make life difficult for yourself? Get an iPod!

As far as I'm aware the only MP3 players with that capacity these days are the iPod and the Zune, unless you go for a larger media tablet thing from Archos. The rest use flash memory and therefore have restricted capacities.

had my 30gb ipod for 3 years and its good. The two others in my family have them too and we can succesfully update all 3 using itunes. Get some decent headphones - the ones supplied by apple are crap!

yet.

It's so much nicer than anything else around. Go for it, you'll be glad you did. All my ipods have been fine.

I've had an 80Gb model for about four years with no problems and prior to that one of the early 40Gb models (I'm an 'early adopter'). If you want something smaller, the iPod Touch gives you the capability to access the web over wifi and you can download some great applications.

I've just checked on the 'bay 120gb pods for £150 very, very tempting.

You've certainly cleared up some myths and misinformation for me.

And those docking doo-dahs. Yes even Mrs C likes the look of those

don't go with the herd with their Ipods.
how about a n96 nokia phone which you might get "free" with your contract it's got only 32 gb memory admitedly but they sound good syncronise easily and work with variety of formats also make phone calls and takes pictures!
http://www.nokia.co.uk/find-products/all-phones/nokia-n96/features

And an Ipod and the annoying thing is that the Zen is a much better machine in my opinion.But not enough storage.

I had to check, and Google tells me I'm right.

Out of the 110,000,000 sites on the web, and throughout the entire history of the internet, that particular phrase has only ever been uttered once: on this very page.

Another ipod bugbear was the battery life of early models (ie my 3G 40gb). Well, mine finally gave out a couple of weeks ago and tempted though with new kit I was the pod itself was fine, just not holding any charge. £12.99 recorded delivery saw us with a new, improved life battery. Fitting it took 20 mins following a step by step video on the company's site. I'm sure other battery providers are cool too, and they clearly do these for more recent models too, so you don't need to worry about the battery going and being unreplacable. Google your chosen model and replacement battery if you want to be doubly sure For the tech-afraid you can send your model of rec del and they will fit a new battery for you for around £30.
Oh, and no loss of hard drive data in the process either.
Of course do not do this while you have a warranty...

but I honestly love it. Couldn't do without it. I've got a 120gb classic and it's given me so much freedom in my listening. Go with the pro-vote and don't use the accompanying earphones. Get Senheiser CX300 in ear jobs and life will never be the same again. Ignore the Zimm who doesn't like them. He dosen't need to.

I wonder how many people have thought their ipod too quiet and rather disappointing sonically, and have stuck with the dreadful ones apple bundle in. This was an issue right from the start and uncharacteristic of apple not to make some progress on.

You're getting a 120gb ipod and there will be no more arguments about it.

you have to bear in mind that there a roughly a squillion iPods in use, so you are gonna hear lots of stories about them failing. It stands to reason.
The mantra is clear - BACK IT UP - BACK IT UP - BACK IT UP!
Everything fails eventually.

Go with an iPod my friend - you wont regret it.

ps.
Depending on your requirements, you may want to wait a couple of weeks. Apple are gonna update the whole iPod range on September 9th.
"The event is likely to bring us new iPods with GPS and camera capabilities. We're also expecting to see the 16/32/64GB iPod Touch varieties with $199/$299/$399 price points."
http://9to5mac.com/September-apple-event-2009

for a couple of weeks - the new models will probably be out in September. I'm hoping for bigger memory (160GB+), which oddly, given the move to video on iPods, doesn't seemed to be the way things are moving.

In about three weeks Apple are due to announce iPod updates as they do every September. I'd wait and see what they announce before you splash out. It may be that something more tempting is announced, or if not, the older models may be got cheaper.

for the same reason; every second car on the M4 is a bloody Audi.

I had an iPod Nano for the past two or three years until the battery failed. That cost me 100 quid at the time, the iPod Classic with 120 gigs replaced it earlier this year for the princely sum of £165 from Amazon. And it is lovely. 20,000 songs on it right now, still with about 20 gigs left to fill. Got some Sennheiser headphones at the weekend and the whole thing sounds beautiful. And all the speaker dock thingys are great, and portable. We have our music systems packed away, just a speaker dock that moves from room to room and sounds great to my ears.

Even got some of the Mondo mixes on and they sound great on it!! And as for iTunes, you can set what it converts tracks you burn to. My iTunes is set for MP3, and quite high quality.

