Ask the interweb

[andrewducker]

My current MP3 player is fucked. I have to balance something heavy on the headphone jack or I get nothing but treble out of it - and even then it can be dodgy. Oh, and occasionally it decides to fast forward for no good reason.

So, what with a bonus arriving soon, I'm going to replace it. I want an 8GB model - and so I'm considering either an iPod Nano or a Sandisk Sansa. Both get good reviews, with the Sandisk having the twin advantages of not having to use iTunes to put music on it and being £25 cheaper, while having a user interface that's apparently nice, but not quite as nice as the iPod.

Anyone care to make any recommendations?

Comments

[ms-tek.livejournal.com]

Well there is an alternative to Itunes (a few actually).

I've heard this one is really good, but costs $25 (but maybe there is a torrent.....)

http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/ctable.php

[nuttyxander.livejournal.com]

The redchair stuff for the Rio Karma is rather nice.
(hopes Karma keeps lasting...)

[autopope.livejournal.com]

My iPod nano works really well with Amarok on KDE -- unless you want to use DRM-infested music from the iTunes music store there's really no need to use iTunes with an iPod. (Unless you're also locked into a proprietary OS, but that's another matter.)

[andrewducker]

And as tekwhore has pointed out, there are iTunes alternatives on Windows, so that's ok.

So it's down to the user interface, which is apparently nearly as good. I just need to find someone who's tried both!

[the-mendicant.livejournal.com]

Well I love my Creative Zen but don't ask me anything technical, its just not in my nature...

Allow me to enter the chat!

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

I've used both - I have a licence for Anapod which I bought last year and was running with it instead of iTunes. I did like it but I just drifted back to iTunes as I found it a much nice interface. I actually bought a multi-user licence so I'd be more than happy to let you register under my licence if you want to try it. Re Nanos try dixons online site - they're the cheapest by far just now. I'm almost tempted to get myself an 80Gb video one but find it hard to justify when my ipod photo is still going strong.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

you can tweak an IPod to act just like a hardrive player like any other. No, I don't have the links (I dislike everything about IPods) but I used to work with guy who had done it.

and 8Gb??? gah, I've maxed out my 40Gb IRiver (which they don't make any more, radio, recorder, line in and out sockets, shows photos, text...). I want an 80Gb *something* that's not primarily designed to show video - tricky (since I hate Ipods).

[dreema.livejournal.com]

I've got a 60gb cowon systems iaudio x5 , that's not bad, and not ipod, plus you can put 3rd party OS onto it, if you don't like the one it ships with.

I've not really played with an ipod so can't comment on the differences, and tbh, i just have the x5 on fully random when driving in the car.

The site I've linked to is based in Musselburgh, i don't know if they have a shop shop that you could go and play with the various models or not, but i've found them to be a fairly good online retailer

[avatar.livejournal.com]

You can use winamp to manage your ipod, albeit not quite as well as itunes (right-click, select option in menu gets tiring). That's all I use, unless I need to manage my podcasts, which is rare.

Been like that for a while.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

My players have always been of the straight "hard drive" type and replicate the file structure held on my PC (an alphabetical tree by artist name (no 'the')/album name.

e.g. the full path to the track "Highway to Hell" would be
A_M/A_G/A_D/A/ACDC/HighwayToHell/HighwayToHell.mp3

One day I'll get round to weighting it :-). I also have a folder called "Singles" for, er, singles.

Classical, compiliations and film soundtracks have their own folder. It al makes it easy to get to any track you want in only 7 clicks/presses/touches, no matter how many tracks you have.

Playlists (m3u) are just straight text files, which as someone said can be done in winamp (might have to fart about to remove the extent info, but the Archos and the IRiver both ignore it.). Or by getting a friendly programmer type to spend a whole half an hour to write you a tool.