I don't get it-- I-Pods

At all the stores around here such as Walmart, Target and K-Mart, you see I-Pods or I-Pod accessories and lots of them. A few weeks ago, my Wife was looking into getting one of those for music. She was looking at one because she didn't think her PDA was able to play music. I did some investigating on both the I-Pod and her PDA. I figured out that I could download realone player on the PDA and store music on the 256mb card. Crazy I thought, didn't know you could do that. So with being able to have music on the PDA, why get an I-Pod? With the PDA, not only you get music but all the other programs, plus games and all sorts of things. So, I don't get it, why do people pay $150-$300 on an I-Pod that only has music and has pictures when you can get a PDA that has music and soo much more for less $ ?

Let's see, $400+ for a PDA with a 256M card that can play for 2-3 hours on a battery charge, vs. half(?) that amount for a 30GB Ipod that plays for 8+ hours. Do the math.

(Me, I'm using a $150, 4GB Sandisk M260 flash player that plays for 12+ hours on an AAA NiMH cell and I can easily carry four spare cells in a holder in my pocket. Great for travel).

Anyway, the quick answers to your question are: capacity, power consumption, and size (PDA is much larger than a small ipod). Otherwise, PDA is a nice alternative.

Well...with Apples massive marketing and promotion campaign (least down here in Oz), people that aren't into technology as much may not know about PDAs and phones being able to play mp3s. Then they see the ads or hear people raving about how good it is, they think they want one...and they recall the Ipod due to ads/promotions etc. Plus it has also become somewhat a part of fashion, with the almost trademark white wire and earphones a status of Ipod ownership and kids sometimes even engage in Ipod status (like the "my phone is better than yours kind of thing). That and also, most of the Ipods can hold alot more than 256mb of music, i know you can buy a larger memory card but then you start hitting Ipod price territory. The menu system is also very easy to use and quite intuitive. Important for people that just want music, no fuss.

I have a Sony PSP with a 4GB Datel hard drive that holds music, movies, game saves, etc....

A true all in one device, I don't need a music-only player.

dragoman

Delvance said:

The menu system is also very easy to use and quite intuitive. Important for people that just want music, no fuss.

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Thats the main reason i got an Ipod..I do alota walking,running, biking etc. and its real easy to make selectons with 1 hand, actually with a stroke of the thumb:naughty:

I also have a Handspring & a PSP but its not that easy to make music selections while on the move and i wouldn't want to lug any of them with me while training,they're just too big

Like paulr said, the difference is the battery life. I had a Pocketpc it had a 400mhz xscale processor and 64m ram, still didn't make a very good mp3 player, battery life totally sucked. Now I have a 2g nano, i think battery life is around 12 hours or so, it's more durable, smaller and doesn't skip or stutter when playing mp3's.

Funny, I work and have worked with LOTS of really technically saavy people that have all had PDA's, palms or PocketPC's both, and while they had a few mp3's and such in there by way of demonstration, nobody used them for serious listening while you did anything.

I think the reasons already spelled out are good, but if you already have your life in a PDA the last thing you're going to want to do with it is strap it to your arm and go jogging, or put it in your pocket and go lift weights. And changing tracks in the car means looking at the interface and clicking around a lot more than with a dedicated MP3 player.

I mostly use my ipod in the car, I could certainly load up small playlists into my palm (or into my dell PPC thing, but I dont use it as much, just development really) but with a big iPod I can have 75% or so of my large music library at any one time and just pick the playlist I'm interested in. I also listen to a lot of audio books on long trips, and i'm not sure that all the PDA players are compatible with those funky files.

Batterylife on a PDA is very much affected by the screen. I use my PDA quite often to play MP3s and it hardly affects the battery. Why? I use The Core Pocket Media Player, it has a nifty feature to turn off the screen while listening. It supports many common media formats...

Free for download from: http://tcpmp.corecodec.org/download Versions for Palm OS, Windows Mobile & Win 32 available.

My favorite iPod feature is "eyes-free operation". The click-wheel is so easy to use and find without looking at it that I can pause, adjust volume, or skip to the next song without looking at it.

I work in a cube farm (like Dilbert) so there are lots of distracting converstions going on around me. So I listen to quiet music often to mask them out. But if someone comes into my office I can pause without looking down at my iPod (mini). I can also change volume when required without fumbling around like some (button encrusted) mp3 players require.

I also like the smart playlists that let me get a mix of new, least recently listened to, and randomly selected songs. My 2nd gen iPod mini gets 18 hours of playing time on a charge, so I only have to charge it every second day, even if I listen to it for the whole 8 hours.

Greg

I also like the smart playlists that let me get a mix of new, least recently listened to, and randomly selected songs.

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I do this too This is a great feature. I load up a small playlist of songs, say 50 or so from a smart playlist that is songs that haven't been played in the last month. I have a lot of music, so often a simply random selection doesn't turn up the stuff you haven't heard in a while very often.

I also have the randomness tuned so that it often plays 2 songs in a row by the same group, which i like. What I wish it had was a feature where if you heard a song you liked you could easily tell it to just keep playing that album rather than having to go browse for it. hmmm... i'll have to put in a feature request.

