When the battery goes dead on my Sansa all I have to do is slide off the back and…Wow..look at that..put in another one. Just like any other portable electronic device built for the past 50+ years.iPod users are either sol or have to plug into something else to charge up the one and only battery that you can’t get to without having to literally PRY the case apart when the battery is drained.

Why would anyone buy something portable with a battery that can’t be changed on the go..let alone easily replaced when it goes bad?

“I owned a 3G iPod for over a year and have had a 4G iPod for a couple of months now, and haven’t had any problems.”

Wow! A whole year? A couple of months? And you mean to tell me that after all that time your $200+ devices still work? I should hope so.

Yeah, great, my Creative Nomad Zen Xtra has a sleek case too, except that I can remove it easily and pull the battery right out. So, if the battery on this fails (which it hasn’t in more than two years), I can buy a new one for a few bucks from a battery reseller and put it in myself. Who is stupid enough to think that $105.95 to replace A BATTERY is a good deal?

You can read the features above so I will not reiterate them.

[*]AA (disposeable) battery. Why is that good?
I don’t like proprietary batteries. They are expensive, and after few months, they are out of production, non supported as companies come up with newer product models. So you’re stuck. Now mp3 players (most of them) have the battery built in. What makes it even worse is that with exception to Creative players, most others are completelye irreplaceable. Ipods too! That is where AA, or AAA batteries come handy. They are found anywhere there is civilization. They are disposeable, cheap!
Of course this little wonder offers 40 hours of playtime with just one AA battery. Ipods barely offer 10 hours of playtime. So compare that.

[*]The music formats.
Majority of the online music vendors use WMA format. Guess what? Ipods don’t play them. Its because they want to force people to buy from itunes store (true for other Apple products, and Microsof is accuesed of monopoly!). With this Samsung player, you are not bound to a specific vendor. Dump your music in it, regardless of the source, it will start playing. Not to mention Samung player also plays more music formats than ipod.

[*]Line input.
Do you have old cassetts? Old records? VHS tapes? Got your favorite songs or any audio on them? Guess what, you can use this player to make mp3s from ANY audio source. Just connect the included cable and press record on the player. You don’t need a computer for this. Line input is not available for Ipods even as an expensive add on.

[*]Built in mic.
Need to record your lecture? Capture a moment? Record live concerts or any other events with this feature. Now this is available for ipods. You can get an extra thing to carry for around $40 or more. Then again, Ipods are capable of handling only 1 accessory at a time. You have to remove other add on such as a remote

[*]Control without seeing?
Many people buy Ipods just to show off, “hey, look, I’m controlling an Ipod, look at me! Oopss, I forgot I can’t operate it from my pocket! I need to have it in my hands to do everything, except the “hold” switch”. Yah. Of course thats true. This Samsung player, you can operate from your pocekt, change volume, skip songs, on, off, pause basically everything. Obviously you’ll need to look at the menus if you want to change the settings, but it no way requires you to look at it. You can operate it with your eyes closed. Ipods are incapable of being controlled without looking. There is a remote for ipods (another $40 extra) which has 3/4 buttons such as back, forward, volume up and down only!

[*]Size? Yes it matters.
Please have a look at the images I have added. You can see for yourself how “small” it is. It comfortably fits in your palm. A bit cube shaped so its easier to hold. Just a little bigger than an AA battery. Its just above 2 inches in height, and little more than a half inch depth.

[*]Flash? yes please!
I always prefer flash players to any “hard drive” based players. Sure the space is small, but flash players are more reliable. The reason is, in hard drive players, there are parts moving, spinning and if for any reason they are dropped accidentally, or experiences a big jerk, it is more than likely that the drive data reader (the magnetic head) being displaced. In plain English, your fancy hard drive player won’t play anything any more. This is true for Ipods and any other hard drive player as well. Now flash players on the other hand, shake them with all of your might, nothing will happen, and the music will also be skip-free. Basically flash players are generally VERY stable, solid, not allergic to simple or tough shaking, jerk etc. Unless you break them with a hammer, or drive your car over them, flash players are very sturdy, tough guys.
By the way, if you don’t believe me, you can try shaking your hard drive player but be WARNED, you might very well damage it parmanently!

