Okay, I'm back from my vacation. Very good trip, I'll post a thread about it later. Anyway, the last day of the cruise was "OMG ULTIMATE UBER MILLION BAGILLION DOLLAR BINGO!" I was going to play until I saw the swarm of old people paying $89 each for an electronic bingo machine which keeps track of like 50 bingo cards. Instead I bought these 'krack-it' things. It's a strip of 5 lottery tickets for $5. There are three rows on each strip so you have about 15 chances to win something. I saw people ALL over the boat with theses. Most of them end up in the trash, but I was bored so I said...what the heck. First one I open I win $200. I never used these before, so I figured there was some weird catch. So I go down to the Casino on the ship and the lady takes my krack-it and hands me $200.


Now I have $200...I have a crappy 128MB mp3 player at the moment, and I need more space but not THAT much more, so for $199 I figured I'd pick up a 4GB I-Pod Mini. I mean the 6 GB is $249 and for only $40 more you can get a 20GB ( !!! ), but I will never use 20GB, and 4GB is more than enough. Plus I am still paying off my 2006 trip to Italy, so I don't want to go borrowing more money from my parents. I have 200 so I'm going to play it safe and only spend 200....

...unless one of you can find me a better deal on a sexier mp3 player for less money! Now go and argue and search and dissagree with one another about mp3 players!

Oh and for those of you who have I-Pods, tell me if they are worth it.

(P.S. Sexy new forum stuff)

Use it to pay off some of your trip.

Right now 98% of my paychecks from work go to that, I figured since I won the $200 dollars on vacation I should spend it on myself. I don't really buy much for myself as much as I did with me going on all these trips recently. (It's my own choice I know, I know!) I mean, I can make that $200 back in a week, so it isn't a big deal.

You see everyone, gambling does pay off.

i have a ipod shuffle, it holds 512mb which rounds to about 120 songs, for 30 bucks more u can get the 250 song / 1gb model, so for 130 that would be pretty good, and then u could save the other 70 for something else?

you want to spend it on yourself? BUY A CLONE

I was thinking that, but I fiddled with my friends I-Pod and it had all these cool games and things to do on it other than listen to music. (Is it the same with the I-Pod?). I mean I really wouldn't mind the shuffle as I enjoy all the music I like, but the LCD screen is an added bonus (Plus, I'd waste the extra money on some game I'll just get bored with in a few months anyway)

Get it if that's what you want. I love mine, use it lots. Too bad you're not in college, or it'd only cost you $180.

I guarantee you'll get a flood of people telling you not to and to instead buy whatever it is that they have though.

If you're using 98% of yuor paycheck to pay it off all the more reason to pay it off faster in my opinion.

Paying off a trip a week faster that's 9 months away < I-Pod Mini

:p

Too bad you can't buy this for $200 like my dad got it for last weekend

There are 20 gig players for $200.

Don't forget you must record gambling winnings as income when you file your taxes!

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php?masterid=6933060&search=samsung+YH-820

An alternative. If you really like iPods, get the mini. In fact, I'd argue that the mini is the only one worth the cha-ching. This gives you an extra gig of space, for less, color screen, and (I've heard) better sound quality. Up to you.

What a scam. Don't we pay enough in sales tax? Here it's 8.25%.

Sales tax has NOTHING AT ALL WHATSOEVER to do with national income tax. The nation only sees I think 2% of sales tax. The rest is local.

And 8.25% is low as hell for CA.

Heh..in about two weeks, I should be living in a state without income tax.. :p

Property taxes are high, though

I researched the Samsung YH-820MC, and it seems the battery only lasts about 2-4 hours. I also hear it's slow and one person said you need napster to put music on it (that one might be false). Battery life on the mini is around 13 hours, so...I think I still might go with the mini...Unless Avenger can point me in the right direction.

Actually, battery life of second gen mini is rated for 18 hours on 128 kbps AAC files. You'll get about that if you use 128 kbps files, never switch between tracks, and play it at a fairly normal volume.

I've never managed to run my mini's battery out in some days of very heavy usage.

2-4 hours? This sounds like BS. It may be a bit slow, I can't comment on that, but I know you don't need napster.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]And 8.25% is low as hell for CA.[/QUOTE]

It's 8.75% up my way.

