Originally Posted By Jafar30 I thinking of joining the 21st century and either purchasing an iPod or asking for one for the holidays. Who here has one? I know I don't want a shuffle, since it doesn't hold enough songs. But I'm leaning more towards an iPod mini. Any comments or suggestions.
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA I have one. It's a 2nd generation 20G. Got it in July 2004, and I love it. It holds 5000 songs, and have only used half that number. It's worked great -- take it on walks, use it in the car. For me, it's as neat as the hype.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan My daughter bought a Shuffle. She loves it, rarely is disconnected from it. But she definitely wants to upgrade to the Nano or larger iPod.
Originally Posted By jasmine7 I'm an iPod addict. I have two of them, a 40G and a 60G with the color screen. I have the 60 almost full. I use mine to store movies. I have a program that rips the audio track off of DVDs, and so I have a big portion of my DVD collection on my iPod. I use my 40 for audio from TV shows on DVD.
Originally Posted By Dave I also just got a 60G with the color screen and its awesome. I can store pics from my camera on there if I need more room on my card. >>>I have a program that rips the audio track off of DVDs<<< Jasmine Do you use DVD Audio Extractor ???
Originally Posted By Big Thunder I've been lookin into getting an iPod Nano either for myself, or for my daughter. She is probably one of the 10% of students at her school that doesn't have an iPod. Of all of them the Nano seems the best for Thunder needs, or maybe I'll get a pair so I can have one too I have been using a 512 MB MP3 player. This week on my flight, I noticed people even older than me [over 44] with iPods, I felt inferior with my lil MP3 player LOL I was reading somewhere this week that 3 major label companies CD's copyright protection will not interact with Apple software. It's not the record company's fault, it's Apple who wont license them the software. I *think* it affects some Sony, BMG, and another label's CDs. Of course, not every CD has copyright protection, but it's things like this that make me hesitate, if I have an iPod, I want to be apple to load ALL of the CDs that I want onto my player.
Originally Posted By peeaanuut BT: about the copyright things, just rip the cd using another program like winamp or media player. Also winamp has plug-ins now that will allow you load/unload your ipod without being stuck using the blocky I-Tunes software. Just a thought.
Originally Posted By Big Thunder thanks nuut, I wondered about that. Plus, a large portion of my music is alreadyed ripped to MP3 which I presume I can convert to Apple's iTune or whatever format I need for iPod right?
Originally Posted By jasmine7 Dave, I use IMToo's DVD Audio Ripper. It works wonderfully, though there are some that it just freezes up on or errors out on.
Originally Posted By JeffG The one bit of advice I give before rushing out to buy is that you should expand your evaluation beyond Apple's products before making a final decision. The various iPod models are generally well made and they do have a very good user interface, but there are other brands out there with feature sets and prices that could fit your needs better. One of the most important points to consider is that Apple uses a proprietary digital rights management system that they refuse to license to anyone else. What that basically means is that if you want to legally purchase music online, you must purchase it from iTunes to play it directly. In most cases, music purchased from other online stores can be converted to be playable on the iPod by burning the music to CD and then re-ripping it, but there is a loss of audio quality in that process. Finally, iPods are completely unable to use music from subscription services like Napster-to-Go, Rhapsody-to-Go, or Yahoo Music Unlimited. It does work both ways, though, in that music purchased from iTunes will not play without conversion on any other brand of digital music. With the iPod dominating the market right now, iTunes does generally have a better selection than most of the competitors. It is hard to say whether that will still be true for the long term, though, particularly if Apple continues to discourage competition. -Jeff
Originally Posted By LuLu I've never had a CD that I can't automatically import into iTunes. Then I'd assume I could load any of the music onto an iPod. Maybe the labels I buy aren't "major" enough. :-D
Originally Posted By LuLu BTW... the device that allows you to play your iPod on your car stereo is uber cool. Just some random info there
Originally Posted By idleHands "I'm an iPod addict. I have two of them..." Sorry, but two iPods doesn't quite qualify you as an "addict." However, my partner and I are definitely iPod addicts. There are seven in our household: two original, two mini, two nano, and one shuffle. (Not sure where the shuffle came from, but it's great for audible.com books!)
Originally Posted By retlaw1 There is a considerable amount of misinformation in this thread. To call I-tunes BLOCKY as was done earlier, is a statement from some one that does not seem to care much for Apple, it is actually a very powerful music server with many options and possibilities. iTunes and iPods will play any, any MP3 file regardless of where it was downloaded from (it does not play all audio formats, it would be nice if it supported wav and ogg files). The proprietary format referred to is AAC files, developed by Apple but not proprietary, many other devices can play a AAC file and I have a library of both MP3 and AAC files that work nicely together, what is being confused here is the DRM (digital rights management) in the AAC files down loaded from the iTunes music store, the DRM allows you to share the down loaded file with a few other users as long you provide the password to the user you are giving the music to. Other devices other than an authorized system will not play the DRM’d AAC file. Also as suggesting win-amp to burn out a CD and then reimport can be done in iTunes. Dave Mathews latest album was unripable on PC’s using iTune but not Mac’s, that has been the only report of unripable music in iTunes that I heard of. I’m sure there is more but has not been widely reported.
Originally Posted By Big Thunder I couldn't remember where I read the article I referenced, so I googled "ipod Sony BMG" and came across sites explaining difficulty ripping certain CDs into iTunes such as the following cut n paste... "Apple's proprietary technology doesn't support secure music formats other than their own and therefore the music on this disc can't be directly imported into iTunes or iPods. Sony BMG wants music to be easily transferable to any device that supports secure music. Currently, music from our protected CDs may be transferred to hundreds of such devices, as both Microsoft and Sony have assisted to make the user experience on our discs as seamless as possible with their secure formats. Unfortunately, in order to directly and smoothly rip content into iTunes it requires the assistance of Apple. To date, Apple has not been willing to cooperate with our protection vendors to make ripping to iTunes and to the iPod a simple experience"
Originally Posted By Big Thunder BTW, Sony BMG does explain a way to get around the difficulty [I haven't tried it myself] Also, I presume it is not a huge problem. Since I am in the market for one myself, I have been asking a lot of opinions from current owners, websites, and retail sales people. As I stated before, I am pretty sure I want an ipod I have played around with a few and ask how they usually transfer music, most said they rip CDs and convert MP3s as I probably would too.
Originally Posted By Big Thunder hey LuLu, I'm not sure which device you have for iPod to car stereo listening, but my buddy has one for his that plugs in iPod and uses an FM radio signal, it was not very ubber cool, tried 4 different signals and all had static noise, I eventually begged him to just find a radio station and skip the iPod because I couldn't stand the interference noise any more. His daughter stated that her boyfriend's did the same thing. I know that there are lots of after market devices for iPods, so I'm sure some are better than others.
Originally Posted By iluvdisneyland "But I'm leaning more towards an iPod mini. Any comments or suggestions." The iPod Mini has been discontinued, I believe. It's been replaced with iPod Nano. I've had an iPod for two years, my first being a 10GB model, and the second and current being the 20GB model. I had problems with the 10GB, but it wasn't music related. My issue was the battery. After a few months, the battery would barely survive an hour's drive into Los Angeles. I bought a new one and haven't had a problem since. I used the PC version of iTunes for my 10GB before moving to Mac. I've never had any real problems ever with the 20GB or my iBook G4. I highly recommend both. If you purchase an iPod, make sure to read up on how to restore it to factory standards (AKA reformat). Sometimes you may have a problem and have to restore it and then reload all of your music.