[*]Others things about this player.
- Body is made of aluminum (2 sides) and plastic (2 sides) (Its one of the VERY few mp3 players that are extremely well built, built to last! Even some newer models from Samsuing are fully made of cheap plastic, which most other players are made of anyway).
- Portable storage. It comes with both cable and a mini plug so it can be uses as a storage drive. Its plug and play, platform independent. Translation, you can use it at your computer, your friends computer, your secret lovers computer, your boss’s (if you’re allowed) computer etc. Only few hard drive players are plug and play, but most of the flash players are plug and play.
- FM radio. It wasn’t important for me, but its there. Reception is pretty good and again you can directly record from FM radio without any wires to mp3 format. You can even change the region, if you’re moving outside the US.
- Advanced SRS, WOW effects, detailed, customizeable equaliser settings, display mode, default volume etc. As it might come as shocking to many, Ipods aren’t the only players that “shuffles” music. Its a common feature that many many players have built in. You can set to normal, repeat 1, repeat all, and of course shuffle all songs in this Samsung player.

Final Verdict:
Please don’t give in to the “hype” and just buy an ipod. Do compare the features, prices. Ipods are overrated, overpriced and offers very little for the money you pay for it. So if money doesn’t matter to you, all you care about is how fashionable, how cool it looks, maybe Ipods are for you but if you are a serious, conscious, educated consumer, this Samsung player is a must buy. This is one purchase you will not regret. I’m actually getting a second one too!

Ok, I think alot of your retorts are pretty stupid, but let me go through them all and explain myself before you make me out to be a simple ipod hater.

“Yes, there have been some problems with batteries in the iPod, but I don’t think it’s as bad as you make it out to be. No one I know has ever had a problem with the battery life of their iPod. I owned a 3G iPod for over a year and have had a 4G iPod for a couple of months now, and haven’t had any problems.

If the battery were to fail during the warranty period (one year), then it is covered under warranty, and you can get it fixed free of charge.

The point Paul is trying to make is that if the battery does fail, you’re screwed, which is not the case. If you’ve bought AppleCare Protection for iPod (US$59), then you have an additional 2 years’ warranty. However, if you’re out of warranty and your battery dies, Apple provides the following: If your iPod requires service only because the battery’s ability to hold an electrical charge has diminished, Apple will replace your iPod for a service fee of $99, plus $6.95 shipping. While it requires you to fork out a bit of money, you’re not wasting “hundreds of pounds”.

So I’m meant to spend $100 US? Is that what you’re saying? I don’t think its fair to make users pay additional because of a device’s defective battery. The battery lasts only 16 months which would explain why ‘you’ve had no problems’, which you state in an ‘I’m the only person in the world’ tone.

“Sound quality is great for me. I’ve had no problems. My sound system (which I sometimes connect the iPod up to) hasn’t revealed any problems either.

UPDATE 19:22: Mat just let me know that Stereophile named the iPod the product of the year in 2003. If the sound quality was so horrible, why was it product of the year, and why have 6 million people bought them?

I doubt a “bargain basement player” would have great sound output, too. If you’re selling the device really cheaply, you have to cut corners somewhere…”

Wonderful, a website named a product “product of the year” and 6 million uneducated sheep have bought in to ipod propaganda, what proof does this give me that the sound quality is decent? There are plenty of products that have gotten good reviews despite not deserving them as well as being bought largely, just look at the sales of n*sync albums.

“The wheel is a GREAT idea. I couldn’t imagine using a portable music player without it.

If the music player is in your pocket, why not take it out of your pocket? Not so hard, is it? You’d have to do the same for any other music player if you wanted to browse your music collection (that and the fact that you might want to see what music you’re browsing).

If all you’re looking to do is skip to the next song, go back a song or pause, then you should have no problems pressing the buttons on the wheel. I do it all the time by pressing on the outside of my jeans pocket. (Although I occasionally get some weird stares!)”

Generally when something is inside my pocket playing music, I don’t want to take it out just to change songs, there should be buttons on the top of the device to help me with such matters. I don’t want a remote, that removes portability, and pushing buttons through my pants isn’t exactly conveniant. Why couldn’t they simple place buttons on the top? Be realistic.

