MP3 Players

Post by **Grimmie** » November 3rd, 2006, 9:27

Hello chaps! I don't venture here into the depths of the H&S forum too often, so be gentle with me.

Righto, well I need a new MP3 Player - At the moment I have the cheap and cheerful S-Media Player, which has a whopping 20 Gigs of space I'm still struggling to fill up. It's clunky, metal and doesn't look too bad - But it incompatable with every piece of organisational software apart from the one it came with - which is frankly ugly and difficult to use.

So, I need a new one.
It has to be reliable, have enough room to store lots of music and files, between 6 and 10 gig, or round abouts. Now, before I get ten people suggesting I get an iPod, and trying to convince me they are TEH BESTZ0RZ!!1, I simply don't want one, for a variety of reasons. I think they're ugly, and my boss is a raving mac fanboy who would gloat about this event for years to come.

I liked the look of the Zen series by creative, but heard they're prone to falling over after a year (by the many helpful amazon reviews out there). So.. Suggestions for an iPod alternative that preferably can be managed with piss-simple software like WMP or its kin.

kthx!

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » November 3rd, 2006, 9:35

Creative Zen Vision:M

Looks great, doesn't feel so small you could lose it, great battery life, plays every video format you can think of, and the MP3's can all be managed through Windows, WMP, or even alternative players such as MediaMonkey & WinAmp.

The screen quality is excellent, and the speakers that come with the device are actually rather good

You missed out one important fact, how much do you want to spend?

Post by **Grimmie** » November 3rd, 2006, 9:40

Anything from the £150 mark I suppose. I could stretch to £200 if it was the best MP3 Player I ever saw.

Have you had any problems with the Zen?
All the reviews I read claim it's very unreliable after a years usage.

Post by **Joose** » November 3rd, 2006, 9:42

Get an Ipod!

if you are dead set against them, zen is probably your best bet. However, from my experience with the micro, its somewhat unreliable (the mrs one crashes at regular intervals, requiring the battery to be taken out to horse a reboot), and the synch software is shite.

You can use WMP, but frankly, I find that to be shite with the zen too. Sometimes, unexpected things happen.

Also, the sound quality from the zen seems piss poor to me.

As far as the boss thing goes, I predict he will take the piss either way. You get an iPod, he gloats. You get a zen, he ridicules the slightly shit interface, the semi-regular crashes and the poor sound quality.

Post by **Grimmie** » November 3rd, 2006, 9:46

I think iPods are ugly little things.
Grimmie does not want an iPod.
Grimmie is Taurean and his opinion is fixed.

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » November 3rd, 2006, 10:06

I have an ipod, I quite like it, I wouldn't recommend it, iTunes makes my mind bleed.

Get a Creative one, for decent mp3 player brands you're probably limited to Apple, Creative or Sony.

Although I think there is a Phillips one which looks pretty good.

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » November 3rd, 2006, 10:10

I <3 my iPod and iTunes.

Post by **deject** » November 3rd, 2006, 11:08

get a Zune

friznit · Post by **friznit** » November 3rd, 2006, 11:15

Buy a trumpet and make your own tunes.

cashy · Post by **cashy** » November 3rd, 2006, 12:17

friznit wrote:Buy a trumpet and make your own tunes.

My experience with MP3 players include some £15 crap and my gigo-phoneage

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » November 3rd, 2006, 12:26

I haven't had mine a year yet, but I can honestly say I have never had a single problem with it, and the transfer thing is vastly improved over my previous "Creative Zen MX Extra".

I had to reset the thing only twice in 2 years usage, and it only takes a minute to do.

My new one however (the one that I got after my old one was nicked) is brilliant, and even someone here in work who has an Ipod already, admitted he would probably get one instead of the Ipod Video if he were to buy one now.

All the usb/mp3 fob type things are all badly made, and feel like shit so I'd avoid them to be honest.

Sony players are good, but almost every one needs to transfer mp3's using it's software into an OMA format, which is a pain in the ass.

There is no right or wrong when buying this sort of thing, it all boils down to personal preference.

There is only one reason I would buy an Ipod, and that's the huge variety of accessories that you can get for it, but other than that it is really overpriced compared to other similar spec pieces of kit.

