The Archos, and I'm pretty sure certain iRivers. I remember hearing of a player that CAME running linux, but I could be wrong about that. It's one of those things you'd have to look up, tofu...and to be honest, I don't care enough to.

You might be talking about Rockbox, not Linux.

Samsungs are garbage. Whatever you do, don't get a Samsung player. Also don't get a Rio... some people like them, but I think they're crap as well. Personally, I love my 30GB Photo, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Pretty much, you pay the extra money for the fantastic interface and the sexy look.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]The Archos, and I'm pretty sure certain iRivers. I remember hearing of a player that CAME running linux, but I could be wrong about that. It's one of those things you'd have to look up, tofu...and to be honest, I don't care enough to.[/QUOTE]

http://www.archos.com/products/overview/pma_400.html

Runs linux.

I don't know about their newer players, but the Rio Karma is legendary among audiophiles for having an incredible number of features and excellent sound quality. It also has decent battery life and a nice interface, from what I've heard. It's a bit big by today's standards. It's discontinued, but you can still find them. One cool feature is how you can plug it into a LAN and use it as a music server.

I have a friend who works in the MP3 player section of Circuit City, and he tells me every chance he gets about how iRiver is so much better then iPod.

I need at least 40 GB in an MP3 player. Everyone seems to say how you get more for your money with iAudio or iRiver. I don't see either selling a 40 GB MP3 player, let alone a 60 GB. Not to mention the iRiver H10 is $299 and 20 GB, whereas the new iPod at $299 is 30 GB. The choice is clear to me. I guess it helps that I don't care about support for other formats; call me crazy but all I want an MP3 player to do is play MP3s.

I want a portable media player, that is flash drive, that will play much music for many hours.

iRivers noobins

If you like the ****tiest bass quality possible, I say go iPod.

You mean less features.

For harddrive based MP3 players, and even non hdd mp3 players, it's become standard to at /least/ have FM radio, if not be able to record off it, have an internal mic, and/or a line-in jack to record from.

The iPod has none of these.

Yet they charge you $100 more for a pretty interface and the brandname.

There are many other better players out there. Most have been suggested prior in this thread.

Actually, I haven't looked into the new Rio players... I thought they went out of business? Anyway, I had the old Rio 600 a while back, and I got it replaced four times. They all stopped working for different reasons... what are the odds of that? And the PC interface was awful. I don't know much about the new Rio players, but that LAN thing is pretty cool.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]If you like the ****tiest bass quality possible, I say go iPod.[/QUOTE]

My sounds just fine. But, then, I'm one of those scary and creepy people who can't hear the dramatic and blood-chilling audio flaws in 128 kbps audio files.



And...FM radio? The reason I bought an MP3 player was so that I could choose what songs to listen to, and not be forced to endure another "Bring Me to Life." As for recording capabilities...iPod has that feature, albeit with an add-on (haven't priced them). But, as above, I don't need to record stuff. The only possible setting would be a class lecture, and I do a lot better if I actually pay attention in class and write the notes, and, if I miss anything, I can always ask the teacher to repeat him- or herself.

[quote=Rogue Leader]I have a friend who works in the MP3 player section of Circuit City...[/quote]

Consider the source. :p

Simply because the iPod doesn't have the superfluous features that others have doesn't mean that it's a bad MP3 player.

Yes, but despite how "superfluous" they may be, you're paying EXTRA for LESS.

And the radio function is very handy, especially when you need a traffic report.

[QUOTE=Cool Matty]Yes, but despite how "superfluous" they may be, you're paying EXTRA for LESS.

And the radio function is very handy, especially when you need a traffic report.[/QUOTE]

Yup. The only iPod I could see myself getting is the Nano, mainly because of its actually decent battery life when you want to skip around songs (which I tend to do), its size, and it's look. But still, there's just better players out there.

Wolfy, turn it up past half volume and the bass sounds so distorted and crappy it's not even funny, ESPECIALLY on the crap stock earbuds. Also, it's actually a lot more normal than most people think not to be able to tell the diff between 128 and higher (though not so common as some would make you want to think). It also depends on how closely you listen to your music, what kind of music you listen to, etc. It's when people claim they can't tell the difference between 320 and 96 that I become skeptical, or when they claim they can hear the difference between 320 and lossless.

