160Gb iPod - Yes!

[Clunk]

Watch out, I think that there's a rural bylaw which allows farmers to shoot any city boy scrolling through his music collection on an iPod in the middle of a field.

And if there's not, there bloody well should be.

Ged orf moi larnd.

[j.o.s.h.1408]

Apple Computer announced today that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play high fidelity music in women's breast implants.

The iTit will cost between £499.00 and £699.00 depending on speaker size.

This is considered to be a major breakthrough because women have always complained about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them

lol

[TooNice]

Charlie boy - you don't need to take your entire music collection with you when you go to the chip shop. You just don't.

No matter how much you think you do - you don't.

I don't need to take my entire music collection with me to the chip shop.

Repeat that back to me, I want to make sure you understand.

Everyone has different 'needs' past the basic needs for survival (breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping, taking a ..., and, for the sake of preserving humanity, getting laid), and living in society (have a roof, some form of income etc.). Chances are, you have things that I'd find unnecessary.

I sure welcome 160GB of storage. It is well short of holding my music in lossless, not quite enough even in decent quality MP3, but it is getting close.

Still, the most important part remains audio quality, and I am curious whether they've made improvement over the quite respectable 5G iPods.

[Stewart]

But do you need your entire music collection with you?

On a long train journey, when you break out the portable DVD player, do you need every DVD \ BluRay disc with you?

Surely the market for music players that will hold everything you own is a pretty niche one?

I suppose its a status symbol - 160gb! Thats far too many to be needed! I'm crazy!

[Whiternoise]

I think the word "need" bit is unnecessary - perhaps "want" would be more applicable, there is no need to take any music whatsoever with you when you go anywhere. But if you want to take music with you, then why not take your entire collection? Say you're going on a three month holiday somewhere, you're not going to take a laptop in case it gets pinched, but an mp3 player will do the trick. There is no need for 160GB as such, my music collection is about 25GB tops, mostly encoded at 192kbs-320kbs (i don't particularly like flac), but if you wanted to put all your ripped DVD's, photo 'albums', etc. with the knowledge that you could keep adding to the device indefinitely, then fine.

Your example of a chip shop isn't really in context. No i wouldn't want my entire music collection in my pocket when i go to the chippy, in fact i wouldn't even want any mp3 player 128mb - 160GB as there wouldn't be any point. If i was going on a long plane journey, then i would consider taking my entire music/video/photo collection with me.

There is also the idea that we are moving into a generation where CD's are effectively obsolete. If you download all your music from the internet, then you may as well store it on an external device and you don't want to have to keep re shifting music to get the songs you want on to it.

Finally, slightly more topically, 160GB is quite enough to act as a decent size portable hard drive, you could back up just about all the things that are important to you as well as installing applications for when you're on the move. Given that the average OS is probably going to be under 10GB, you could feasibly use it as an alternative boot disk - perhaps if your main hard drive is up the creek, etc.

There are plenty of reasons why a massive hard drive could be worthwhile. Not that i'm saying i'd want to pay quite that much for it, but it would have it's uses.

EDIT: Wasn't there a plan to use iPod's onboard light aircraft to act as a mini black-box recorder?
EDIT2: http://lifestyle.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=8020 would be much more useful with 160GB, that could be used to store multiple real time instrument readings, etc.

[TooNice]

It is rather inconvenient to carry after DVD/BluRay disc don't you think? Then again, I have no "need" for a portable DVD player at all in the first place. I do however remember carrying all my GB games when I travelled on a long flight as a kid.

I am not aware of any 'status' attached to the size of MP3 players nor do I have no interest in such things - I am sure that there are more glamorous items I could acquire if that is a priority. I just know that like charleski, I have a large collection of audio, and would rather be able to listen to any track at any moment during a long-ish journey (especially when the destination may not have my music collection). Having said that, I am not saying that a HD based player is right for every situation. I would prefer a flash based player when I go to the gym. My mobile phone is fine if I am just going to the Tesco express 10 minutes down the road.

And if carrying everything is such a niche market, then I thank Apple/Archos for catering for this niche I belong to.

[finlay666]

I want an Archos 605

Given the choice I wouldn't buy another Archos unit again

Nice news for the ipod....shame iRiver haven't really become a big player, ogg support etc was their selling point for me before I bought an AV480

[TooNice]

I am pretty keen on iAudio. They were the first (after the Archos's larger players) to release 60GB players. And the SQ out of the headphone out were very nice. Shame about the kinda botched line-out though. They support Ogg out of the box too, though with Rockbox it's not a big issue IMO.

[charleski]

But do you need your entire music collection with you?

Sigh.

Yes.

If music isn't on my iPod, it'd not going to get listened to. But honestly this is a stupid discussion - if you're happy with a few Gb, fine, lucky you. I'm not, because I don't want to waste time deciding what to put on and what to leave off, OK?

[Stewart]

So you might go - this is a nice walk in the country side, however, I am unable to enjoy it, for lo do I only have an 80gb iPod, and this only allows me to carry a few thousand songs - I CAN NOT ENJOY A WALK IN THE WOODS WITHOUT HAVING FINGERTIP ACCESS TO MY ENTIRE MUSIC COLLECTION, I AM NOT AN ANIMAL, I AM A HUMAN BEING!

If so, great. Buy a 160gb iPod. Actually, buy 2.

[Howard]

Stew, no offence, but why do you care? Just let him buy whatever he bloody wants

I would love to have more than the 60GB my Creative player has, beacuse I have more than that music, but I can't really be arsed to spend the £300 necessary for the 100GB Archos

[Stewart]

Furry muff.

You don't need every song you own in your pocket on the bus though. Apple use drugs to make you think you do.

[Funkstar]

Furry muff.

You don't need every song you own in your pocket on the bus though. Apple use drugs to make you think you do.

No you are right you don't need all your music with you on the bus to work. But some of us want to take it all with us when we go away for any significant amount of time. Like 3 weeks in the US, two weeks offshore, 4 weeks in Egypt, etc.

When i'm just going into town to do a bit of shopping i just use my phone with 4gb. But then my AV500 is a little bulky

[Stewart]

Yes but thats just the drugs talking Funky. Fight it.

Apple - Laughably expensive solutions for problems you never had in the first place.

Jobs next tag line. And if he is really clever, he'll get the bird from Natural Born Killers to dance about a bit in front of some flashing colors.

Mmmmmm... flashing colors...

[Whiternoise]

I wish they'd drop their MacBook prices That would be really good

[TooNice]

Apple - Laughably expensive solutions for problems you never had in the first place.

Heh, come to think of it, I used to carry all my CDs with me when travelling over summer holidays many years ago. A CD player was hardly cheaper than an MP3 player back then, and you also had the inconvenience of having to shuffle through an oversized CD holder and have to be careful not to lose them. I don't see what's your problem - going by your logic, Intel/AMD must obviously drugging us into thinking we need multiple core and ever faster CPU