What are the advantages etc of different Ipod things for music

[Cindy]

I have an Ipod shuffle and use it almost exclusively at the gym. It seems to be having a few problems with recharging so I suspect the battery is getting towards the end.

So, what are the pros and con of small, music things. I don't want to use my android as a music source in the gym as it may get smashed and I need it as a phone at all times.

Happy to go for different types models things.

Any comments?

[Adam (birkin)]

I had to get a new ipod and I just stuck with shuffle, so got the 6g. imo it's as good as it gets...and especially for the gym, you don't really want the hassle of choosing a song off the screen anyway. It's better to just make a playlist you like and let it run its course on shuffle.

[Elspeth]

The Apple products are over-priced and lock you into programs I loathe.  I've been using a Sansa mp3 player for a few years, managing it on WinAmp. This also avoids getting tangled in Apple's ever-changing approach to crippling your access and control over music that you already own the CD for. Apple's shifting strategies for DRM deeply offend me, but I haven't tracked them closely (or dealt with the iStore) ever since I backed away several years ago. That is, apart from listening to complaints from friends and children (my ex gave my son an iPhone over the holidays, which he loathes).

[Cindy]

Interesting I have never bought anything from the apple stores I download from my computer, my own music and whatever. It hasn't been a problem with the shuffle is there something different in the others.

I'm not familiar with WinAmp what is that?

[Elspeth]

Interesting I have never bought anything from the apple stores I download from my computer, my own music and whatever. It hasn't been a problem with the shuffle is there something different in the others.

I'm not familiar with WinAmp what is that?

WinAmp is a fairly generic media player (but one with a very broad range of 3rd party plug-ins and feature extensions -- for instance, one that allows you to use it to manage live streaming) which does the same things iTunes, or Win MediaPlayer does, without the added nonsense, and, at least in my older version, with greater control. The one thing I don't use WinAmp for is ripping CDs to my hard drives -- for some reason, it does this at a glacial pace, whereas Win MediaPlayer can rip a CD in a matter of a minute or two.

I'm actually using a fairly old version because I haven't wanted to upgrade since the player was bought out by (I think?) AOL, mainly due to concerns they may have crippled it once they got their hands on it.

You may not face as many issues if you are using only media that you have on your own machine. I got an iPod back when Apple was using some fairly nasty DRM to turn ordinary AAC files into a proprietary horror show, and I made the mistake of buying a few albums from the iStore before I realized how messed up those files were in terms of copy restrictions that made perfectly legit uses a PITA. I've avoided it ever since then, so I'm not up-to-date on what new horrors they are trying. They did back away from the DRM'd AACs when they realized (I think) that Amazon was beating them up because of it, but I know my son has, fairly recently, run into problems with transferring files from one machine to another because of things that (probably) happen in managing those files on his iPhone.

Not sure of the details, since he's not close enough now for me to help very efficiently, and not having dealt with them for a long while, I'd only be stabbing in the dark to figure out whether there were any good workarounds.  The waste of time in needing to fairly often find workarounds or avoid doing things in ways that run into speedbumps or restrictions is at the core of my avoidance.

[Emily Aster]

Yes. What Elspeth has said. iPods are very overpriced. You can get a much cheaper mp3 player with more hard drive space. I think about the only "plus" of the iPod is iTunes, but you're not using it anyway.

Latest version of WinAmp actually is pretty good, although the last time I used it was about 6 months ago. I'm on Fedora now instead because I'd rather spend money on clothes than software.