iPod or Zune?

[Smoke]

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.

That's a setting in iTunes itself that does this, and it's supposed to organize your files based on their tags(Artist, album) in the folder you set as your music directory for iTunes(Which is also where the downloaded tracks are stored, and defaults to My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music.

The only way that you would encounter your issue would be if you changed that folder to your C drive, and turned on the automatic organization stuff(Copy files to iTunes Music Folder, a setting on the same section that holds the folder location settings), combined with some pretty bad tagging.

I disabled this option the moment I started iTunes for the first time, added the tracks I wanted and fixed tags where needed(Fairly rare cases), then used it. All my tracks stay in their original folder.

The only flaw in iTunes I found was that it doesn't like files being moved to different folders, and won't help much when trying to find the track again.

[CE]

That's a setting in iTunes itself that does this, and it's supposed to organize your files based on their tags(Artist, album) in the folder you set as your music directory for iTunes(Which is also where the downloaded tracks are stored, and defaults to My Documents\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Music.

The only way that you would encounter your issue would be if you changed that folder to your C drive, and turned on the automatic organization stuff(Copy files to iTunes Music Folder, a setting on the same section that holds the folder location settings), combined with some pretty bad tagging.

I disabled this option the moment I started iTunes for the first time, added the tracks I wanted and fixed tags where needed(Fairly rare cases), then used it. All my tracks stay in their original folder.

The only flaw in iTunes I found was that it doesn't like files being moved to different folders, and won't help much when trying to find the track again.

Yeah I noticed and did the same think. I kinda like the interface too. I'm happy with iTunes.

[defender!!]

i'm with Antipode; i've tried iTunes and hate it. i spent days (weeks, maybe) reorganizing my .mp3 collection with MusicBrainz and tag software and the like.

it just seems like iTunes is more for people who don't care about that stuff, which is fine. i use Winamp and custom keyboard controls, like hitting the number pad buttons that i never use to open up the library, open a URL, etc.

the thing that really turned me off about iTunes is that whenever i used it, if i tried to sort it by album or search or do ANYTHING, even with a small library, there was about a second of lag. maybe i was just working with a few bad computers but i hated it.

on the flipside, has anyone ever tried Foobar? i couldn't get into it. i know it's so customizeable, but i just got annoyed how it would go track 1, track 10, track 11 and THEN track 2, or how various artists had their own section instead of going into the album i wanted them to.

[The Damned]

Yes, Antipode and Smoke, I know about that feature. The problem was that it did it on its own. I wasn't touching the mouse or keyboard at all when it did it. The version or install or something obviously didn't go right, otherwise I wouldn't have had the massive problems with it that I did.

Any way, there are other players out there with better prices, features, battery life and support. But the iPod is the perfect example of how marketing and glossy plastic override its glaring faults and limitations.

Good for Apple. Bad for those of us that want and need more.

[EdgeCrusher]

I unchecked the itunes auto organization and haven't had a problem with it. Point of all of this is, I use to be the biggest anti apple/ipod person in the world on here, if anyone ever saw any of my posts on the subjects. But I can honestly say now that I like my ipod and use itunes easily.

Speaking on the subject though, anyone know a good mass retagger? I have a folder full of VGM that I want to add to itunes but has not be tagged at all. All of it is done just with file naming.

[Razumen]

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.

Really? You do know that that you never do get the full capacity of a drive when it's formatted, right?

[Red Shadow]

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.

cue yamipod to the rescue

its what i use on the ipod i stole from amazon and it works just swimmingly

[atmuh]

I have yet to have any problems with itunes.

I have been using it for a few years now and I agree wholly with this statement.

[Old Man Time]

Really? You do know that that you never do get the full capacity of a drive when it's formatted, right?

Yeah, I forgot about that, that accounts for some of the space you lose, though it isn't always all of it.

[weggy]

Ive gone through 2 ipods - a 4G I got from freeipods.com back in its heyday, and a 30GB Video for a birthday present.