“The Windows version of iTunes allows you to transcode from WMA to AAC if you wish (although that results in some loss of quality). This could be an issue if you have an entire library encoded in WMA. If you do, just go buy a WMA-compatible player.”

But I don’t want to transfer all my damn songs to AAC, why should I have to convert my library to suit apple’s needs? Why can’t I just transfer the songs onto the player as they are? WMA has become far too big to be neglected and for the people who have masses of songs in it’s format the iPod fails. I shouldn’t have to compromize my entire collection of music just to get it working on an iPod.

“Ogg Vorbis support *might* be nice, but the number of people that use it is quite small, I would think.”

But you see, there is the problem, you THINK Ogg vorbis is small and that therefore it isn’t important. How do you think people feel who have some of their best music in OGG vorbis format? The iPod is claimed to be the best mp3 player yet it doesn’t even feature the file range that most mp3 players consider a necessity.

“Sure, there’s no support for the lossless codecs you mention, but you could always use the Apple Lossless codec. If you’re a real audiophile and want to listen to your music on multiple platforms, why not just encode the files as WAV? You might not be able to hold as much, but at least you won’t be plagued by the hisses and crackles and pops that are oh-so-prevalent when you encode the song as a 256kbps AAC. ;)”

Don’t be an idiot, if people use an the Line out of the iPod to connect it to their $16,000 speakers to play their entire collection on, they WILL hear the ‘crackles and pops’. Not to mention they’d have to CONVERT to AAC to hear those crackles and pops, so they are not only wasting time converting but they are converting to a poorer quality for the sake of an mp3 player, useless. WAV is space-hungry and pointless, FLAC is the way to go and iPod doesn’t support it. This all falls down to once again Apple’s attempt at monopolizing the market with their shit, not to say microsoft is better but at least Windows media player supports FLAC and such other non-microsoft-or-mp3 formats.

“The AAC format has almost zero support? Considering Apple has around 92% of the hard drive-based music player market and 65% of the entire music player market (at least in the US), I’d say there’s significant support for AAC and FairPlay.”

If I wanted to use Windows Media Player - which comes with Windows XP,that the vast majority of PC users use - to play AAC files could I do it? Negative. I’d have to install iTunes, what if I want to play the songs at a friend’s house who doesn’t have iTunes or a fast enough internet to download it in a fair amount of time? Then I’m screwed thanks to iPod.

“Where’s your proof? If you base it on the number of computers it’s installed on, then your generalisation may be correct. But that’s not what counts. It’s how many people actually use it.”

You will find that windows media player is actually USED by far more than any other player, primarily because of the fact that its installed with windows XP but also because of personal preference. The fact that they have neglected this fact is ridiculous and simply adds to the list of problems, you can’t rule this one out because its put simply the only software a computer has with windows XP on it to play music and video files, unless you download another program ofcourse.

“Yes, but how many of them actually work? How many offer the same experience as using an iPod with iTunes? You simply plug it in, and it’ll sync all of your songs (or selected songs or playlists) with no hassle.”

Windows Media Player is just as capable of doing what you ask, not to mention you don’t get extra baggage.

“Yah huh… Yes, you may have to download and install iTunes on a Windows computer, but you have to do that anyway in order to use Windows Media Player 10, so what’s the issue?

iTunes works fine on my Mac, and I’ve used it on my flatmate’s laptop running Windows XP and it works fine. He updated to iTunes 4.7 the other day, and I distinctly remember the installer asking if he would like to place an icon on the desktop, the quick launch bar and in the start menu.

The only other applications it installs are “helpers” for iTunes, and QuickTime, which is required to play the files! Please show me how the software is doing things behind your back… and how iTunes’ behaviour is akin to that of a virus. Provide some proof before you start throwing claims around.”

Dude, the software comes with Windows XP, obviously you need to download an “upgrade” for version 10 but at least you can play the files without downloading anything at all, its just a matter of wether you want the bells and whistles or not. With iTunes you’re forced to download the program. Apple wouldn’t need those bloody “helpers” if it didn’t use its own media format, and even so those “helpers” should be asked to install by the user, not installed by themselves. The act of installing additional data to your computer without informing you or giving you a choice is akin to a virus, this is considered common sense by the original writer but you have failed to grasp the concept.

