I'm just wondering. I think I want to be semi-conservative and say that no more than 250 american dollars is what I'm looking at to spend at most. I will probably get it in the summer, but I'm making plans.

Thanks,

Jared

Are iPods really proprietary?

Well, it somewhat depends on what you want to do. I got myself a protable CD/MP3 player so I could play both normal CD's and then also just burn CD's with a bunch of MP3's on it and both work on those players. The upside is that you get both normal CD's and MP3 CD's to play on one protable player. The downside is that CD's can only store 700 MB worth of MP3's max.
These are very reasonablly priced, and you can get a very good one for under $100.

I wouldn't go for the iPod. Do some research on Sony and iRiver mp3 players. Try epinions.com to find exactly what you're looking for in your price range.

http://www.epinions.com/MP3_and_Digital_Media_Players

There, I got you started.
-Sunny

I don't understand all the anti-iPod bias on this board. Download iTunes, copy some of your cds into it and play around with it. If you like iTunes, you'll love iPods, even if you don't buy any music from the iTunes Music Store.

Dell DJ is great or so I've heard.

Yeh. There are probably 3 or 4 threads on this topic already.

i love my ipod, though i havent tried the new small one...

i wouldnt say an ipod is propriatary, but it uses propriatory software...

you can still play other files types like mp3 etc...

i love my ipod

love my ipod too.

I got myself a 512MB shuffle just for the gym... its perfect for that.

I love my Dell DJ, you can get it for less than you would an Ipod and still get the same functionality and everything.

Uhh.. what?


Can I play my ogg or flac files on it? Both of which are open-source file types, unlike apple's file formats or the mp3 format which are proprietary formats. The answer is no. In fact, even after Real Networks found a way to get its own music files to play on the iPod, Apple came back and updated the iPod software so that these files would no longer play.

Anyway, I don't really have an opinion or recommendation about digital music players, but the iPod/iTunes is by far the most closed and monopolistic system out there. It's really a shame, but it's very indicative of the way Apple plays. Everybody complains about how Microsoft is a monopoly, and maybe they are, but suffice to say that if Apple had the market share that Microsoft has, they would be a hundred times worse - if only because they can have a monopoly on both the software and the hardware, and are vehement about being as closed as possible.

So yeah, just wanted to post some actual facts. And since I'm railing on Apple, I might as well point out that the iTunes software was bought, not created, by Apple. Okay, rant over. heh.

lyra 1080 is where its at

Rio Karma (20 Gig).... it plays every type of file that I've thrown at it. Ogg, flac, wma, lame encoded mp3's, etc. I've had mine over a year now and I can't imagine not having it!

ipod is probably the simplest to use and best designed audio player out there. However, it is overpriced and apple doesn't upgrade much on it. It's completely closed source and it's unlikely you'll see any firmware modifications to support other formats or do other stuff. Then you look at something like the iriver, where people are playing gameboy games on it.

if all you've got are mp3s and a few other scattered formats, and you don't mind paying a little extra for convenience, it's fine. itunes will convert the stuff to aac for you, and once you get your music collection set up, you rarely have to worry about it.

I've played with the dell dj, the iriver, rio karma, and nomad zen. i don't think they're as easy to use, especially in a one-handed "wheres that song i want to hear right now" way.

That doesn't change the fact that iTunes is awesome.

and i think the fact that apple didn't create the program is true for a lot of the software they use.

I don't think Apple buying out SoundJam and it's developers to create iTunes is much different than what many other companies do and have done in the past. Microsoft was founded on MS-DOS, afterall. I would be interested in reading any articles you have on this, but as far as I know, Apple hired the SoundJam crew and had them develop iTunes, they didn't just buy the program as a finished product.

Anyway, if you have the time, I think this is an interesting read:
http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

It's the story of Audion, which was one of the top MP3 players for Macs before Apple introduced iTunes. Steve Jobs originally wanted these guys to develop iTunes, but they were tied up in negotiations with AOL at the time.

Well, SoundJam did already have a SoundJam MP application put together when they were bought by Apple. I don't think the idea that Apple bought them "to develop iTunes" is that accurate, it's more like Apple purchased the SoundJam application/developers and expanded on it. Here's a pretty good look at one fan's view of the whole thing, from SoundJam to iTunes 2: http://www.macopz.com/rumors/itunes2/

And yes, I grant you that many companies do this (i.e. Microsoft and its recent Anti-Sypware app). It just bugs me when people talk about things like how innovative Apple is and then use iTunes as an example of this.