I like my ipod for 3 reasons: First, iTunes is a pretty solid program. Only downsides being its a resource hog (and you can, as others said, change wether or not you want it to organize stuff). Second, it overwhelmingly has the support of 3rd party applications/accessories. Finally, in the same venue as 2, I can put Linux on it and play Doom. (w00t!)

The Zune sucks. $20 from every Zune goes to Universal Music and some sort of piracy repirations. Plus their software is pretty bad, and is still buggy. The screen is nice though.

The Zen I havent had much experience with. I dont see it as being bad, it just has less 3rd party apps/accessories... so I lean towards the ipod.

[TimberWolf]

Ive gone through 2 ipods - a 4G I got from freeipods.com back in its heyday, and a 30GB Video for a birthday present.

I like my ipod for 3 reasons: First, iTunes is a pretty solid program. Only downsides being its a resource hog (and you can, as others said, change wether or not you want it to organize stuff). Second, it overwhelmingly has the support of 3rd party applications/accessories. Finally, in the same venue as 2, I can put Linux on it and play Doom. (w00t!)

The Zune sucks. $20 from every Zune goes to Universal Music and some sort of piracy repirations. Plus their software is pretty bad, and is still buggy. The screen is nice though.

The Zen I havent had much experience with. I dont see it as being bad, it just has less 3rd party apps/accessories... so I lean towards the ipod.

Haven't tried the linux thing... If i could play games on my ipod that were actually worth playing, i'd basically never stop!

[DrEw.]

I got a 4gig nano for xmas and It really works great. Itunes, on the other hand, is a big pain in the ass. I would never use it in a million years unless I had to.

I had a 128 meg MP3 player made by Intel for about 7 years. It still works great. I don't even know if they still make them, but thier products are usually well made.

[linkspast]

wow 7 years old... Thats pretty cool.

[Smoke]

Really? You do know that that you never do get the full capacity of a drive when it's formatted, right?

The whole 1000/1024 bytes in a kilobyte thing has been going on for years, and it's rather annoying. And the larger a drive gets, the bigger the discrepancy becomes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte#Consumer_confusion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Legal_disputes

More on it there.

[Czar Diego]

Also, remember that the player's firmware takes up space too. That accounts for a litle of it.

I have the 60 gig Zen Vision M. It is teh sexx. The picture/video quality of the screen is amazing for a 2.5 inch, and it handled all my video files just fine, and converted the ones that it didn't. It was also only a little more than the 30 gig, from where I got it.

It also has a decent amount of accesories. I <3 it.

[SilentChasm]

If you didn't notice from my posts on the Zen Vision M, I have one and it's working perfectly. I used to use a Zen Xtra, and a Nomad IIc before that.

I organize everything myself and have over 15GB of music alone. I used to use the software that came with it (Creative MediaSource) but when I reformatted to Win2k (more stable, secure, generally faster) it didn't work with the updated firmware on the player so I switched to Media Monkey and haven't looked back.

Media Monkey works with iPods, Zens and other MP3 players and makes tagging and organizing a breeze. Playlist transfer works better than MediaSource and it keeps the track order. Album art can easily be embedded in the tags so it always will display on an iPod or anything else that supports it.

Also supports winamp plugins for stuff like chipamp so you can easily convert music.

EdgeCrusher:

MediaMonkey has an "Auto-tag from filename" feature that makes it really useful for stuff like that.

You can just use stuff like strings like

<Album>\<Track#> - <Artist> - <Title>

or

<Year>\<Genre>\<Artist> - <Album>\<Title>

and many other ways of doing it including conditional statements in order to tag files and it will automatically change the tags for you.

So if you had VGM music (ex. "Chrono Cross - 102 The Brink of Death.mp3" you could set it to

\<Album> - <Track#> <Title>

and it would tag it for you.

There are also other ID3 tagging programs to automatically do it for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3#Editing_ID3_tags

[Razumen]

I used to have a Creative Zen, don't remember the model but it was a earlier one with 30GB and a nice 24hr lifespan before recharge, unfortunately the touchpad frequently stopped responding so I ended up returning it.

How does the touchpad on the Zen Vision M hold up so far?

