Hi all,
I used to work for a small company that a central store of MP3s that everyone brought in or being that we are close to many shops ripped from CD bought at lunch.
The staff including me have no been taken over by a med-large company which has itself been taken over by a large pan-European (now a multi-national). At some point our network goes down and we become full members of the main network. Probably much less posting on here and certainly no storing of MP3s on my desktop or network.
Sooo, I need to get an MP3 player.
I have spent many years with minidisc players and I am used to having a nice remote which is handy in this winter weather where you don't want to be opening your jacket all the time.
Ideally my 'dream' player would be like this:
2"+ colour screen
14+ hour audio playback
2+ video playback
Mass-storage/explorer organisation (and other OS's)
File-tree browsing as I have alot of compilations and soundtracks and few 'downloaded' single tracks.
A good remote, possibly with LCD.
Not bothered about an online store as I buy CDs.
Reasonably nice looking and NOT white which I still see as a kitchen appliance colour (I don't hate Apple, just white).
And a minimum of 20gb tho 30GB+ preferred.
Obviously this is an insane spec as it is my kind of cherry pick of the various devices out there.
I looked at the iPod 60gb and X5 20gb yesterday. The iPod physically looked an felt more professionally designed than the X5, like someone had sat down and thought about everything. The X5 did seem slightly more feature rich, but the menu felt a bit random compared to other Dpad/joystick menus found in phones and the like.
I didn't like the iPod's management of MP3s it would mean butchering ID3 tags to make my current collection work with it. Also I tried iTunes last night and it felt less well organised than Sonic Stage 3 to me (tho not necessarily as slow and unreliable).
I considered the Samsung YH-J70 until I found you couldn't get the remote bundled in the Korean Yepp version (http://www.ebluesun.co.kr/preview_img/j70-review07.jpg). This seems weird as Samsung should be trying to support their players as few 3rd parties support anything, but the iPod.
So what does this leave me with? The iRiver H3XX is a brick and I will never ever by anything Creative ever again.
Am I just too finicky? Am I asking for the moon on a stick when a lollipop will do?
Anyway if by sheer chance there is a nice random make player hither to unknown to me please tell me or if you have personal experience of any of the players mentioned let me know.