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iPod or Zune?


shadowbeard
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How ironic that this page comes up... My year and a half old Zen just died yesterday in the car...for good. All i did was shut it off and when i came back out to the car it wouldnt start up. I tried resetting it but it is stuck on the intro screen. So... im gonna go buy an ipod. The touch-pad on the Zen (in my opinion) SUCKED MAJORLY but...maybe the new version of Zen is better.

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sounds like the Zen is the way to go. My only final concern is the stuff I've bought over Itunes in the past. The Zune interface can't even load the purcahsed songs. For the Zen, i'd just drop them in a folder and they would be automatically recognized? Sounds easy enough for even me.

No...you won't be able to run any iTunes purchased music on either the Zune or the Zen. iTunes can convert formats, but it will not convert from anything DRM'ed. You'll have to look for some sort of illegal DRM stripper software to get your iTunes purchased music on any non-Apple player. This is why the iTunes store is extremely lame. Most of the other music service work with a bunch of different (non-apple) players. Though I think the URGE service that works with zune only works with zune..not sure.

I bought an ipod recently...I would rather have had something else like a Zune or Zen, but my car's stereo has a data jack for iPods that lets you play your ipod in the car and browse your library from the stereo display. That was too good to pass up.

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b = bit

B = byte = 8 bits

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE

I have a 30GB iPod (more like 27.82 GB) and I'm quite content with it, especially since I didn't pay even a penny for it. I got lucky and found it in a taxi.

However, if I didn't have one and wanted to get an mp3 player, I'd probably go with the Zen. Then again, all the music I have takes up less than 1 GB, and I don't watch videos on the go, so a flash-based player would be good enough for me.

Also, this is my first post since the death of UnMod. :[

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I got a Toshiba Gigabeat F, and I'm running Rockbox on it (it doesn't run on the Gigabeat S at all, yet. But, check it out. It does run on a good selection of portable players). It's great. It plays almost any format of music I want (including NSF and SPC, with patches [you'd need to compile these yourself]). I can even play Gameboy, and Gameboy Color games on it. Someone even ported Doom to Rockbox, so there's that as well.

Honestly though, the extras (GB/C, Doom, what have you) aren't what intersts me. Its the functionality, and expandability of Rockbox that got me. It can play just about anything I want. Really, it comes down to this. Rockbox allows me to use my player the way I want to use it.

The nice thing about the Gigabeat is that it's a really powerful system, for being a portable player. I don't know anything about the Creative line of players, so I don't have much to say about them. However, the Gigabeat is great. I'd suggest that, if you want to run Rockbox, that you at least look into it. Good luck on your decision though. Mouser X out.

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I have a 30GB iPod and I've never regretted the purchase.

The wheel allows for fast and easy navigation and the connection/organization services with iTunes are great. I wish it had been a bit cheaper of course, but nothing can be helped there. If I had as much money as I wanted I would still get the iPod over the Zen and Zune. I didn't get it for the brand name, I got it for the functionality, and it hasn't let me down.

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One of the things I don't like about the Gigabeat line is the secret DRMing it does to your files. This was something that caused me to never buy one.

It's not very well known, but if you look it up, you should be able to find a few forums where they discuss it.

I'm well aware of the SAT format that they create when you transfer files to it. Guess what? I've never used the software, or firmware, that comes with the unit. As soon as I got it, I installed Rockbox, and never bothered with anything else. It works great, so I have no need that I can think of for ever using the original software or firmware.

You're right though. Their SAT stuff does suck. However, you can "remove" their DRM stuff using a simple workaround. Connect the Gigabeat in WMP10 mode (or, whatever it is), and when browsing the unit, they're show up as MP3s. When you transfer them back to your PC, it transfers at USB 1.1 speeds, but you can get your files back that way. However, I think it's transcoding them back to MP3. At least, from what I've heard anyway, this works. As I said, I never gave my unit the chance to create SAT files, so I have no reason to attempt to transfer SATs back to MP3s. If you have a Gigabeat F, I can't think of any reason not to use Rockbox. Some people have even gotten 20 hours of runtime on one charge using Rockbox (though, that's definitely not the norm. 15-17 hours is).

