Robin

Looking at getting an ipod for my bday but am not sure which one to go for. I'm looking at eather the 4gb (1000 songs) Nano of the larger 30gb (7000 songs) Ipod that allows u to play videos.

anyone got experince of these ipods and which one would u recormend??

Cheers

Mr S1

iTrader: (2)

Mini mate. Got a Mini and a Nano and the Mini is harder wearing and holds alot more tracks.

ballin

iTrader: (1)

30gb is a bit excessive imo!

4gb will be more than enough for most, and you'll still end up skipping half the tracks on that anyway because no one likes 800 songs

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

The main differece is the storage device. Nano's are solid-state devices, like USB flash pens, and memory cards. They have no moving parts.

The Ipod Mini, normal Ipod and Ipod Video are all Hard Drive based - all have hard drives in them like a laptop or PC. This does leave them open to more sustainable damage than the Nano, but to be honest, you;d have to knock if pretty fucking hard to damage the internal HDD.

Nano's have been suffereing a bit with just dying for no reason - you hear about Nano's dying more than HDD based ipods. but many go for them for their size.

Biggest problem that plauges all the ipods is battery life. For such an expensive player that is so "advanced" over the competition, the battery life is atrocious. I have yet to meet someone who has one, whose ipod has got anywhere near the manufactures alleged battery life.

The other biggest let down, IMO, is iTunes. I hate it. It's fiddly, doesn't always do what you want it to (syncing your PC with your ipod and vice versa) and often crashes, and has been known to wipe out half your music collection!

Personally, I prefer solid-state non software-specific USB players. Simply plug em in the USB, windows picks em up as removeable storage devices and you drag n drop your MP3's onto/off of them. Simple, quick and easy.

JohnnyB

Well done thrush, get them to take there Ipod blinkers of.

The IRiver range is better speced and better quilaty, but somtimes more expensive.

Also look a Sony very nice design

Robin

thats why i'm sort of torn between the 2, i've heard about nano's just dieing for no reasion and that sort of makes me wanna go for the larger one but cant ever see my self filling 30gbs of music up. I mean my phone comes with itunes built in and that only holds 100 songs but with that being full thats still 5+ hours of music.

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

I dislike Sony for the same reasons as I dislike ipods - the fact you have to use Sony's SonicStage software to transfer from the PC to the mp3 player and vice versa.

Also, most Sony players are misleading. The reason you HAVE to use SonicStage is cos they don't actually play MP3/WMA files. They take the MP3/WMA files and while they are being tranferred to the Sony player, they are being re-encoded to ATRAC/ATRAC3 format (same format as Minidisc uses)....

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

It all depends on how much you compress the music. If you compress to low bit rate like 112kbs you will get THOUSANDS of songs on there. 64kbs will possibly get you into the tens of thousands on a 30gb pod. But if you encode at the higest bit rate you can, you will get less songs, but better quality.

POPEYE

very true thrushnuts
i liked the look of the sony players but didn't like the way you had to change to there own format, even though it would have been staight forward for me seeing as i have a vaio.
in the end i went and bought a samsung 4gig ,roughly the same size as a nano and cant fault it to be honest

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

PMSL @ Thrushnuts

I too liked the look of the Sony players, nearly bought this one;



Which is tiny and very nicely designed. But I don't like the software or the file transfer/re-encoding.

Even tho you have a Vaio tho Popster, it' wouldn't be any different to any other PC, as your Vaio will play stuff as MP3, so you still have to install SonicStage and transfer/re-encode like I would have to one my Dell.....

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

An afterthought Pops, I take it you have this player?



What is the display like when playing music? Or rather, when looking for music to play?

I mean, can you search by Artist and by Album etc. So if you look up by album, it shows you whats in that album and plays the entire album, but nothing else? Then you select another album to listen to, etc....

POPEYE

yes you can matt, can set it to play any album you want and only that one, it shows the list of songs in that album and a picture of the album itself, or you can search by artist and then it lists every thing you have on there

Rene

i got the mini Ipod great bit of kit

Thrush

iTrader: (1)

I might get the one you have then Pops, as it sounds like a good little player. Shame they don't do a solid state version tho.

Last q - does it need software to transfer music to and from it? Or is it simply plug in, it opens a window and you drag n drop?

James-W

i got a shuffle and a mini, shuffle is the most pointless thing ever though, and the mini fucked up a few times so had to be replaced

i would go for a nano if i were you as they are probably the best and who the fuck needs 30gb of music?

james

POPEYE

drag and drop matt, it comes with software which i installed but it really is only a manual so you dont need to install it.

JamesH

iTrader: (21)

to you and Thrush!

IRiver's are the nuts