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MP3 players
I would like to dedicate this thread to the discussion of mp3 players. I have been using them since 2006 and they are, in my mind, one of the best technical innovations of the last decade. Since I gave up on talk radio, podcasts are mostly what I listen to and good podcast support can practically make or break a player for me. I also am the go to guy on mp3 players at the Best Buy I work at. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about them, but I am always happy to learn about things I do not know, so if you know of an awesome player that everyone should check out, please do post about it here. To start, I will list some of my favorite mp3 players that I have used and why.
Sansa Clip 2 gig - this was my first player with an internal battery and the screen was really bright. It didn't have a dedicated podcast section at first, but it did eventually get one through firmware updates and then this puppy really got good. Being able to listen to a podcast, then in the middle of it go and play some music, then go back to my podcast just where I was blew my mind.
Zune 30 gig - Before I got this, I had tried a second gen 8 gig Zune and returned it to the store, I liked the player but I did not like the software at the time. I got my 30 gig second hand from a friend of my brother, and by this point(last summer) the software had improved a great deal, and having a larger than 8 gig player with a big screen was absolutely awesome to me. At the time I was using the Sony E series player of what is now the last generation, and while it played video the screen was not big enough and it was picky about what it would play. The Zune is a little picky about .mp4s and .avis once they added the avi support, but what I love about the video support on the Zune is that the software will take a video and convert it into a Zune compatible format if the software can play it. The screen is big and 4:3 which is okay because I watch a lot of Japanese wrestling which is/was mostly recorded in 4:3, even today it seems. It's a bit too small and a bit too low res to really enjoy a video podcast that uses smaller fonts, though. I actually own two now, and sadly I think they are both on their way out, but I cannot complain as both of them were second hand and have gotten much longer than the expected life of an average player.
Sansa Clip + 4 gig - I initially did not like the new design of the Clip + because I quite enjoyed the power/hold switch on the old Clip and the home button, I believe, was on the top of the originals, whereas this has it on the front of the player. I got one as a secondary player to go with my Zune. It is, in my opinion, the best pure music playing mp3 player on the market. It supports mp3, wma, ogg, and flac(and possibly others I don't recall), has a very simple, functional design, and as with other recent Sansa mp3 players, it has a micro SD slot for adding memory, which really every player should do, but it is sadly rare in the mp3 player world.
I have used other players, including iPods, and I will offer my opinions on them later, but this post is already rather big and I don't want to make it bigger.
Sansa Clip 2 gig - this was my first player with an internal battery and the screen was really bright. It didn't have a dedicated podcast section at first, but it did eventually get one through firmware updates and then this puppy really got good. Being able to listen to a podcast, then in the middle of it go and play some music, then go back to my podcast just where I was blew my mind.
Zune 30 gig - Before I got this, I had tried a second gen 8 gig Zune and returned it to the store, I liked the player but I did not like the software at the time. I got my 30 gig second hand from a friend of my brother, and by this point(last summer) the software had improved a great deal, and having a larger than 8 gig player with a big screen was absolutely awesome to me. At the time I was using the Sony E series player of what is now the last generation, and while it played video the screen was not big enough and it was picky about what it would play. The Zune is a little picky about .mp4s and .avis once they added the avi support, but what I love about the video support on the Zune is that the software will take a video and convert it into a Zune compatible format if the software can play it. The screen is big and 4:3 which is okay because I watch a lot of Japanese wrestling which is/was mostly recorded in 4:3, even today it seems. It's a bit too small and a bit too low res to really enjoy a video podcast that uses smaller fonts, though. I actually own two now, and sadly I think they are both on their way out, but I cannot complain as both of them were second hand and have gotten much longer than the expected life of an average player.
Sansa Clip + 4 gig - I initially did not like the new design of the Clip + because I quite enjoyed the power/hold switch on the old Clip and the home button, I believe, was on the top of the originals, whereas this has it on the front of the player. I got one as a secondary player to go with my Zune. It is, in my opinion, the best pure music playing mp3 player on the market. It supports mp3, wma, ogg, and flac(and possibly others I don't recall), has a very simple, functional design, and as with other recent Sansa mp3 players, it has a micro SD slot for adding memory, which really every player should do, but it is sadly rare in the mp3 player world.
I have used other players, including iPods, and I will offer my opinions on them later, but this post is already rather big and I don't want to make it bigger.
Comments
However, my car interfaces very nicely with the iPod, so when it came time for a new player, I jumped onto the Apple boat.
I also used to use a...Creative Labs Jukebox, I think it was. It was an older high-capcity (60 GB) player roughly the size of a Walkman. Man, I loved that thing.
And before you mention the iPod Classic, I have tried the iPod classic, and I do not like it. I will elaborate on my issues with iPods later.
First one lasted for a long ass time, second one had a hard drive failure within 6 months, and I never bothered to replace it because I found that I liked using the PSP better anyway. The iPod Touch is a very recent purchase, and it's mostly for development purposes.
i enjoy the small size because it's more portable, lighter..
i clip it on my shirt collar, plug in some earphones with a short cable, and i'm ready to go.
as nice as a small touchscreen music playing restaurant owning computer (read: electronic leash to netherspace) might be,
i probably won't convert from my nokia brick and sansa clip until the battery life is comparable.
I've had various since, like a Sony thing and an ipod shuffle. Now I have a ipod touch 32Gb and it's great. Don't see myself upgrading for a while yet.
My second was a Creative Zen Micro, which was similar to the Nano, except it had no FM and could be removed from the battery portion and plugged straight into a usb port.
My third was a Sandisk Sansa e250, which had 2gb internal memory and a MicroSD Slot. This is currently being used as my car MP3 player.
I'm very much looking into getting a Zune.
My parents got me my first player with out me even asking for one. I got it for Christmas and the summer before I had $700 worth of CDs stolen so this was a way to bring my collection with me.
I used it a lot and heavy. The lock button eventually gave out and it would die frequently. I wanted to get another Creative but I found that they did not make hard drive based players any more. I had been working in Electronics since I got out of High School and knew I definitely didn't want an iPod. a friend had a Zune and I was sold.
Christmas 2008 my parents got me a Zune 8gb which I returned and Got a Zune 120. I LOVE my zune. and My Zune Pass is awesome and i love it. Hopefully by the time I need to upgrade again the Zune HD will have a much bigger capacity
Edit: The screenshots page shows it detecting duplicates.
For moving music from the iPod TO he computer, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Evil closed source Apple strikes again.
I started out with a 64 meg black crappy mp3 player a few years back with a 128meg SD card in it which I used until it basically fell apart. Then I graduated to a red (sandisk maybe?) player with a 1 gig sd card.Then I got a Zune 30 which I still currently use. I also use a pink 2 gig sansa clip I picked up basically new in a $6 bag of random electronics at goodwill a year ago.
I need a new, non-Apple music player. I don't need a crazy number of features, just playing a variety of file formats and decent syncing features is fine. I don't even need perfect podcast functionality, since I don't listen to many podcasts anymore. The key feature that I absolutely need, however, is space. I would say I need 60GB, minimum. 40GB or so is technically a possibility, but I would need other details (such as price, other features I may like, etc) to justify that. Anybody have some good recommendations?
Lately, I've taken to just using the most recent 4 months' worth of new releases. I have to get better about staying on top of it, though.