to wireless internet, its sooo sweet.

^^^This intrigues me, and is what I've been considering. From what I have been reading online an IPod Touch seems to have all the functions of an IPhone minus the phone. Is 16GB big enough? That's more space than my first PC had. How is the battery life? They state 36 hours between recharges, but is that accurate? Ease of use?

The price isn't cheap, $300, but that's not a real concern for me as long as you get the quality, versatility, and usefulness you're paying for.

[TevashSzat]

^^^This intrigues me, and is what I've been considering. From what I have been reading online an IPod Touch seems to have all the functions of an IPhone minus the phone. Is 16GB big enough? That's more space than my first PC had. How is the battery life? They state 36 hours between recharges, but is that accurate? Ease of use?

16 GB should be enough if she doesn't put lots of movies/tv shows/music videos on there. In terms of music, that should be enough to have easily 200+ hours worth of music (may be off a bit, it'll depend on sound quality and such), which should be enough if one has a sense of control and don't try to put every single half decent piece of music on it.

Video, on the other hand, takes up a ton of space. On my IPod, I have about 7 seasons or so worth of TV shows as well as some movies and they take up like 55 Gigs.

If she doesn't put too much video on it, the only other concern would be all the apps that are available. There are some really nice ones that are free so most people have a ton of apps on their touch, but they may take up alot of space (I don't know since I dont have one myself)

[Hosakawa Tito]

Thanks Tevash. Making decisions on keeping what's important *to you* and deleting what isn't is good training for entry into adulthood.