(If you have ever downloaded, for sample purposes only, a track from my blog, that's an MP3 normally pulled straight from the iTunes, dumped on the desktop and uploaded to my filestore. It's pretty simple)

well is enough for this person

I am very late to iPodness although a long time Apple user, my 8Gig tOuch is just perfect for me, it has games, apps, vids as well as music - it's lovely

BTW, I'm suffering withdrawl symptoms - no WordCast again!

There are a lot of myths about the iPod.

For example:
1. Poor battery life
2. You have to convert your collection to AAC
3. You can only buy from iTunes
4. It is somehow difficult to sync the same library to more than one device
...etc.

The truth of the iPod is that it is well-designed, just works when you plug it in, is very simple to use, and has a mass of accessories designed for it. Also true is that the default headphones are very poor.

After three years of constant, heavy usage, my first iPod died due to a hard disk fault, after I dropped it. I'd used it for an average of four hours a day, every day for this period. The battery was still managing 8 hours charge. I reckon I got extremely good value for money, and don't reckon I've ever used a gadget this much.

A modern design classic.

Hold off for a couple of years and make sure they're not just a fad.

(but I don't care) the reason people lose their entire music collection is because they don't back it up. And whether you're a Windows / OSX / Linux user, it's your failure to do this most elementary of tasks that will totally mess you up. But then there's a lot of people who need to be burnt to realise that fire hurts...

I think the iPod is a superb device, pretty much whatever model, and Apple deserve a lot of praise for making it platform agnostic. However, I do sympathise with the battery life problem. My iPod touch has never come near to hitting a claimed 36 hour playback life. But I wouldn't change it for anything on the market.

Buy an iPod. If your music disappears - and I believe that could happen on other mp3 players - then you should have backed it up.

I'm on my third iPod. My original 30Gb had a ridiculously short battery life. But I've since had an 80Gb 5th gen and a 120Gb 6th gen. I need the large capacity because I use Apple lossless files which are somewhat bigger. I haven't had any problems with my later generation iPod and think that although there is the issue that everyone has one, it also means that the accessory possibilities are endless. I also use a Graham Slee Voyager amp which enhances the sound no end (one thing about iPod is that the later generation have worse sound than the earlier ones. There has been a 160 GB before but it had so many problems that Apple withdrew it, perhaps they've sorted it out now. So get an iPod - but wait to see what's coming out in September.

Thanks for all the comments, exactly the the sort of crunchy feedback and sound advice I've been after. The 120gb Classic seems to be exactly I need.

One last question though - playlisting.

A key feature of my trusty ol' Zen is the ability to resequence tracks within a playlist, on the player, and on the the fly.

It's a function that's invaluable to me as I make mixes and for my own site and guest mixes around the net. I've also used it to compile music for several parties, a couple of podcasts, work out set lists for very occasional DJ stints and plan the music for our wedding from the service to the first dance.

Creative pulled this feature after the Zen, which is why I've stuck with mine.

But can you do this on a pod? Throw tracks into a playlist and resequence the order while on the move?

I've resisted the ipod invasion for much the same reasons as yourself, but I have to say that I'm almost embarassed these days when I pull out my chunky old 60gb Zen Vision. It's actually only 2 years old but in comparison to those sleek little ipods it feels like I might as well be brandishing an 80's brick-phone.

But my impression is still that the sound and the playlist function are better. Is this not still the case? I'm a little upset that there's nothing else out there to improve upon it - whither all the options of couple of years ago? And why aren't Creative trying to target those of us who might want to upgrade?

Make them on the go, on the tube; edit or resequence them on the computer when you get home. Not sure if you can resequence on the move, though.

....on which I keep my favourite music. I feel no need to carry everything I have around with me....then again, I only use mine when out walking or cutting grass etc. I don't have to commute.

What I like about this model is that it has a SD card slot built in. I bought 3 x 8Gb SD cards before going on holiday recently and filled one with music videos, one with audiobooks and the last with new music. So, technically, it can be used to store as much data as I like.

Had a 20Gb Creative Zen Touch. Still believe it was better than the iPod currently available at that time (Feb 2005).

Got sick of the small hard drive capacity.

Borrowed someone's iPod Classic for an hour to test it. Sounded fine to me and to two others who I asked to check the sound quality.

I ordered the 80Gb Classic in April 2008. Then I realised that even though I struggled to imagine filling it, I might still kick myself a year later. So I cancelled the 80Gb and ordered the 160Gb model. Within about two months I was over the 80Gb limit.

Close to a year and a half later I'm still using it everyday for about three hours. Never once crashed on me or gave me problems of note. Just treat it like a princess that will throw a wobbly if you don't treat her right and it will always work.

