Imagist

Well, hell, if I had known Rockbox ran on the iAudio X5 series I'd have been running it with this X5L all along. If I can't fix it maybe I ought to consider just going for a new 30GB X5L... We'll see. My dad claims that as long as the hard drive is still good and the actual sound chip isn't broken then he should be able to repair the output mechanism.

With the iPod--when it freezes, it's easy to reset, right? It's usually just a temporary nuisance? As far as Creative, I've always thought the players were high-quality but in the past they've always been more expensive than competing players (iPod in particular). It's definitely something to look at, though, as the Vision:M is only $220 at Amazon right now. The only really negative thing I've heard about it is the sound quality--supposedly the bass defaults to something awfully low, even though everything else is loud and clear. Has anyone heard of a trade-in option at Best Buy? I've heard of friends trading in their old players for credit toward new/upgraded units, but I don't know if this requires a purchase receipt or warranty from Best Buy, or if damaged units are accepted, or what. I know someone who turned in an old Rio player and covered the difference for a newer model a couple years ago, but I'll have to ask him one of the upcoming days what the details of that were. Anyone know anything about this?

So my iAudio X5L fell four feet to concrete and now plays scratches and static rather than music. I'm looking into getting it repaired (it seems the hard drive is intact, just the output that's messed up), but I may rather just buck up and shell out for a new player. I could just purchase a new 30GB X5L for about $250 right now on Amazon, but the model was old when I bought it a year ago and I'm wondering if there aren't newer, better options out there. That said, I'm looking for recommendations and advice. Yes, it's another one of these threads. As far as what I'm looking for, the big pluses about the X5L for me were the superb battery life (it was advertised for 35 hours, but I never really saw more than 30, probably because it was a refurbished rather than new unit; regardless, 20+ is still fine by me), the broad range file format compatibility (.ogg and .flac in particular, although certain files of the latter were buggy), the recording options (both built-in microphone and line-in), and the really excellent sound quality with plenty of equalizing and balancing options (which is kind of a given when you've got something made by audiophile Koreans). So something with most or all of those is what I'm aiming for. Other features, like the file tree system where music is sorted by directories rather than artist>album>song given in ID3 tags (which is moot for me because I have all my files sorted into directories with that exact structure anyway), the FM tuner (which I used once, just because I could, but might use when I'm off to college where I hear the radio stations play much better songs), and the customizable wallpaper from stored pictures, were also handy but not necessary. The file tree system, however, was good because I only had to open the player from My Computer and copy/paste My Music to the player's own music directory, without any cumbersome syncing software. As far as size, I have a 20GB unit and find it to be plenty of space. The most I ever used was 16GB, and that was when I was converting Red vs. Blue videos to test video playback, which would have been much nicer if I had anything worthwhile to play. However, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be spending much of my summer expanding my music collection, so something more like 30GB (which seems to be more standard in large HDD players now anyway) would be good. I was looking into an iPod, partially because of the sheer amount of accessories and support out there, and partially because as much as I hate iTunes, I could see myself downloading a decent amount of videos from the iTunes store to help fill up a 30GB iPod if I had one. I'm just not sure I want to go down that route, because it seems to really lack a lot of versatility and functionality, and if I didn't do that then I probably wouldn't have much need for video playback because I don't have any videos right now that I could see myself watching on the go. Well, I appreciate any helpful suggestions, but I also figure I'd open this thread up to any discussion of music and media players in general--what's good, what's not so good, bad experiences, etc. If this thread finds a life of its own, so be it.

Or, you know, something for the next generation and--God forbid--new.

...How are your critical reading skills? Tycho approached it as a rumor, and said nothing more than it would make sense given how successful WoW has been. Also, just as a note, at no point does he refer to the rumored title as an "MMORPG," just an "MMO." There is still no trustworthy confirmation about anything other than the fact that Blizzard is looking for people to work on a new MMO. Who even knows what the time frame on it is? If they're still looking for important leadership positions development-side, it's clearly not far out of initial planning.

I said this like forever ago. Also, if they were going to go with a cheap, formulaic naming scheme, it would probably be Worlds of Starcraft.

Uhhh, have you seen all these shinies? I'd be inclined to call BS without hard proof.

In case you haven't already, G_D, you might want to petition a mod to change the thread title to reflect the new competition. Don't want to turn away potential entrants.

That's what I'm thinking. If the MMO is StarCraft, then the "next-gen" aspect of it might be an incorporation of RTS elements. Who knows what kind of genre hybrid they might be working at?

Given that Raimi hopes to keep doing these movies, has it occurred to anyone else that he's thinking ahead with Venom and has some idea like "the explosion scrambled Brock and the symbiote and bonded them together irreversibly," so that Venom will be as fearsome as he ought to be next time around, with doubletalk and giant tongue and less or no grinning Topher Grace? If he plans to keep this up, Raimi's got to know that Venom is a much bigger villain than he was in this film and has got to have a continuing presence, not just a third of a movie, focused on him. Of course, this may not happen if everything falls from underneath him, but it seems to me that Raimi's got to intend something along these lines.

I imagine having a group of people you (at least indirectly) know to begin with would be good. I tried to get a friend to try out the beta with me but he gave up at level 4. "It's just a WoW clone"--and he stopped playing WoW 8 months ago. He didn't believe me when I said it got a little more interesting, probably because he really doesn't want to start playing MMOs again.

No need for PMs. Not all nontraditional haiku is "moku," which is really just a neologism coined by one modern poet to describe her own work rather than everyone else's. Modern Western haiku is extremely broad and varied, often staying true to the Japenese tradition in brevity only, and that Ezra Pound haiku is one of the most famous examples of it. Here is my entry: *edited out to protect potential publishing interests--pm me if you'd like to see my co-winning entry of this competition for critical purposes*

That's a plain unwarranted quip. I am sick and tired of WoW. I never played the 60 endgame so I was completely unprepared for how horribly dull and unrewarding 70 turned out to be. I'm not talking fast and frantic. I'm okay (great, even) with the combat style being slower paced and more tactical, but--hell, maybe it was just my rig, but I turned every option down and it was still just generally choppy. Movement was jumpy, the UI didn't feel responsive, and things just didn't run too smoothly. I was really turned off when playing my Dwarf Hunter there, and although the Hobbit Minstrel was interesting (interesting class, interesting albeit repetitive homeland), it wasn't worth the clumsiness. Don't take the question as an attack on the game. It's an honest question. I'd like to give the game another shot but I'm not blowing $50 without reasonable reassurance. I might just have to wait and see a little further down the road.

I guess it's nice for people who are already dropping $1500 a month on their cards, or people who don't mind playing in random spurts whenever they manage to spend a total of $1500. If there were a way to use both points and cash to pay for game time, then hell, why not? But otherwise... nah.

A) No comments on submissions until after the contest is over. You seem to have an extremely limited definition of haiku. You probably also think all haiku are three-line poems with a five-seven-five syllable pattern. I refer you to Mr. Ezra Pound (link).

Holy shit, actual choices. Yes.

I've only recently started watching this show. I just finished episode 7 and have more queued in uTorrent. So far so good--although it seems to have a trend of two fantastic episodes followed by a dull one, as I didn't care for episodes 3 and 6. I'm hoping this trend doesn't continue.

So you purchased the game? Is everything still ridiculously slow and clumsy engine-wise in the live release?

I hope I have time to write come Tuesday. I need to pull something together for class sometime soon anyway.