“This is a legitimate concern, but last I heard, Apple had the largest catalogue of music for online music stores, so unless it doesn’t offer something you’re looking for, why would you go anywhere else? It’s also an extremely easy to use interface.

Apple also doesn’t force you to use their music store. No one forces you to do anything. If you want to buy something off Napster or MSN Music, that’s fine. But because of the way Apple has decided to control the iPod, you can’t play those songs on it. In a perfect world, every music store would be compatible with every music player, but we don’t live in that world. ”

Wrong, most players will provide you access to almost all stores, far more than the apple store at least. It’s not a matter of “In a perfect world” its just a matter of compromizing for iPod’s shit. Again, I shouldn’t have to compromize for them when other mp3 players don’t trouble me so.

“Music store rant”

I don’t know about this topic.

“That’s the way business works. You think Microsoft didn’t do that with Windows, and that they’re not trying to do the same as Apple with WMA?”

Ofcourse he knows, but why does Apple have to make life even harder? We accepted the fact that windows media player threw in another file format, we don’t need apple troubling our lives with another format. The fact is that this isn’t the way “Business works” as you put it, but rather the way ‘Apple and Microsoft’ work. The fact that microsoft acts this way doesn’t remove the fact that apple is just as guilty.

“Oh ho! Now he brings out the big guns. Join the ranks of people who have been predicting Apple’s demise. It’s still here, isn’t it?”

Microsoft/Windows still has the amazingly large majority of the computer industry, the fact that apple is still here doesn’t remove the fact that its used far less.

“The fact is that Apple offers a very good product that many, many people appear to have adopted (on Windows and the Mac). I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon.

Hypothetically, if Apple did go down the gurgler, your music wouldn’t be worthless, either. You could still listen to it in iTunes and on an iPod. You could also remove the FairPlay DRM (using one of the various utilities available) and go and play it elsewhere. I could say the same for WMA files encoded with the Microsoft “Janus” DRM system. What happens if it’s squashed out of the market? Then you have a pile of WMA-encoded music that can’t be used.”

Hah, microsoft squashed out of the market? I hope you’re kidding. Also the fact that ‘many many people’ have adopted to Apple doesn’t make it a ‘very good product’ and the things I’ve pointed out here still stand.

“I’d like proof you can get a portable music player for a double-digit price, that is compatible with the “Janus” DRM AND will sync with Windows Media Player (by implementing PlaysForSure).

iTunes, on the other hand, syncs perfectly with the iPod (whether on Windows or the Mac).”

There are MP3 Players out there which are double digits and provide Janus DRM with WMP and PlaysForSure, you just have to look. I’m not going to waste my time proving this to you but I’m sure if you cared you’d find one just as well.

“”Evil”. There’s that word again. How is the iPod evil? It doesn’t make your life any worse. It doesn’t torment you or destroy your life, so what’s the problem?

Although the iPod is a little bit more expensive than some portable music players, I think it’s worth spending that extra $50-$100 to get something that “just works”.

As I mentioned before, some proof of the “virus-like” activity would be nice, as you have provided none.
Tags: none”

Oh it isn’t evil, it just traps you with its file format, required software installation, incapability of transferring music from computer to computer and 18 month battery life. Not to mention its propaganda and monopolization attempt on the MP3 Player market. Worth spending $50-$100 extra to get something that “Just works”? You mean, once you’ve downloaded the software they force you to download and by disregarding all the things I just said, yeah I guess it works in that case.

The virus-like activity was stated above, the installation of data without choice for the sake of apple’s crap.

If you disagree with anything I’ve written - which by all means feel free to -, don’t hesitate to buy another apple product and feed the juggernaught. The last thing this world needs is convenience and simplicity, we need a world full of incompatibilities, complications and redundant file formats. As well as people who care more about money than productivity, efficiency and support, we don’t have enough of those.