Basically, in regards to Rockbox, I strongly recommend the Gigabeat as the way to go. Sure, Rockbox will run on iPods and iRivers, but the Gigabeat has them beat in CPU power. The potential for the unit is pretty nice. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that SAT encryption is an unimportant concern for Gigabeat users that run Rockbox. Mouser X out.

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I have a 30GB iPod and I've never regretted the purchase.

The wheel allows for fast and easy navigation and the connection/organization services with iTunes are great. I wish it had been a bit cheaper of course, but nothing can be helped there. If I had as much money as I wanted I would still get the iPod over the Zen and Zune. I didn't get it for the brand name, I got it for the functionality, and it hasn't let me down.

iTunes organization services and great in the same sentence? Their organization sucks major ass :( .

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b = bit

B = byte = 8 bits

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE

I have a 30GB iPod (more like 27.82 GB) and I'm quite content with it, especially since I didn't pay even a penny for it. I got lucky and found it in a taxi.

All devices with hard drives list the capacity as greater than it really is. My creative labs jukebox did that too - its not just apple. What they do is count 1000 bytes as a kilobyte, instead of 1024 (2^10). Its devious, but everyone does it.

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QFE. Fucking iTunes... it's for lazy/ignorant people that don't care about how their files are handled.

Hate iTunes...

There aren't that many alternatives to iTunes for some iPod users. For example, ephpod stopped their support after v2.77 making it useless for new generation iPods. That being said, if you have to use a mediocre piece of software to get your device to work the way you want it, so be it. Not to sound cliché or anything: don't hate on the player hate the game.

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QFE. Fucking iTunes... it's for lazy/ignorant people that don't care about how their files are handled.

Hate iTunes...

I actually switched to iTunes because I liked the interface. For a long time I used WinAmp (and still do for various purposes), but as my mp3 collection grew, it became harder and harder to manage them and find what songs I wanted. At first is was easy enough to simply click the file and play, but then I had so many files that became annoying. Then I tried the media library, which was an improvement, but it still didn't work well. iTunes on the other hand, was just what I was looking for. Besides, the fact that I have an iPod also made it easier than using and managing two different libraries.

It just works.

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I should clarify. I didn't mean that I liked the way iTunes automatically organized your music - I meant that I liked the ease of use it has in allowing you to organize your own music. I spent many hours manually doing it all myself and while it may have been easier to let iTunes do it I know I wouldn't have been satisfied with how it did it - I've seen how it works on other people's libraries.

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What I don't like about it it the fact that when I installed it, it then proceeded to move all my files around, placed them in different directories, and move any files that for some reason didn't meet its restrictions into another folder. It wasn't like it was all done under another folder. No, it sent these folders all over the hard drive. I was digging them out of the Windows directory, game directories, system folders, everywhere. It went completely fucking nuts.

I spent two days manually reorganizing every file back to its proper folder and sub-folder. Tens of thousands of songs, haphazardly thrown around because the program didn't like the way the ID3 tags were done.

Basically, I had the worst experience with iTunes. And combined with the massive problems the iPod had, and the complete and total failure that was Apple customer support... I will never buy an iPod ever again. I don't care if they hand out free blowjobs for a year with one. It won't change my mind.

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I ended up going with the iPod. The Zen was really tempting, but I liked the way the software for Zune and ipod organized my library for me (I don't even remeber where half the stuff on my hard drive is anymore I'm so unorganized). However, the Zune was quickly outed because I couldn't play all the media formats I could with the iPod, and because the Zune store is run off microsoft points, the same retarded system xbox 360 uses.

Most people probably already know why MS points suck, but in case you don't: Basically, you can only buy points in $5 increments, for 400 points. 400 for $5, 800 for $10, and so on. They usually price albums at right above a 400 mark (a new CD is, for example, 1280), so you have to buy the next increment up to get what you want. Spending $20 on points to get a $15.30 item is annoying.

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What I don't like about it it the fact that when I installed it, it then proceeded to move all my files around, placed them in different directories, and move any files that for some reason didn't meet its restrictions into another folder.

You do realize that when you're installing iTunes you are given the option to "have itunes organize your music for you", and that you can uncheck this while you're installing. I always just uncheck that box and I've never had a problem. But if it put them in the windows directory or game directories, I can't explain that - weird stuff... I'd be just as angry, likely.

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