With a product as successful as Ipod, and a high price point, everyone who owns one will automatically defend it regardless of its flaws, as they don't want to kid themselves that it's overpriced, and they can get a better alternative for the money.
But, at the same time they can laugh at me as an Ipod can pretty much be plugged into everything from a docking station, to a homeless persons anus.

wyrd · Post by **wyrd** » November 3rd, 2006, 12:38

i've just had a thought

are there any of these fancy photo mp3 players that support TWAIN capture?

it'd be really useful for offloading my camera whilst out and about

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » November 3rd, 2006, 12:47

I've got the camera adapter for my iPod, came in very useful for freeing up memory cards on holiday

pixie pie · Post by **pixie pie** » November 3rd, 2006, 21:10

I've been thinking about getting a new MP3 player recently (I've currently got the old iPod shuffle, which has served me extremely well) but I've been drawn into thinking a mobile phone/mp3 player combo might be a nice way to go, I know I'll never get all my music on it but I haven't had all my music on my mp3 player for well over a year now, and I quite like the way that's working out for me. I'd hate to jump in on this thread, but was wondering if any mobile phones are any good for mp3 players apart from the Sony Ericsson?

Also, WEY, you mentioned the Sony MP3 players, for one I think they are all of the rubbish, and you mentioned the OMA file format, if I recall correctly my friend has one, and he has them all in OMG file format, which I think is worth having the mp3 player for, just for that. (Might be an extremely contradictory sentence)

Post by **deject** » November 3rd, 2006, 21:14

I was only half-joking about the Zune, by the way. It actually looks like it could be awesome.

Post by **Joose** » November 3rd, 2006, 22:46

pixie pie wrote:I've been thinking about getting a new MP3 player recently (I've currently got the old iPod shuffle, which has served me extremely well) but I've been drawn into thinking a mobile phone/mp3 player combo might be a nice way to go, I know I'll never get all my music on it but I haven't had all my music on my mp3 player for well over a year now, and I quite like the way that's working out for me. I'd hate to jump in on this thread, but was wondering if any mobile phones are any good for mp3 players apart from the Sony Ericsson?

Actually, the mrs has just got the sony ericsson k800i, which kicks ass as a small memoried mp3 player.

However, as you said "apart from"; I use my Nokia N70 as an mp3 player occasionally, using the standard came-with-the-phone headphones. Ive only got a teeny card for it, which is a pain, but you can get reasonably big ones easy enough. Sound quality is chuffing brilliant, interface is reasonable, synching stuff to it was a bit odd, but not too painfull. Selling point for me though is that you dont miss phone calls due to listening to loud music, as it pauses the music automagically when you get a call.

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » November 4th, 2006, 0:23

Joose wrote:Selling point for me though is that you dont miss phone calls due to listening to loud music, as it pauses the music automagically when you get a call.

My SonyEricsson W300i does this too, and it am whin. It only comes with a 256MB card, but you can expand it up to 2GB at the moment I believe. Transferring music is a case of copy and paste, but it is a little slow over the USB cable I find. Basic playback buttons are on the outside of the clamshell which is handy, and I find the included headphones very usable too. Planning to get a bigger memory card for it for my bday or xmas I think.

pixie pie · Post by **pixie pie** » November 4th, 2006, 22:44

Lateralus wrote:
My SonyEricsson W300i does this too, and it am whin. It only comes with a 256MB card, but you can expand it up to 2GB at the moment I believe. Transferring music is a case of copy and paste, but it is a little slow over the USB cable I find. Basic playback buttons are on the outside of the clamshell which is handy, and I find the included headphones very usable too. Planning to get a bigger memory card for it for my bday or xmas I think.

I noticed the W800i had a cable that lets you plug in your own 3.5mm jack headphones (I really want this capability, because I have some ace headphones) does the W300i have this too?
I've not seen much about how the transferring works, is it simply dumping them into a folder on the phone, or do they give you some god-awful software you use?

Post by **FatherJack** » November 4th, 2006, 23:21

Woo Elephant Yeah wrote:Sony players are good, but almost every one needs to transfer mp3's using it's software into an OMA format, which is a pain in the ass.

Indeed. My NWA-1000 has pretty good sound through the supplied earphones (compared to my sister's nano at least), they look quite nice and have decent capacity, but that software is a fucking abortion.

The software that came with it refuses to convert anything of Oink-like quality, and the new release just CTDs - this on a Sony laptop that's only used for that and DVD stuffs.

Lateralus · Post by **Lateralus** » November 4th, 2006, 23:32

pixie pie wrote:
I noticed the W800i had a cable that lets you plug in your own 3.5mm jack headphones (I really want this capability, because I have some ace headphones) does the W300i have this too?
I've not seen much about how the transferring works, is it simply dumping them into a folder on the phone, or do they give you some god-awful software you use?

Yes - there is a cable for the w300i which plugs into the phone and runs to the mic for the hands-free which has the 3.5mm plug integrated into it. The included earphones just run on a short lead from there, but any will plug in.

When you plug it in, there is some weird software, but I just ignore it because the phone and the card appear as two new drives on My Computer so I just dump files to where I want them that way. Works fine, if a little slow.