[Bren]

Why is it that everything made by Microsoft has to be "evil" and shunned? I have only heard good things about the Zune from people I asked about it. The reason behind it is in fact a counter from Bill Gates that Mac had terrible customer support for people buying Ipods. At least that's my understanding from what I've read and heard.

On that note, I would certainly trust a Zen, because a Nomad was my first MP3 player, and it worked great for a few years. Not saying it broke...it still works, I just haven't had a need for portable music much anymore.

[Devyn]

Neither. There are other MP3 players in the world, which are available for cheaper prices. But if you're limiting yourselves to those two, go for the ipod. Don't make me count the reasons.

[Katsurugi]

Why is it that everything made by Microsoft has to be "evil" and shunned? I have only heard good things about the Zune from people I asked about it. The reason behind it is in fact a counter from Bill Gates that Mac had terrible customer support for people buying Ipods. At least that's my understanding from what I've read and heard.

On that note, I would certainly trust a Zen, because a Nomad was my first MP3 player, and it worked great for a few years. Not saying it broke...it still works, I just haven't had a need for portable music much anymore.

Microsoft isn't evil. But certainly a lot of people seem to think so. Personally, I distrust a lot of first gen. hardware. I read up about the iPod before it was released, however, I knew there were some issues that might arise. Lo and behold, battery life was teh suck. I think that the same goes for the Zune as well. It does have a lot of features such as wireless file sharing that does seem quite cool. This would be a definite plus for musicians at conventions or wherever they may be. I'm just going to wait until a lot of the kinks get worked out before I consider getting one.

In general, I think that user software interface is the biggest question though. If you've ever used Sony's software for MD players, you will know that it's absolutely horrible. The hardware was amazing though! But I for something like audio files, which I am more than likely to swap around, delete and add, the interface has to be friendly and simple. Compared to Sony's SoundStage, I think iTunes is a big step up, but I know that a lot of other people (including my sister) find it annoying and even a bit cumbersome. But I'd probably like something where there was no interface at all, and you'd just load up songs as if it were a portable hard drive. This is what older mp3 players actually did, but it's a dying approach due to piracy and all that jazz.

As of right now, the Zen Vision M is pretty sweet and it's probably my first choice if I had to pick one now.

(Isn't the Nomad made by Creative? Your argument would make more sense if it were made by Microsoft.)

[JJT]

The Office Season 3 Pass + iPod = shortest flights of my life.

If you're looking for a raw mp3 player, then the 'pod probably isn't worth the money.

[SilentChasm]

I used to have a Creative Zen, don't remember the model but it was a earlier one with 30GB and a nice 24hr lifespan before recharge, unfortunately the touchpad frequently stopped responding so I ended up returning it.

How does the touchpad on the Zen Vision M hold up so far?

Haven't had any problems with the touchpad. It can be a little sensitive at times but you can reset the sensitivity. I never was a fan of touch pads on MP3 players but I can see why people like them (more precise control of scrolling speed).

But I'd probably like something where there was no interface at all, and you'd just load up songs as if it were a portable hard drive.

MTP players allow the folders on the player itself to be accessed and music drug to. You can open it up like an Explorer window and copy the files over just like that. MTP is what's in PlaysForSure devices such as the Zen Vision M.

The Player usually has two directorys.

\Media Library\

\Data\

Inside Media Library there is a folder for each content type

Music, My Playlists, My Recordings, My Slideshows, Pictures, Video, TV(the folder that XP MCE transfers recorded shows to) and ZENcast(Creative's audio/video podcast program)

You don't have to use any kind of program: if you have WMP10 or WMP11, you can just drag and drop.

It doesn't matter where you put the files(as long as they're in the correct type folder), as they usually get the track info from the ID3 tags.

[Bren]

(Isn't the Nomad made by Creative? Your argument would make more sense if it were made by Microsoft.)

Yes. Like you mentioned, the Zune is a first release, so I'm not entirely sure I'd want to go out and buy one not knowing exactly how reliable it is...I'm simply stating I think it has good potential, and that I have heard very few negative comments about it so far...

I'm just saying that in addition, I would definitely trust a Zen, since I've owned a creative mp3 player which worked perfectly as long as Ive had it (as far as I know, it still works)