Cool. I've never played with the randomness setting.

I have all my songs rated so I have a bunch of smart playlists like: new 4-5 stars, new 3-5 stars, new 2-5 stars, and least recently played (LRP) 4-5, 3-5 and 2-5 stars, plus random 4-5, 3-5 and 2-5 stars. Then some mix playlists: 3Mix4-5, 3Mix3-5, and 3Mix2-5 based on the three types (new, LRP, random). By controlling the number of songs in the different star ratings and types I can control what is in the 3Mix.

Greg

I think all the reasons have been listed. I have a Axim Pocket PC I use occationally, sometimes more than others and have used it as a MP3 player But the battery life was low, and it's pretty big. I figured for a little more than buying 2+ gig's of memory for my PDA, I could buy a 4 gig Nano and be done with it. It's TINY by comparison, I lost it in the pocket of my cargo shots this morning.

As to white headphones, I DISPISE them. I haven't used my Nano with headphones in public yet, and I'm awaiting delivery of a set of Shure e2G earphones.

you can never get enuf mp3 players. i've 3 ipods, a scam disc,256mb, a radio shack 1gb flash i got last black fri. a pda gps, a pioneer inno, and one of those flash drive that plugs into a car lighter plug, plus a mess of stereos that uses cds in mp3 formats!

just love those mp3 players! my next one will be zen vision m.

but the ipod is the most user friendly and most aesthetically pleasing!

I don't understand the iPod craze either. I've used an MP3 player since the original Rio and I still have it. It stores about 2 hours of music (smartmedia cards) and will play for about 12 hours on a single AA battery. That was enough to travel to work and back without repeating a song. I loaded a fresh random song list each morning.

Now I have a palm TX PDA. It does a lot of things and does it well. It happens to play MP3s too. I only have 500 songs in my collection (ripped from my CDs) and the 1 gig SD card holds 394 of them as of this morning. That's about 20 hours, or enough for 2 weeks of my current commute without repeats. Best of all, it works well with my Linux workstation (where my music is) and my windows system (for those pesky software upgrades). The TX is on sale for around $250, the 1 gig card was $50 at costco.

Now I have to rip the other 40 CDs that my wife bought since my last rip-fest.

Daniel

Not to get in an argument, but how easy is "eyes-free" operation? How hard is it to adjust the volume without looking or feeling around for the right button? How hard is it to skip to the next song without looking or feeling around?

Any non-iPod music player would have to pass this test before I would switch.

(The financial analysts who follow Apple also talk about the iPod infrastructure as a big advantage Apple has. There are tons of accessories (cases, speakers, car interfaces) that other brands can't match. If you don't need accessories then that isn't a factor for you, but for the average music player consumer it has an effect.)

Just my opinions - Greg

I don't get the whole- "I have to have entertainment with me all the time" ??

Walking down the malls, grocery stores...you name it. I also see countles ear buds in shoppers ears if not that, a Bluetooth for the constant update about what they are doing the very moment. Often tiems they have it cranked up that if they take the buds out, I get to hear it.

Prolly my age...I enjoy talking to the person I'm with or enjoying the surroundings in natural. Except for the city traffic... Seems to me that many of these protable music devices are contributing to hearing loss...I have to repeat like I'm talking to my 85 year old father. "huh...what?!"

It depends in your usage. I have a lot of friends at school that have their music on them all day due to walking or taking the bus to school, plus down time between classes that aren't enough to get any homework done. Myself? I use mine when studying and not at home, or on the plane. I'm also going to experiment with listening while on boring roadtrips on my motorcycle.

senecaripple said:

my next one will be zen vision m.

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Good choice! I just recieved mine a little over a week ago. I have about 10 full length dvd's on it (encoded in XviD), with tons of pictures of my recent engagement... as well as over 100 full albums! And, I still have 17.5 gigs available! I strap it to an armband when I go jogging... something I *wouldn't* want to do with a PDA.

Before you order a ZVM though, keep in mind, you WILL want either a full body sheild, or at least a frontal shield from someplace like ShieldZone or Best Skins Ever. The *only* complaint I could find about the ZVM was that it is a micro-scratch MAGNET! Yeah, the ShieldZones are a little expensive, but they have a lifetime warranty...

VWTim said:

...I'm awaiting delivery of a set of Shure e2G earphones.

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Nice! Just yesterday, I pulled the trigger on a pair of Ultimate Ears super.fi 5 Pros... Total impulse buy, but I can't wait til those bad boys show up in the mail.

-Allen

Aaron1100us said:

So, I don't get it, why do people pay $150-$300 on an I-Pod ?

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I'm sure people with IPods will think the same to us who buy flashights

Most MP3 players are usable with one hand. I can do the volume on mu palm with one hand easily, and without looking. Truth is, I only have songs that I like loaded on my palm, so I almost never change music mid-song.

I use the music to block out the irritating squeal of the train's wheels. I continue listening as I walk from the train to the office because the music is pleasant.

Daniel