iPOD or not?

[nvening]

not

Ipods break, very often, my mates U2 one broke in half!! The earphones also often break. The batterys are very low quality and have a short life when they are new and degrqade very quickly. Ipods are very attractive to muggers. The audio quality is not as good as others out there. It does not support many formats. Internet music has to be bought from itunes. No support for gapless playback. Chavy

Creative is the better choice over the video (30gb) (i just ordered one for my sister) and actually hold the patent to the ipod style interface so the ipod interface is not better (well i have to say the click wheel is very good, but i mean the 3 menu system thing)

Sonys are my fav, i own an nwa3000 and the sound is great, the quality is great, but the software is still crap, and thats the new connect player, but all i need to do is occasionally put some tracks on it so im fine with that.

[autopilot]

OGG would be nice but it's best feature - gapless playback - isn't available on any DAP.

It's available on the Rio Karma's and all Sony HD Series players (if ripping directly from CD to ATRAC). I am told the new Toshiba's have good gapless support too.

I'm not dissing Ipod's before any ipod owners get the hump, i think they are very nice. I'm just saying for me personally there are better options. If they could just sort a few little niggles out which they have let slip for far to long, i might consider buying one. Apple need to stop being such a pain in the ass with thier over restrictive DRM too. Now the itunes store, that i really hate with a passion.

[muddyfox470]

I was going to say my karma supports gapless ogg playback

i love my karma and it is still going strong; with the battery still working

the new toshibas look absolutely lush !!!

ian

[jamena]

imo the creative mp3 players look cheap next to an iPod and they break and go wrong (in my limited experience) far more easily. The one's I've seen were also considerably larger/fatter than their iPod counterparts. Main disadvantage of the (older) iPods is the battery life, which is nowhere near as good as some other players (official rating of 8 hours...maybe 6 in reality when new)

Oh and on the battery front ... ALL lithium ion batteries deteriorate with time, it is not a problem soley related to apple devices. The fact that they weren't easily replaceable was poor thinking ahead!

Go and look at some of the various players in a shop, see which ones you think you'd like to carry around with you in your pocket. Then buy a nano ...and some decent headphones! In black!

[Aaron]

It's available on the Rio Karma's and all Sony HD Series players (if ripping directly from CD to ATRAC). I am told the new Toshiba's have good gapless support too.

I thought Rio went bust and Sony's players only do gapless playabck with ATRAC? I was specifically talking about Ogg here.

A number of players support Ogg, but don't offer Ogg gapless playback. I assume because the processing power needed is too high.

[autopilot]

Sorry, i thought you meant gapless playback in general. I dont think it really matters that much what format is used, especially on a portable player at reasonable bitrates. I would be happy to use ATRAC or whatever. Actually, gapless playback can be achieved using most formats, including MP3. Thats the main reason i use OGG with my Squeezebox 3. FYI there are a couple of ways to achieve it with MP3 - Rip to one long file and reference the tracks using a CUE sheet, or just rip using the latest LAME encoder which will create the MP3's without the padding frames that cause the problem - just like OGG.

[directhex]

Sorry, i thought you meant gapless playback in general. I dont think it really matters that much what format is used, especially on a portable player at reasonable bitrates. I would be happy to use ATRAC or whatever. Actually, gapless playback can be achieved using most formats, including MP3. Thats the main reason i use OGG with my Squeezebox 3. FYI there are a couple of ways to achieve it with MP3 - Rip to one long file and reference the tracks using a CUE sheet, or just rip using the latest LAME encoder which will create the MP3's without the padding frames that cause the problem - just like OGG.

many players insert extra blank space well beyond the scope of frame padding though (the ipod is the worst offender)

[TooNice]

not

Ipods break, very often, my mates U2 one broke in half!! The earphones also often break. The batterys are very low quality and have a short life when they are new and degrqade very quickly. Ipods are very attractive to muggers. The audio quality is not as good as others out there. It does not support many formats. Internet music has to be bought from itunes. No support for gapless playback. Chavy

Creative is the better choice over the video (30gb) (i just ordered one for my sister) and actually hold the patent to the ipod style interface so the ipod interface is not better (well i have to say the click wheel is very good, but i mean the 3 menu system thing)

Sonys are my fav, i own an nwa3000 and the sound is great, the quality is great, but the software is still crap, and thats the new connect player, but all i need to do is occasionally put some tracks on it so im fine with that.

Pretty one sided I'd say...
I doubt that iPod breaks significantly more than other players in %. I've seen more report of bad Karmas (regretfully, I was quite set for that player at one time) than bad iPods. Considering the amount of iPods out there, it doesn't surprise me that there -might- be more reports of bad iPods than Sony/Creative/iRiver/etc in absolute numbers. The battery I will say isn't the iPods strengths. Then again, I have friends still happy with their first set of battery on a 3rd gen iPod.
Most MP3 players are attractive to muggers if you leave them around
The trick is not to show it off like a fashion accessory, nor use the stock earbuds (honestly, you aren't getting the most out of *any* of those players using stock earbuds anyway).

As for format, in terms of music, lets see...
Sony: ATRAC, MP3
Apple: AAC, ALAC, MP3
iAudio: WMA, OGG, FLAC
iRiver: WMA/ASF, OGG, MP3
Creative: WMA, MP3

IMO, it doesn't lose against the competitors IMO (unless you highly value WMA/OGG). Of the above, I favor the iAudio, simply because I normally encode to FLAC. But unlike most competitors (minus iAudio, and the now defunct Karma), it support lossless. Sure you get Wav with the other players, but navigating wav files is not exactly entertaining

For video, it isn't the best, nor the worse (beat the iAudio). I am not that interested in video playback anyway. What got my attention to the 5G iPod however is the sound quality. Apple have improved the SQ of their product over the years, it is reflected in audio enthusiast sites like head-fi. Looking at the older thread, the iPod was clearly -not- a favored product. But nowadays, it is more or less reference.
(Oh yea, the Shuffle is not unfrequently seen as having the best SQ straight out of the headphone out amongst the portable players out there.. I've never tried it since I don't really need a small flash players now, but it goes to say that "Apple = inferior sound quality" is most likely not true anymore).

[j.o.s.h.1408]

My wife has a ipod nano and its ace! smaller than most phones and the sound quality is excellent!!!!!!!!!!!

[nvening]

Well the majority of ipod owners i know have had problems, even if it it just very bad battery. Also sony supports WMA as well.

[TooNice]

... but I must wonder who uses WMA. It is hardly groundbreaking, even compared to a modern LAME MP3 codec.

[Merlin4458]

Its a bit like AMD vs INTEL

Im a creative fan, the sound quality is better imo, and battery life is good, and the guy next to oyou wont have the same one, and the lady behind u wont have a pink version,

[Kaine (AoD)]

and the lady behind u wont have a pink version,

hahaha well said

[hitman67]

I'd say not as I'm buying a 20gb MP3 Player for £115, which seems a lot better money than a lot of the Ipods go for. Also it has an FM Radio.

Basically, it's a society today where everyone has to look good, except me, as I purley couldn't give a toss. The Ipods look good so everyone has to have one, while some very good alternatives get left out as a result.

[Alex]

Do any of these have the ability to download pics off a digital camera, so you could take thousands of photos on holiday without having to have a PC with you?

[5lab]

the zen vision has that built in, the ipod (i believe) you can get a card reader accessory thingy for it

or just get a bigger mem card - 2 gig is good for ~900 photos.. if you get more than that on an average hol start being more picky