That’s all. e-mail me at the_vortex01@hotmail.com if you feel I’m being unfair or that my factual argument is somewhat incorrect, contradictory or wrong, though this time I’d prefer you to have some reasoning.

them all and explain myself before you make me out to be a simple ipod hater.

“Yes, there have been some problems with batteries in the iPod, but I don’t

think it’s as bad as you make it out to be. No one I know has ever had a

problem with the battery life of their iPod. I owned a 3G iPod for over a

year and have had a 4G iPod for a couple of months now, and haven’t had any

problems.

If the battery were to fail during the warranty period (one year), then it is

covered under warranty, and you can get it fixed free of charge.

The point Paul is trying to make is that if the battery does fail, you’re

screwed, which is not the case. If you’ve bought AppleCare Protection for

iPod (US$59), then you have an additional 2 years’ warranty. However, if

you’re out of warranty and your battery dies, Apple provides the following:

If your iPod requires service only because the battery’s ability to hold an

electrical charge has diminished, Apple will replace your iPod for a service

fee of $99, plus $6.95 shipping. While it requires you to fork out a bit of

money, you’re not wasting “hundreds of pounds”.

So I’m meant to spend $100 US? Is that what you’re saying? I don’t think its

fair to make users pay additional because of a device’s defective battery.

The battery lasts only 16 months which would explain why ‘you’ve had no

problems’, which you state in an ‘I’m the only person in the world’ tone.

“Sound quality is great for me. I’ve had no problems. My sound system (which

I sometimes connect the iPod up to) hasn’t revealed any problems either.

UPDATE 19:22: Mat just let me know that Stereophile named the iPod the

product of the year in 2003. If the sound quality was so horrible, why was it

product of the year, and why have 6 million people bought them?

I doubt a “bargain basement player” would have great sound output, too. If

you’re selling the device really cheaply, you have to cut corners somewhere…”

Wonderful, a website named a product “product of the year” and 6 million

uneducated sheep have bought in to ipod propaganda, what proof does this give

me that the sound quality is decent? There are plenty of products that have

gotten good reviews despite not deserving them as well as being bought

largely, just look at the sales of n*sync albums.

“The wheel is a GREAT idea. I couldn’t imagine using a portable music player

without it.

If the music player is in your pocket, why not take it out of your pocket?

Not so hard, is it? You’d have to do the same for any other music player if

you wanted to browse your music collection (that and the fact that you might

want to see what music you’re browsing).

If all you’re looking to do is skip to the next song, go back a song or

pause, then you should have no problems pressing the buttons on the wheel. I

do it all the time by pressing on the outside of my jeans pocket. (Although I

occasionally get some weird stares!)”

Generally when something is inside my pocket playing music, I don’t want to

take it out just to change songs, there should be buttons on the top of the

device to help me with such matters. I don’t want a remote, that removes

portability, and pushing buttons through my pants isn’t exactly conveniant.

Why couldn’t they simple place buttons on the top? Be realistic.

“The Windows version of iTunes allows you to transcode from WMA to AAC if you

wish (although that results in some loss of quality). This could be an issue

if you have an entire library encoded in WMA. If you do, just go buy a

WMA-compatible player.”

But I don’t want to transfer all my damn songs to AAC, why should I have to

convert my library to suit apple’s needs? Why can’t I just transfer the songs

onto the player as they are? WMA has become far too big to be neglected and

for the people who have masses of songs in it’s format the iPod fails. I

shouldn’t have to compromize my entire collection of music just to get it

working on an iPod.

“Ogg Vorbis support *might* be nice, but the number of people that use it is

quite small, I would think.”

But you see, there is the problem, you THINK Ogg vorbis is small and that

therefore it isn’t important. How do you think people feel who have some of

their best music in OGG vorbis format? The iPod is claimed to be the best mp3

player yet it doesn’t even feature the file range that most mp3 players

consider a necessity.