But yeah, the FM radio rules, line out rules, recording rules, and so does the LAN thing though, admittedly, I've never heard of that anywhere else. iPods COULD record, with a rather expensive addon, and only in 8khz 32kbps or something like that--REALLY horrible quality. Worse than telephone conversations. Now they finally made it able to record 96khz mono 128kbps I think, something decent like that, maybe 192. I'm not sure if you need a new addon or what, though.

The iPod is just an overpopular, overappreciated player, FOR THE MOST PART. There's only three reasons I could see owning one--
1) You buy too much music on iTunes, or have never heard of dbpoweramp for ripping CDs.
2) You own a mac
3) You buy a nano or the new iPod (nano because of the battery life and whatnot, the new one because 30 gigs for 300 is a damn good deal, really.)

Also, I've heard great things about samsungs. It's just the battery life I've not heard anything about. I'd really like to try out a flash player of theirs

I'm waiting on my new 4gb white nano from Apple.

Those are MSRPs, maximum suggested retail prices. Check street prices on a good price search engine such as Froogle.

Actually, MSRP stands for Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. Lowest I could find a 20 GB H10 for was about $260 US. I'll take 10 more GB for $40 any day, and that's assuming paying full price for the iPod (which, as a student, I wouldn't). I'm not a huge iPod fanboy or anything, I haven't had one for almost a year and when I did I didn't use it much, I just think the iPod haters are as bad as the fanboys. And I firmly believe that if the H10 was the ultrapopular player right now, most of the people who are now in support of iRiver would support Apple.

For me, I'd love features like FM radio and voice recording, but if that comes at the cost of not getting nearly as much capacity, there's just no way. I can live without trivial features that I won't use often, I can't live without large capacity.

Trivial features like...sound quality?

Seriously, guys, the sound quality on iPods is horrendous compared to players like mobiblu, iaudio, and iriver, especially when they allow you to make your own EQs.

I had a iRiver H-120. Loved the player. Drag and Drop, SRS sound, microphone, FM Radio, all you could want.

I used the FM Radio feature once, the microphone recording once (to record my sexual predator of a drivers ed teacher. If you want the hilarious audio, just message me), and the equalizer wasn't that advanced. The menu system was a lot "clunkier" than the iPod. It was still great, with .m3u support and such, but just going to an exact artist is a pain because of the joystick. That may be fixed with the new H10 since they use touch scroll.

I vowed never to get an iPod the day I got that H-120. Well, less than 4 months later, the hard drive literally exploded in the H-120. So I went searching for an mp3 player, and I got an iPod. Best menu system around, most accessories, my personal favorite looking mp3 player, and it played music. I bought the iPod to play music. Not to listen to radio, which I can do in the car. Not to record things, which I already have a recording device.

And your extra for less thing doesn't really apply CM. It all depends on what the individual values. Maybe the person values a simplistic player like the iPod more than one with features that they will never use that has a clunkier interface. They value ease of use with the iPod more than the slightly advanced learning-curve of the iRiver. Principal rule of economics. If the individual thinks it's efficient, then it is efficient for him.

So yeah, if you value features more than ease of use, by all means get a different player. I will be the first to say that you can't do most of the things an iRiver can do or even a Creative. But if you want something that plays music, and you literally don't care about FM Radio (which you can listen to in the car), or micorphone recording, then consider an iPod, which is now very competitively priced at 300 bucks for 30GB, as Yoshi stated above. That's only 270 actually with student discount, which is a GREAT deal.

And going slightly back, yes, Rob, you are right. The customized firmware for the iRiver's is the Rockbox firmware. I waited so long to see if that was released. That alone MAY have swayed my decision to get my H-120 repaired.

Yeah, and Microsoft patented the click wheel, so Apple has to pay up to them. LOL!

i <3 my ipod (20 gig). I have a dock for it in my car. and im my house. everywhere i go i just mount it for travel and parties. ive had it for about 10 months and have not had a single issue with it yet. and itunes rules.

NEW QUESTION;

Do they make flash memory MP3 players, that you can stick like SD memory cards in?

It's been a long journey towards the Ipod for me. When I first wanted a players like that, I bought a CD/Mp3 player from Rio. Unfortunately, that proved to be a huge mistake as the thing broke a few months after I bought it.

Next up was an Archos 20Gb player. That was my first mp3 player, and I look back on it fondly, however the thing was a brick, and had crappy battery life. In fact, that was the reasonI ended up casting it aside; although it had replaceable batteries, for some reason they would not charge fully.

