Hivemind Knowledge Request!

[SamuelAWilkinson]

O wise and benevolent Hivemind, I seek your wisdom. And benevolence. I am in the market for a new personal music playing device priced in the region of £100 - £150. Any recommendations or dire warnings as to what to avoid?

[Richmond Clements]

We got the teenager in our lives one of these a month or so ago: http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electro ... oduct.html and for the price, I think it's rather good.

[Jim_Campbell]

O wise and benevolent Hivemind, I seek your wisdom. And benevolence. I am in the market for a new personal music playing device priced in the region of £100 - £150. Any recommendations or dire warnings as to what to avoid?

Based on my experience of using the iPhone as a media player, I'd recommend seeing if you can scrape together the extra £15 for an iPod Touch, which is a bit of a game-changer in this area ...

Cheers!

Jim

[Richmond Clements]

Oh man... I didn't realise the Touch was as cheap as that... must resist when backpay comes in next month...

[Jim_Campbell]

Oh man... I didn't realise the Touch was as cheap as that... must resist when backpay comes in next month...

If -- as is rumoured -- Apple announce cheaper and/or higher capacity iPhones at their big Developers' Conference tomorrow then you may well see a knock on to the Touch as well.

Cheers!

Jim

[Richmond Clements]

Oh man... I didn't realise the Touch was as cheap as that... must resist when backpay comes in next month...

If -- as is rumoured -- Apple announce cheaper and/or higher capacity iPhones at their big Developers' Conference tomorrow then you may well see a knock on to the Touch as well.

Cheers!

Jim

Dammit man! I've got Guitar Hero Metallica to buy too!

[Tweak72]

Creative Labs
this week only 32 gb for £149.99
//http://uk.europe.creative.com/shop/product.asp?category=10&subcategory=30&product=16999&ucmsid=true&nav=

or if you want to have wiFi lan the 16gb for £149.99
//http://uk.europe.creative.com/shop/product.asp?category=10&subcategory=30&product=17811&ucmsid=true&nav=

[TordelBack]

I'd endorse RAC's recommendation of the Sansa Fuze (which can be acquired pretty cheaply).  I bought the Old Man one for his Radio 4 Podcast needs, and in bringing it to readiness for him was so impressed that I bought one for myself, replacing my beloved but increasingly battery-incident-prone iRiver brick.  My recommendation would be to buy the 2GB-or-4GB version and slap an 8GB-or-16GB Micro SD in the side for storage, as budget dictates.  The necessary movie conversion software is proprietary and pretty clunky (BEWARE:  It will not run on a Mac.  At all), but I've found it works fine, and movies run really well if you can bear the small screen.  You'd need  a sticky screen cover too, as it scratches like nobody's business.

All that said, I covet the iTouch as I would my neighbour's ox.

[Tweak72]

[Jim_Campbell]

Well, that was a helpful, productive contribution to SamuelA's request, Tweak. Well done.

For the record, you might want to make sure that your prejudices are up to date and/or accurate before parading them around the place ...

1) There's no DRM on an iPod. Never has been. Any remaining tracks with DRM on the iTunes store (which is by no means necessary to use an iPod) have it because the record company wants it, which is actually the only reason there was any DRM in the first place.

2) Syncing ... it's an option. If you don't like it, turn it off. Are you suggesting that other players have a faster way of moving the data than USB2?

3) WTF indeed? I have never heard of anyone losing "all their music" for no reason, certainly not as a result of using an iPod. Care to clarify?

4) Oh, of course, because everyone else's MP3 players are made of biodegradable, vegetarian-friendly components, sustainably harvested from organic producers? Or is somebody making lithium-ion batteries that don't need disposing of carefully now?

Cheers

Jim

[Dandontdare]

I didn't realise Apple had scrapped DRM - so does that mean I can now export all my music from i-tunes and convert them into a format that other MP3 players use? I'm thinking of getting something bigger than my 8gb nano and feel like an apple-slave at the moment as all my music in their format.

[Jim_Campbell]

I didn't realise Apple had scrapped DRM - so does that mean I can now export all my music from i-tunes and convert them into a format that other MP3 players use?

No. All new iTunes purchases (AFAIK) are 'iTunes Plus' which means they're in unprotected AAC format. Anything you've already bought from iTunes needs to be upgraded to iTunes Plus (I believe) which costs about 20p per song. (Never done it, so I could be wrong about that.)

Any music player worth its salt should support AAC already, but there's a 'Convert to MP3' option under the 'Advanced' menu.

Anything else is in the same format it was in when you added it to your iTunes library or ripped it from CD, and never had any DRM in the first place.

(Note, however, that stripping the DRM from any existing iTunes track is as simple as burning the album to Audio (not data) CD and then reimporting it into iTunes. I believe there may be software floating about the internet that will remove the DRM for you. Try Googling DRM + Fairplay + Removal + iTunes, or similar, if you have a big library and burning stuff to audio is going to be a pain.)

Cheers

Jim

[Dandontdare]

(Note, however, that stripping the DRM from any existing iTunes track is as simple as burning the album to Audio

ohh, don't go there......I've been wrestling to burn CDs for ages now - it may be my disc drive, but i-tunes keeps trying to tell me that a blank CD is not a blank CD. If I try a blank DVD, it won't burn audio, just data files. All the advice I can find talks about updating all my drivers, but I find this daunting as I'm moderately tech-ignorant (eg not bad, but forty bloody two!)

[Jim_Campbell]

ohh, don't go there......

I have no experience with using it, but this would appear to do what you require.

Cheers

Jim

[Tweak72]

Well, that was a helpful, productive contribution to SamuelA's request, Tweak. Well done.

I would at this point draw my esteemed colleague's attention to the post I made before with links to options for possible MP3 player options.

For the record, you might want to make sure that your prejudices are up to date and/or accurate before parading them around the place ...

I was mealy following Apples recent examples of misrepresenting the truth
Such as last years advertising for the iphone
//http://www.macworld.co.uk/ipod-itunes/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=22558

and not quite being honest about the battery life up to and including the 5th gen ipods
//http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipod#Criticism

not nice when some one bends the truth is it?

personally I have never really cared for the insidious way that iTunes works. for example
Why do I need to pay 20p a track to upgrade iTunes plus to make my mp3s DRM free?
Why do I need to use what is basically a unofficial programme to crack the DRM for free? you might as well of stolen it in the first place.

Why not then buy you mp3s from some one else who doesn't make you arse about like you always seem you have to do when ever you upgrade your hardwear? Nokia for example right away let you keep the mp3 for ever on what ever you want. so if you change player next year you get to keep the track with out any cracking or buy the CD and rip it your self

i will admit ipods and itunes is slowly getting better but it is very slowly. the wonderful design and ease of use have always been spoilt with crap battery issues or lack of durability. I am personally not up for having to buy an mp3 player every 14 months. i bought a creative zen touch 40gb 24 hour battery 4 years ago and apart from a recent fault in the audio connector it still plays for nearly 24 hours. barring one or two people every one i know has replaced there ipod 2 or 3 times over the same period. always because it died. and that is exactly kind of thing puts me off