“Sure, there’s no support for the lossless codecs you mention, but you could

always use the Apple Lossless codec. If you’re a real audiophile and want to

listen to your music on multiple platforms, why not just encode the files as

WAV? You might not be able to hold as much, but at least you won’t be plagued

by the hisses and crackles and pops that are oh-so-prevalent when you encode

the song as a 256kbps AAC. ;)”

Don’t be an idiot, if people use an the Line out of the iPod to connect it to

their $16,000 speakers to play their entire collection on, they WILL hear the

‘crackles and pops’. Not to mention they’d have to CONVERT to AAC to hear

those crackles and pops, so they are not only wasting time converting but

they are converting to a poorer quality for the sake of an mp3 player,

useless. WAV is space-hungry and pointless, FLAC is the way to go and iPod

doesn’t support it. This all falls down to once again Apple’s attempt at

monopolizing the market with their shit, not to say microsoft is better but

at least Windows media player supports FLAC and such other

non-microsoft-or-mp3 formats.

“The AAC format has almost zero support? Considering Apple has around 92% of

the hard drive-based music player market and 65% of the entire music player

market (at least in the US), I’d say there’s significant support for AAC and

FairPlay.”

If I wanted to use Windows Media Player - which comes with Windows XP,that

the vast majority of PC users use - to play AAC files could I do it?

Negative. I’d have to install iTunes, what if I want to play the songs at a

friend’s house who doesn’t have iTunes or a fast enough internet to download

it in a fair amount of time? Then I’m screwed thanks to iPod.

“Where’s your proof? If you base it on the number of computers it’s installed

on, then your generalisation may be correct. But that’s not what counts. It’s

how many people actually use it.”

You will find that windows media player is actually USED by far more than any

other player, primarily because of the fact that its installed with windows

XP but also because of personal preference. The fact that they have neglected

this fact is ridiculous and simply adds to the list of problems, you can’t

rule this one out because its put simply the only software a computer has

with windows XP on it to play music and video files, unless you download

another program ofcourse.

“Yes, but how many of them actually work? How many offer the same experience

as using an iPod with iTunes? You simply plug it in, and it’ll sync all of

your songs (or selected songs or playlists) with no hassle.”

Windows Media Player is just as capable of doing what you ask, not to mention

you don’t get extra baggage.

“Yah huh… Yes, you may have to download and install iTunes on a Windows

computer, but you have to do that anyway in order to use Windows Media Player

10, so what’s the issue?

iTunes works fine on my Mac, and I’ve used it on my flatmate’s laptop running

Windows XP and it works fine. He updated to iTunes 4.7 the other day, and I

distinctly remember the installer asking if he would like to place an icon on

the desktop, the quick launch bar and in the start menu.

The only other applications it installs are “helpers” for iTunes, and

QuickTime, which is required to play the files! Please show me how the

software is doing things behind your back… and how iTunes’ behaviour is akin

to that of a virus. Provide some proof before you start throwing claims

around.”

Dude, the software comes with Windows XP, obviously you need to download an

“upgrade” for version 10 but at least you can play the files without

downloading anything at all, its just a matter of wether you want the bells

and whistles or not. With iTunes you’re forced to download the program. Apple

wouldn’t need those bloody “helpers” if it didn’t use its own media format,

and even so those “helpers” should be asked to install by the user, not

installed by themselves. The act of installing additional data to your

computer without informing you or giving you a choice is akin to a virus,

this is considered common sense by the original writer but you have failed to

grasp the concept.

“This is a legitimate concern, but last I heard, Apple had the largest

catalogue of music for online music stores, so unless it doesn’t offer

something you’re looking for, why would you go anywhere else? It’s also an

extremely easy to use interface.

Apple also doesn’t force you to use their music store. No one forces you to

do anything. If you want to buy something off Napster or MSN Music, that’s

fine. But because of the way Apple has decided to control the iPod, you can’t

play those songs on it. In a perfect world, every music store would be

compatible with every music player, but we don’t live in that world. ”

Wrong, most players will provide you access to almost all stores, far more

than the apple store at least. It’s not a matter of “In a perfect world” its

just a matter of compromizing for iPod’s shit. Again, I shouldn’t have to

compromize for them when other mp3 players don’t trouble me so.

“Music store rant”

I don’t know about this topic.

“That’s the way business works. You think Microsoft didn’t do that with

Windows, and that they’re not trying to do the same as Apple with WMA?”

