Santa wants to bring me an IPOD or similar MP3 player. Anyone have one? Can you share your experiences? I just returned from Best Buy and according to the "kid" there, the IPOD's require you to download your music from itunes exclusively. That doesn't seem right to me. An MP3 format is an MP3 format right? Anyway, Zune (Microsoft's product) had similar proprietary bullshit. Thoughts?

 

Wrong. I have an ipod nano and I use it all the time. You can very easily load songs from CD's or file sharing sites. I think what he meant was that the songs you actually buy from itunes can only be palyed on an ipod. My ipod is loaded with everything I want and I have yet to buy a single tune from anywhere. The library is a good source for CD's.

As old as it is, I think ipod is still the state-of-the-art.

 

I have an IPOD mini I bought several years ago. It is probably a little archaic by today's hip generation as it is larger and bulkier but it still works great. I had tons of CDs and was able to put them all on my IPOD. I don't have any experience with other MP3 players but I recommend IPOD.

 

I have an IPOD Nano 4G. Love it. I only put songs from CDs on it for now.

 

My granddaughter has a nano and thinks it's great. Various ways of downloading music available. I have her MP3 player. Several hundred songs, easy to charge and load off a PC, and really cheap now. Did I say they work well, are really small, have great playback and lots of volume and quality sound, and are really cheap now?

 

My wife bought me a 30G Ipod video for my birthday last year.

I didn't think I'd use it very much.

One year later:
Bose sound dock for Ipod
Direct Ipod to car connections for each vehicle.
Ipod shuffle 1st gen
Ipod Nano 8G 2nd gen for the S2000 instead of a changer
Ipod Nano 4G 2nd gen for the wife
Cancelled expanded cable and download our television shows to watch with the Ipod connected to our main TV.

Buy the Ipod, the Itunes software is ultra-friendly to use.
Zune doesn't have the infrastructure support to support it IMHO.

 

I have an older iPod Shuffle. It does require that you use iTunes to manage the MP3s on the iPod. The problem isn't that it's using a nonstandard format for the music files. The problem is that the music files need to be placed into the iPod's directory structure in a specific way before it will recognize the order in which they should be played.

This doesn't mean that you need to buy your music from Apple. You can import any MP3 into iTunes, and then load it into your iPod from iTunes. The 2 step process is a pain, but I live with it.

 

A good buddy of mine has one and loves it. He told me I should buy one, but since my alpine headunit plays cds with mp3s I don't see that I have the need for it. I do have an older mp3 player that I take with me when I travel on planes or am on the beach.

 

I have a 20 GB I-Pod that I have had for about two years. The only regret that I have is that there is NO interface to the head unit for the 2003 S's stock radio. If there where it would plug into where the CD changer unit would plug in to the head unit and display the I-Pod like a CD with all of my playlists, etc.

I have made do with a Monster FM modulator/charger that I can tune to an unused FM frequency and transmit from the I-Pod to the FM antenae while at the same time charging the I-Pod. I have 4140 files on it (17.93 GB) that translates to 12.3 days (295.2 hours) of listening, and never hearing the same tune twice. It is great on road trips.

In the Infiniti, which has a Bose AM/FM/CD/Cassette system I use the Monster to power the I-Pod and a Cassette adapter to listen. The quality is better than broadcasting to the FM side of the antenae (which at best is FM quality, not close to digital quality).

One word of advice. make certain that you have enough room on your hard drive to store your music and manipulate your play lists after the fact as I-Tunes needs the files on the C drive to do that.

If you like music you will love an I-Pod.

 

I work for Best Buy and legally we are not allowed to speak of how to download music illegally cause it can fall back on us. So its possible he didn't know what he was talking about but as far as policy goes, we are not allowed to speak of how to download music illegally nor any illegal file sharing.