One problem is that once in a while it will suddenly pause in the middle of a song for a second before continuing. I assume it has run out of cache memory and is taking a second to refill it. It's irritating and a stupid design flaw. One of the great strengths of music is that it flows so this pause is very disruptive. I have since accepted the flaw and have embraced it as a "good" thing. I like the fact that it wakes me up and focuses my attention on the music if I've been drifting away. Question: I had one album in Apple Lossless and it always had that one second pause every time I listened to it; anyone know if Lossless is a cache problem for the Classic?

The sound might be slightly flat, less 3D, than my Creative Zen (which still works and is always plugged up to my sound system with a 3.5mm jack). It sounds good, but maybe has a glacial quality to it that makes things sound very expensive. I have no issues with it. I use Sennheiser CX-300 headphones.

To sum up, the iPod is the best option and I wouldn't buy a music player from any other company now. Also they are currently the only hard drive players on the UK market, and they might be discontinued this September (I've heard that Apple are very hardcore and will discontinue profitable products in the name of innovation).

------------------------

How On The Go works - Hold the centre button down on the artist/album/song for one second and it will flash indicating that it has been added to a On The Go playlist. Repeat until you have finished selecting the content of the playlist.

As far as I'm aware On The Go cannot add songs to the list of songs that you are currently listening to. It's fiddly and inflexible in comparison to the Creative Zen Touch. It does work though and I found it easy to give up some old listening habits like queuing up my next album in advance.

have a look at these

bought for my daughter - sound great and of course rca plugs for other inputs

http://www.aktimate.com/

I don't really see the point of having all your music with you all the time.

And if you do - the need to have it backed up is particularly critical.

Ipod is simply a means to an end for me - listening to music/podcasts - whilst travelling or discretely when The Light is watching something about lives of misery or re-designing suburban houses to become things of infinite light and space.

If you are a DJ or a musician I can see why you may need more functionality. But I am not.

I don't watch videos on the move except on long plane journeys when the selection available is more than sufficient - and indeed with youngish kids the only time I see anything new.

So for me, my little 8GB Nano is more than sufficient. I love the way it looks and feels too. Frankly, I get a small techo-erotic frisson every time I use it.

"I don't really see the point of having all your music with you all the time"

Really? That's the best thing about it. Especially on holidays.

....and one of the things I *liked* about it was that it didn't have so much storage space. I don't want all my music with me all the time, any more than I want all my furniture with me all the time, or even, in the nicest possible way, my family with me all the time.

This year we went on the same holiday as we've been on for the last few summers. Each summer we take less stuff (clothes, toys, amusements etc) and each summer we come back thinking we took too much. I think it's a modern disease, this desire to carry everything with you.

If I thought even 10 years ago I could carry my entire record collection around with me in a thing the size of a fag packet I'd never have believed it. But it's what I'd always wanted.

Perhaps it comes from being shipped from pillar to post - it meant I had to travel light and never had all my records with me in any one place. Now I do.

But that's just me. However, I still don't understand why, as a music fan, you wouldn't want all your music with at any one time.

Used to have a 60GB Zen until I lost sound on one channel. 3 years service, quite happy, but by then Creative only suuplied a 30GB machine. So reluctantly I went to an 80GB iPod 2.5 years ago and never had a problem. We now have 4 iPods running in the house from the same library and the latest Nano is the only one we have had trouble with. As it was bought 09/2008 I sent it back last week and a new one is one the way with the personalized engraving replicated. No cost, quibble or problem, UPS collection and TNT delivery all at Apple's expense. Cannot complain.

Sound was better on the Creative but with good isolating buds and sensible volume limits it is not too noticable.

Plus the immense amount of Podcasts available so easily through iTunes makes for a better experience than the limited Creative versions.

Maybe I am just paranoid... all my music files (24,000+) are stored on a 500gb Lacie external hardrive, and that plus all my jpegs (3-4,000) photos are backed up to a portable external Passport hard drive.

I have a 120gb iPod that I am very happy with, especially once I learned how to reset it. I love the 'genius' feature. Everytime I add music I will always "update my genius" so that when I do mixes they stay current to recent uploads.

As for the sound of mp3's being lost, look at all the space gained!! I have a pair of Bose Companion II speakers and the iPod plugs directly into the speaker, no dock, no fuss, no mess. I did the big stereo with tower speakers 30 years ago and to be honest the 'pure sound of vinyl' was only good until someone scratched the surface or the weather got humid, and when the music was played LOUD.

Having 23,000 songs sitting on my bookshelf with the opportunity to play any song within seconds is priceless!!

paranoid.

