happy 20g ipod user here with a happy 4g ipod mini user wife.
I bought a couple iPod shuffles and I’m generally happy with them. It really depends on what you will use it for - I could never understand the desire to add an fm radio. Isn’t the whole point to listen to your own music?
I’m just getting into the various fun ways of using my shuffle. It’s fun.
The remarks about batteries are a bit off I think. Most of these mp3 players seem like expensive commodity items to me. Can’t imagine using anything available today 10 year or even 5 years later.
News perhaps?
I also think the voice recorder can be incredibly useful. MP3 snippets are great for language learning.
So why would you want to by an IPod shuffle when you can buy something smaller, with as much or more memory, an FM radio and a voice recorder for the same price.
Really. I’m curious. How much does the shuffle cost anyway?
Brian
What about the iRiver? I saw one at the K-Mall, and it looked pretty good. Compared to the iPod mini, I believe it has the FM radio and color screen advantage.
I have looked into it enough, but a few iPod owners I’ve talked to have complained about the battery life deteriorating pretty soon after new.
I’m not sure how the new iRiver firmware is. There’s a review on Engadget. They said with the 1.0 firmware, you could only play album tracks in alphabetical order. What kind of company would do that?
If anyone wonders why people like iPods, try iTunes for a while. Really get to know it and see how you like it compared to Windows Media Player.
There will soon be a FM tuner for the iPod and iPod Mini. $70 US in April.
all sorted according to http://www.iriver.com/
Lots of improvements in v 2.0
Edit: I removed the full url as it was making the page go: w i d e.
But you don’t need an iPod to use iTunes do you?
I’m not trolling here. I;m genuinely curious why you would want to buy a shuffle when there’s better stuff out there. Something I’m missing?
Brian
For those mac users who worry that anything you buy won’t work with itunes, check this out reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-5614609.html
It looks as good as the shuffle so I’ll be buying the Creative MuVo tomorrow 
But you don’t need an iPod to use iTunes do you?
I’m not trolling here. I’m genuinely curious why you would want to buy a shuffle when there’s better stuff out there. Something I’m missing?
Brian[/quote]
Generally I don’t think there is anything better out there. I just want to listen to music - nothing else. Why I think it’s better:
Software integration between player and iTunes
Build quality of iPods (I’m not so impressed with the build quality of the shuffle)
The iPods are very well designed - user interface and industrial design
The shuffles are incredibly simple which I find very refreshing and I think this kind of focus is more successful than the “featuritis” that other players have (I hate complex devices)
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]
But you don’t need an iPod to use iTunes do you?
I’m not trolling here. I’m genuinely curious why you would want to buy a shuffle when there’s better stuff out there. Something I’m missing?
Brian[/quote]
You don’t need an iPod to use iTunes. Just download it and give it a try. Take a look at smart playlists and see how they work. Try ripping a few CDs or burning CDs.
I’ve tried using Napster To Go. I can’t believe it’s disorganization. And trying to purchase music on that store is so unorganized.
Apple is probably the only company that knows interface design. Adobe is decent; they’re pretty good. Photoshop’s interface is amazing if you know it very well. But Apple is quite incredible. They may not add every single feature ever invented. But then that would get in the way of what most people use.
Apple will change enterprise computing. Core business apps like for sales, accounting, or anything need to change; they’re now so complicated and take so long to use. IT innovation in that field, well, and everywhere else, is pretty slow. Apple has started and will push quite a bit in the next 2 decades.
FWIW since Apple came out with a 6Gb version of the mini, the 4Gb version has been 199USD for a while.
Then there are of course edu discounts.
The iPod Shuffle will play songs in order, as well as randomly. The powerswitch has three settings to control this.
I bought my wife a 6Gb iPod mini the other day and she is enamoured. I have had my 20Gb iPod for a good while now, and it’s been great. I saw recently, though, that the cost per mb varied greatly with iPods, and that the 20Gb was the best deal, and the minis weren’t so great.
One thing about the mini though: you can work out with it, which is not something I can easily do with my bigger one.
shiver I prefer to spend my money on a iRiver which has better sound quality, features, lcdDisplay, batterylife, etc for just a little more.
Or one of the hot new Sony’s which for the same price kill the look of the Shuffle or any Ipod.
Check out Sony’ new NWE400 series or the NWE500 series. The shuffle is just way too expensive for too little.
Sony and their proprietary crap can suck my balls. I think they deserve scorn even more than the gigantic poseur-fest iPod.
Hold up now, the new Sony MP3 players now play MP3’s. No more proprietary crap! And for the same price, go get yourself a NWE500 or NWE 400 series, comes with FM too!
NW-E507 Network Walkman
bang for your buck wise, you’ll always loose with Apple since they charge a premium for their “i-coolth” trendy value… That said the best deal is the Mini as eveyone has already poitned out…
BUT:
If I were in the market (and I kind of am) my money would be leaning towards a Creative Zen Touch a friend of mine has the original Zen and it’s great… this one is smaller, lighter and tougher with all the convenience of the touch interface like an i-Pod but with a bigger display, 6 times the battery life and even more versatile UI software, plus with the space you’ve got you can easily use it as a portable HDD to store data as well as tunes… A 20Gig model will run you a shade over NT$9000… and they do a 40Gig model too…
not a bad package IMHO…
Ah. No matter what I think Ipod is the worst deal for your money. The Zen Touch and the smaller Zens are really really small. That picture could be actual size.
Anyway it really comes down to this, Flash or Micro/Hard Drive. I prefer Flash since solid state is usually more reliable and sturdy. Those that want space but at less active should use a hard drive based player. But if you want something in between use a Microdrive player.
I bought a 6gb iPod mini back in March just after it came out. I’ve really been enjoying it. Yeah, I know that you pay more for Apple, but it’s not just for style. I’ve tried some of the other players out there and the usability of the user interface is usually pretty poor compared to the iPods.
I was going to point out for you that that’s what that Ipod shuffle thing is, but I’m glad you found that out on your own.
About half of Apple’s “innovations” seem to be of this type – solving the problem of the difficulty of choosing songs on a small LCD by taking that feature away alltogether. Woo! Go technology!