Buy some friends.

Well the YH-820 has an 8 hour on average battery life. You'd have to charge it every day (probably), but other than that it's better than the mini at a lesser price. It's up to you though.

I'm going to go for the iPod Mini, it's just that it has all I want PLUS more, and atleast I know I can trust the company. The mp3 players from Rio, Sony and about 10 others I saw all seemed to be GOOD players, they just ALL had some minor flaws that were off-putting. The batery life, the size, the compatability, the speed of it, peoples reviews. The Mini just seems the most solid to me, so I will most likley get one tommorow. Thanks to those who helped out.

I have one, they are great for the amount of songs you can store and they last about 12 hours and then you have to charge them, and I've only had to reboot the thing once cause it went braindead.

My friend has a Mini; she gets about 3 hours of battery life (4 if she is having a good day). I'm not sure if that's indicative of all Mini's, but it doesn't sound like a nice feature to me.

I get 12 hours

Tell her to send it in and get the battery and charge circuit looked at, and tell her to turn the backlight off.

I've heard good things about the Zen Micro.

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=10795

I got the iPod mini last tuesday and it's pretty cool. I have around 400 songs and less than one gig full. The 4GB iPod mini actually only can hold 3.7 gigs of stuff but i think that its plenty. Plus its so sexy. I finally beat solitare on it yesterday! It's kinda hard and im mnot that good at it But the battery work for a loooong time and it just charges through a USB port, or you can get an adapter.

i tried putting some MP3's MP4's(AAC), and WAV's on it and tried to tell the difference. I couldn't when i pluged my headphones into it, but when i pluged it into a micro amp and then to some $200 heagphones, daaaaaaaaamn. :p(I could definently tell the difference)

Anyway get the iPod.

Weee, I got the green mini! *dances*

The new ones get a much better battery life.

The Zen Micros are pretty cool, I would've kept mine but the 5 GB still have that battery draining problem (the battery slowly drains even though the player is off) but I hear the 4 and 6 GB models don't have it. And the headphone jack never gave me problems.

Same as mine, enjoy.

178 songs and counting :p I love the touch wheel thingy. Very neat. I like how you can play music then just go and play games and stuff while the music continues to play. Also iTunes is awesome. It's easy to use, fast, and it does most of the work for you! Even the iPod box is cool. On the instruction manual and CD it says 'enjoy'.

Get a Rio Karma 20GB. It supports FLAC and has an extensiev EQ. Only about $175 and you'd have enough left over for some Koss KSC75s.

Your a half a day late....I already said I got the mini :p

[QUOTE=Yummy Cookie]I get 12 hours

Tell her to send it in and get the battery and charge circuit looked at, and tell her to turn the backlight off.[/QUOTE]

The backlight isn't on (she's not an idiot). I'm just assuming it has a crappy battery. For the most part, she uses the in the car, so battery life isn't an issue.

I told her to get a Carbon in the first place, though. I think the Carbon looks much sexier too (well, at least sexier than my Karma). :p

Yeah, I have a blue mini, and I get plenty of battery life. It must be around 12 hours... man, these things are worth it. It has 4 GB of music, three games (Brick, Parachute, and solitaire), a clock, a calender you can modify, a contact list you can modify to what you want, etc. And it all fits in your pocket!

I've only used it for a few hours, but then again I only charged it for an hour when I got it...so is that why I only have like a bit more than half a battery when it 'looked' full last night? Because it says a full charge is 4 hours.

Well, that's what my friend gets with hers. I would try playing it till it dies, then fully charging it. If you still get four hours, you're SOL.

Once the little lightning bolt on the battery indicators stops blinking, it's fully charged. Yeah, it takes about 4 hours for a full charge, and when they're shipped the batteries only have a partial charge on them, so an hour might not be enough.

Also, if you were playing around with it a lot, skipping between tracks a lot and such, you're going to drain the battery faster because it's more frequenty having to spin the drive to refill the cache.

Also, if you left it unplugged over night, the battery will drain somewhat. It goes into a suspend-to-RAM mode and doesn't actually fully turn itself off, so it's constantly draining the battery to keep power to the RAM. That's one reason why it's best to just always leave it plugged in if it's not being used.