• my new car had an input
• I was fed up with CD-Rs all over the place
but
• mainly The Wordcast, honest, not being sucky or owt it's a perfect companion on a wet Tuesday and it's so nice to have them all stored in one handy to access place

I do listen to music but I like to hear old geezers ranting and raving about things that don't really matter.

thank you (the) Word

PS. more Mark Ellen and Andrew Harrison pls
no offence Frazer and Mr. H

...because I was born in 1958, had a Binatone "portable" record player in '72 which pretty much obliterated all of my LP's, Binatone (wasn't rich) cassette player which destroyed all my tapes, then moved on to Hi-Fi separates, bought a Phillips CD solid state and a Linn Axis turntable, Rotel amp, Monitor Audio speakers, expensive cables, Creek tuner..well, you get the picture. My iPod Classic 80GB is the love of my life, I can listen through Bose sounddeck or headphones. I've backed everything up onto an external, but this happiness can't last forever. 15.000 songs, TV shows, audiobooks, CD's burned, games etc. What happens when the battery is fucked? I tried to change one on a Nano and screwed it up. And I've worked in places when I've downloaded songs and then been made redundant. No back ups for them. Compare the iPod to even the last generation Sony Cassette Walkmans (I paid about £80) and you realise what a wonderful world we live in. Why shouldn't you have all your music with you? It's the aural equivalent of sucking your thumb. Put shuffle mode on today whilst walking and the bugger came up with Dinosaur Jnr, KRS1, Ivor Cutler, Gallon Drunk, Big Youth, Beyond the Fringe, The Queers, Patsy Cline and NWA. Fantastic. I'll personally kill myself when my iPod dies. And shove it up my arse when you bury me.

I have my music collection backed up on my computer, but I also backed it up to eight DVD's - 8,000 songs - took about 2 hours. That way, even if my computer fries, gets nicked, whatever, I have the collection backed up. Definitely recommend it
I use a Bose something or other with built in speakers to listen to the thing. Sound is just about OK, and battery life isn't an issue coz it's permanently being recharged, but sometime in the future when the kids are a bit older I definitely want to find some means of listening to my music with some of the quality I remember from my vinyl collection. At what stage in our life exactly do we trade shitty sound for convenience?

now, you're not being sarky you little monkeys are you?

What I have learned over the years.

1) iPods don't last forever. My black 1G Nano only works for a few minutes at a time now. Repair shop said the motherboard may have gone as the battery is okay.

2) The Nano sounds better than the iPod Touch which replaced it. But you get used to Touch sound over time and bass booster helps in the music settings.

3) Apple TV is not a lemon of you like music. My Apple TV was bought cheaply as it was refurbished by Apple. It - and not my computer - transmits to two Airport Expresses around the house which are connected to my stereo systems. This means my 10,000 tracks or so are easily accessible through the free Remote app on my Touch will allows me to skip track, change volume and hit the Genius button. The other things the Apple TV does - You Tube access, photos, movie downloads - are useful but not as essential as its use as a fantastic jukebox. It also needs plenty of ventilation as it runs hot!

4) You will have hard disc problems at some time. Experience has taught me to keep my collection on a external hard disc and every so often back it up to DVDs. When I get new music or podcasts the computer keeps them locally until the odd time I connect the hard disc and save the new content to it. When I am there, I turn on the Apple TV in Itunes preferences and it updates my apple tv with the new content.

5) Getting DVDs onto the Touch takes ages. For me. it's not really worth doing for a film you'll watch once. But it is worth taking the time for live music DVDs that'll you'll watch again and again.

5) This sounds complex but it's not really. When I'm on the train or in the house just wanting to listen to a track , it's about the music not the device. Apple's skill is making complex things simple. People forget they didn't invent the MP3 player - they just improved it!

Can we talk about makeup and shoes now, boys? :-)

Apparently, Booster only works on Apple Macs. Does anyone have any alternatives ?

@Jamsodonnell - I don't think iPod VolumeBooster excludes any models, but it does only work with Macs. I did a Google search a while ago for my partner who, inexplicably, uses Windows, and there were various alternatives. If you go to the VolumeBooster url - http://volumebooster.tangerine-soft.de/ - there's a link to Windows versions

does ANYONE know how I can get Eupod going ? My FPO is my bloody PC.

Stevie. I've tried that and I can find it where you say. However, I found conflicting opinions on the net re. Eupod, some saying it works well and others saying it can corrupt the pod and is then ok if resynced. I'm a bit confused so maybe I should leave it, could be a can of worms.