[The Actual]

I am looking into buying my first mp3 player in the next couple weeks before school starts.

It seems like a lot of players out there are very similar, and what is different is the software with which they are designed to run. (Correct me if I am totally wrong here. I do know that it is possible to make ipods or whatever run with non-itunes programs, but it is more complicated, right?)


The two main things I want is a decent media player with the ability to have 'now playing' cues, so I can just click something when I am on the computer to have 'this song play next.' (like what Real Player has, or had)

And in terms of the actual mp3 player itself, I want something small, lightweight, and with 20GB to 80GB. Thin is more important that small, I think.




One player that looks cool so far is the Creative Zen V plus 16GB. 16GB could store a lot of my music, and the player looks tiny. Is it as good as it looks?


Budget is not really an issue, so make with the recommendations! Thanks.

 

[BetaLyr]

I believe Winamp will work with iPods without complications.

To have the feature to choose the next song to play... You can probably install a different firmware that does that, but I don't know which MP3 players have that feature :/

I've seen the Zen V before and it is really tiny and cute. My friend had it, but it got stolen because it was too adorable looking!

Try looking into the Creative Zen Vision:M or Zen Vision:W or iPod Video or Archos

(Maybe the Zune too, but that might be a bit too bulky.)

 

[The Actual]

One more question, what is the best place to buy/look at different mp3 players? Do stores like Best Buy and Circuit City have pretty good selections?
Thank you.

 

[Hooah]

Make sure you understand the difference between harddisk and flash based players. And their pros and cons.

 

[BetaLyr]

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Actual /img/forum/go_quote.gif One more question, what is the best place to buy/look at different mp3 players? Do stores like Best Buy and Circuit City have pretty good selections? Thank you.

Yeah, they have pretty good selections. You can check out the stores here and here.
There are also stores like Walmart, CompUSA (if you can find one near you), etc.

 

[The Actual]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hooah /img/forum/go_quote.gif Make sure you understand the difference between harddisk and flash based players. And their pros and cons.

Hm, this sounds pretty ominous.. what exactly are the advantages and disadvantages? I know flash generally has a smaller capacity and is lighter, but that's about it.

 

[rockin_amigo14]

flash players are, as you said, smaller and lighter, but also are less likely to suffer internal damage. you see, flash players have no moving internal parts. HDD players have a moving hard drive, which always have a chance of being scratched. it's not a huge chance, but it's always a possibility.

the big thing is that HDD is cheaper in terms of GB. the 16gb ZenV+ costs the same as the 30gb ZVM.

iPod's i know allow you to create your own playlist on the go, and save it. quite a few players out there allow dynamic playlists, which simply can't be saved. the only stick around until you turn your player off.

the ZenV+ has an option called 'Add to Selected'. It takes the selected song and adds it to the list of songs that are playing.

Ex: You are listening to a song from the album "Yay". You use 'Add to Selected' on the song "Hooray". At the bottom of all of the album "Yay" is the song.