OT ipods

There. Get an iRiver.

Get the Rockbox firmware.

No, it sucks.

Have you ever owned an iPod and used iTunes for any length of time?

Have you ever owned an E36 and used it for any length of time :-) ?

No, but my brother has. It was the worst heap of s**te he's every had the misfortune to own - given his previous collection of cars, that's saying something.

No, it really doesn't. This has been very well documented.

Richard

I don't think I described them as friends.

Indeed tis true - although I have a H320 I'm considering getting an iPoo as well - just for the better accessory support.

Yes.

I'm now curious as to how you formed your opinion, then.

iTunes + iPod is by far the easiest and most logical way to organise and listen to your MP3s bar none.

Thanks for putting me straight. I thought it was a proprietary system that is designed to fit right into the pocket of the Apple fanboy, er I mean afficionado, who can't see the system constraints because he is blinded by the iLifestyle marketing light.

What's proprietory about MP3s?

Proprietory? AAC / MP3 is far from proprietory. You can use standard headphones. The UI is spot on. It's only shortcomings are lack of recording facilities and lack of radio - others also fail in same areas. Itunes is stable and reliable - I use it a lot even though I have neither a Mac nor an iPoo.

Simply using it for a few months.

Having to use their proprietary software to handle the essentially trivial task of copying MP3s from the PC disk to the iPod disk drove me mad. Trying to pull tracks off the iPod to other machines with said software drove me mad. Default settings that rip to a proprietary format drove me mad. Lack of Linux support drove me mad. Added to which the application is a resource and memory hog.

Deciding that I wanted to rip CDs in Ogg Vorbis rather than MP3 was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I can do more now than I could do then, easier than I could then.

Apple AAC is proprietary. Vanilla AAC and MP3 are patented and subject to licence fees. Sorry if I used the wrong term. MP3 sounds like my arse at less than 192K. Headphones are nothing to do with it.

Why make excuses for its lack of features? My iRiver has both, and a built-in mic.

Lots of things are stable and reliable. It's also bloated, having a massive system footprint, and unnecessary except if you have hardware that doesn't give you much choice i.e. an iPod. The standard thing people say is "it makes it so easy to organise and listen to my music" - what do these people think this basic, mundane computing task is? Rocket science? They have also generally not explored, let alone used, other ways of achieving the same result.

All mine are ripped at 320k - I can't stand low rate MP3.

heh - I'm not, but the vast majority of users don't need recording

If a basic mundane computing task is required that excludes a lot of the General Pubic from accessing it.

Well, if you consider a: that it works on Windows machines, and that new models of iPod don't even have Firewire any more... and I'm curious about the system constraints, since the only one I am aware of is the inability to handle Ogg files (or WMA, but if you want to talk about proprietary)...

And as for it sucking for music playback only, you clearly haven't been paying attention to the technical aspects of the iPod.

(It's not great for video, but it isn't half as complex to get video onto as people make out, and it does copy all the files from my digital camera onto the HD very quickly via the camera connector - and you show me ANY portable player that can display RAW formats if you consider that a limitation).

Richard

There's a headset for the new models with a radio thingy built in (incidentally - I think the radio issue is due to licensing, from something I was told recently. A product ships with a radio in in the US, but doesn't/won't here due to licensing fees - they may or may not disable it in firmware or remove it entirely. I urged them to keep it in the hardware so it could be enabled), and recording is definitely feasible on some models - don't know about the Video, but the 3rd/4th gen models can do it.

Richard

Owned a few Alfas as well? ; )

Fraser