Third on the list was a Neuros Player. Now, this was the mother of players at that point for me. It was 20Gb if I recall, had a microphone, FM transmitter, FM capability, and the ability to record radio. However, problems soon came up. In order to put music on the player, one had to have the entire database at your disposal. So, If I went down to Florida for a vacation, and bought a CD and ripped it, I could not put it on the Neuros unless I recreated the database on whatever computer was at my disposal. That would and did take hours, so it wasn't worth it. A few times my library got erased for no reason, which was a great source of consternation. This player actually was close to the size of a brick, so it was not portable at all. Finally, the battery life after a few months was 3 hours at the max.

So there I was last summer, with a lousy mp3 player and college looming. I decided it was time for a new one. Buck counselled me, and we came down to two conclusions; his iRiver model, and the iPod. For years I had longed after an iPod, but they were too expensive for my tastes. I remember sitting down at the food court at the mall discussing it with Buck, and I decided to go with his iRiver. However, we then realized two factors came into play that didn't get any consideration at first. One, was that I bought a great deal of music off Itunes, and still do. The second was a natural extension of the first; the computer I would be using for college was an iBook G4. I remember Buck saying, "Go with the iPod. No question." So I purchased a 20Gb 3rd Gen, and that lasted me until this past summer.

When the fourth gens had come out, I was ticked off because it was a mere 2 weeks after I had bought the 3rd Gen. However, Apple was kind enough to give me the 100 dollar difference back in store credit, so my anger was abated. However, this past summer, Apple updated all the current iPods to color, and slashed prices. Suddenly, a 60GB iPod was the same price as my 3rd Gen has been one year ago. So I sold the 3rd Gen, and went with the 60GB.

This was a long winded response, but here's my two cents. Itunes is god. Compared to my earlier players, syncing music etc. etc has never been easier. Editing is also a hell of a lot better than what I had at my disposal previously. Secondly, you've got the looks. It may be a flimsy reason to spend a little extra cash, but come on. If you've got the money and want to have an mp3 player that just look damn good, why not? Buck covered the economical reasons behind this in his post. The iPod's battery life is actually decent now, really the biggest objection to it's pricing earlier. As for the sound, I'm sorry but I don't hear this crappy quality everyone talks about. I'm not an audiophile and that may have something to do with it, but the point remains it sounds good. There are thousands of accessories for the Ipod that allow for features of other mp3 players, and in my experience are decently priced and also match the iPod in looks. For example, Grffin's iTrips fit perfectly with the whole style of the iPod. Now, am I here to say the iPod is the best mp3 player out there? I can't tell you, I've given up the search. However, I see the iPod as an excellent player, that is not horrendously overpriced, looks good, and does it it's job; play music.

Yeah, don't even consider a CD player. When the first MP3 came out, everything else became obsolete. But, I can't advise on an MP3 cuz I don't own one. :/

See, I need a flash player, for when I go dirtbiking.

If I can still find it.. I have a helmet that I wired all up with little speakers, so I can have a little music while I have a ride.

I also had plans of making a phone attachment, that I could plug my cellphone into, and talk while I was riding.

my mini is indestructable.

The first mp3 player or really portable media player/handheld game console I got was a PSP whiched costed $250 plus tax. I bought a 512 MB Memory Stick Pro Duo for $80 plus tax. I loaded some songs onto it. At the time I wasn't really into music. That changed very soon. I realized why did i pay nearly $350 for a PSP and an memory stick when I could of gotten a better mp3 player. The thing was also pretty bulky in my pocket. I now use it squarely for games and movies.

I've got a 512mb Audiovox Sport MP3/WMA player. It doubles as a jump drive. I fit on average about a hundred songs on there, which gets me through my work shift( which is about the only time I use it) Sound quality is excellent. Battery life is about 12 hours on one AAA battery, which is a lot better than my previous Rio.(It lasted 6 hours).

Who the hell buys a PSP for the music?

You see, everyone who has/uses iPods usually doesn't have experience with other players, or only has experience with ones that have huge flaws. iRiver, iAudio, and Creative all have fixed most of these flaws, and provide more for less, and the sound quality is much better. I'm not saying the iPod is a bad music player, but comparably...why bother when they're ~ the same price?