Ofcourse he knows, but why does Apple have to make life even harder? We

accepted the fact that windows media player threw in another file format, we

don’t need apple troubling our lives with another format. The fact is that

this isn’t the way “Business works” as you put it, but rather the way ‘Apple

and Microsoft’ work. The fact that microsoft acts this way doesn’t remove the

fact that apple is just as guilty.

“Oh ho! Now he brings out the big guns. Join the ranks of people who have

been predicting Apple’s demise. It’s still here, isn’t it?”

Microsoft/Windows still has the amazingly large majority of the computer

industry, the fact that apple is still here doesn’t remove the fact that its

used far less.

“The fact is that Apple offers a very good product that many, many people

appear to have adopted (on Windows and the Mac). I don’t think it’s going

anywhere soon.

Hypothetically, if Apple did go down the gurgler, your music wouldn’t be

worthless, either. You could still listen to it in iTunes and on an iPod. You

could also remove the FairPlay DRM (using one of the various utilities

available) and go and play it elsewhere. I could say the same for WMA files

encoded with the Microsoft “Janus” DRM system. What happens if it’s squashed

out of the market? Then you have a pile of WMA-encoded music that can’t be

used.”

Hah, microsoft squashed out of the market? I hope you’re kidding. Also the

fact that ‘many many people’ have adopted to Apple doesn’t make it a ‘very

good product’ and the things I’ve pointed out here still stand.

“I’d like proof you can get a portable music player for a double-digit price,

that is compatible with the “Janus” DRM AND will sync with Windows Media

Player (by implementing PlaysForSure).

iTunes, on the other hand, syncs perfectly with the iPod (whether on Windows

or the Mac).”

There are MP3 Players out there which are double digits and provide Janus DRM

with WMP and PlaysForSure, you just have to look. I’m not going to waste my

time proving this to you but I’m sure if you cared you’d find one just as

well.

“”Evil”. There’s that word again. How is the iPod evil? It doesn’t make your

life any worse. It doesn’t torment you or destroy your life, so what’s the

problem?

Although the iPod is a little bit more expensive than some portable music

players, I think it’s worth spending that extra $50-$100 to get something

that “just works”.

As I mentioned before, some proof of the “virus-like” activity would be nice,

as you have provided none.
Tags: none”

Oh it isn’t evil, it just traps you with its file format, required software

installation, incapability of transferring music from computer to computer

and 18 month battery life. Not to mention its propaganda and monopolization

attempt on the MP3 Player market. Worth spending $50-$100 extra to get

something that “Just works”? You mean, once you’ve downloaded the software

they force you to download and by disregarding all the things I just said,

yeah I guess it works in that case.

The virus-like activity was stated above, the installation of data without

choice for the sake of apple’s crap.

If you disagree with anything I’ve written - which by all means feel free to

-, don’t hesitate to buy another apple product and feed the juggernaught. The

last thing this world needs is convenience and simplicity, we need a world

full of incompatibilities, complications and redundant file formats. As well

as people who care more about money than productivity, efficiency and

support, we don’t have enough of those.

That’s all. e-mail me at the_vortex01@hotmail.com if you feel I’m being

unfair or that my factual argument is somewhat incorrect, contradictory or

wrong, though this time I’d prefer you to have some reasoning.

Hmm.. hello? Th simplest reason is there are 6million idiots out there! After doing a comparsion between iAudio, Hi-MD Player, iPod and Creative Zen Micro with the same song ripped at 256kps from the same in mp3 format (atrac3plus for Hi-MD) and playing it on each players over both a 2.1 subwoofer system and also an Audio Technica clip-on earphone, me and my bunch of friends who are music lovers that are very particular about sound quality, concluded that hi-md player offers the best sound quality! This includes some hard-core fans like you, and they blushed when they finally admit that iPod produces one of the worst sound quality out of these few players.

Also, with regard to the battery. The battery used in iPod is an lithum battery. Although manufactures never tell its consumers this, such rechargable battery normally wear out completely only after just 3~5 years of usage. So, be prepared to throw your iPod away any time soon, especially if you are not in US. The battery placement service isn’t available in all countries. For most of us, iPod is actually just a disposable, low quality white elephant.