What Low Cost Player would you recommend?I have the MP3 Hookup in my truck and would like to get an MP3 Player so I can Put most or all of the CD's I listen too on it.I found what looks to be a Couple of pretty good Refurbished 4GB players at Tiger Direct.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3402959&sku=S153-7014 (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3402959&sku=S153-7014)
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3505307&sku=R104-7004 (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3505307&sku=R104-7004)
Do these look OK? I've Always liked RCA Products and that ones under my Price Range.I don't want to go Over $60 for one right now.If anyone has any other Suggestions I'm Open. :dunno_white:
I see no problem with em :dunno_white: you could keep an eye on woot, they have some pretty good deals on there on occasion.
Looks like the RCA Doesn't Support Windows Vista and the RCA Site doesn't have an Update. :icon_confused:
The other one doesn't have WMA only MP3 and MP4. :icon_confused:
Dude, nothing is supported by vista :cookoo: still :cookoo: keep your eye on woot.com, I've seen decent players for under $50 about once a week for a while now.
:oops: :oops: :oops: Didn't know that.Sorry Bastards are Falling behind on technology nowdays aren't they. :icon_rolleyes:
Will do on Woot.I found another one on TD I may try.It Supports Vista looks like. :thumb:
Yeah, good ol Microsoft is sucking pretty hard these days.
If you see one that works with your OS and is a good price, go ahead. It's pretty hard to f%$k up the programming on a flash based mp3 player, so they're all pretty much the same.
I just bought a pair of Creative Zen Stone Pluses for my sister and I. Look to be rather nice. 4gb with FM, voice recorder, etc, etc and a screen to boot (beats my shuffle). Haven't played with them too much yet but I they should be in the price range and are highly reviewed on Engadget.
Back when I owned a computer store I used to buy from these guys alot...
http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=MP3 (http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=MP3)
And
www.newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com)
Never had much experience with geeks.com, but newegg.com is a very reputable site.
I bought a refurb Sandisk Sansa E260 (2GB) player on woot.com a couple of weeks ago. It was $50 and Best Buy has them new for $120. It is very small, has a very intuitive ipod-like interface, and sounds great. You might be able to find someone else selling these refurbed.
Thanks Trumpetguy I found a E260 4GB on Tiger Direct for $69.99 with a $10.00 rebate.I think I'll go with it. :thumb:
Or maybe the Mach Speed Trio Onyx for the same Price. :icon_confused: :icon_confused:
Actually mine is a 4gb. It is a great player. You'll like it.
I'm trying the Mach Speed Trio.Like to have gotten the E260 since it has the Micro Card Slot but the Trio looked Pretty neat.I'll let you all know how it works. :thumb: Thanks for the Suggestions. :thumb:
Seriously???
Sorry but one of the few things apple has done that I like is the iPod. I have a a 2nd Gen nano. Bought my wife the 3rd Gen video Nano for christmas. I actually believe the quality of the product is worth waht you pay for it. With the addition of some nice noise cancelling headphones you'll hear parts of your music that you never knew were there, or at least I have since I have bad hearing.
iPod FTW!
Quote from: bettingpython on December 27, 2007, 01:37:26 PM
Seriously???
Sorry but one of the few things apple has done that I like is the iPod. I have a a 2nd Gen nano. Bought my wife the 3rd Gen video Nano for christmas. I actually believe the quality of the product is worth waht you pay for it. With the addition of some nice noise cancelling headphones you'll hear parts of your music that you never knew were there, or at least I have since I have bad hearing.
iPod FTW!
Apples does make a good product (I have a shuffle for the bike and the wife has a 3g nano with the Nike thang) but iTunes sucks ass. And none of them can touch my Rio Karma when you're talking audio quality - too bad Rio went out of business - they made the only real audiophile pmp.
What issues are you having with iTunes? Other than the protected format conversion isuue which sucks ass It does a great job of organizing your music folders by artist and album. To get past the protected music format you can burn the .m4a's to a cd in .wav format then use itunes to rip them into unprotected .m4p's and import them into your music library in that manner if you want. or you can rip them as .mp3 for use on other players it's just in how you set up iTunes. So far I have not had an application instability issue running itunes on vista ultimate and that was even before itunes was vista compatible. Also more music players are compatible with the itunes music manager but your music has to be .mp3 not .m4p
The ipod is definitely cool -- great user interface. I'm just too cheap.
I've had a Creative Zen Xtra 30GB that I still use on the bike with some ER-6i noise-blocking in-ear phones. The user interface sucks on the Creative, but I use shuffle all the time so I almost never touch it. It turns off and on with the bike, so I just have to get the phones in.
BP, You're right about good phones revealing things you haven't heard even with good speakers. It's awesome to be able to listen to classical music and jazz on the bike. Even in the quietest car, that's hard to do.
I use the shure e2c's doesn't have all the bass and dynamic response of the higher end shures but at 149 bucks when I bought them last year they were cheap, but even on the bike with the pod at 1/3 volume i hear stuff in my music I never knew was there before. And considering the exhaust note of my bike, measured at 108db at 10k on the tach that's amazing performance from a set of earphones.
Quote from: bettingpython on December 27, 2007, 03:11:42 PM
What issues are you having with iTunes? Other than the protected format conversion isuue which sucks ass It does a great job of organizing your music folders by artist and album. To get past the protected music format you can burn the .m4a's to a cd in .wav format then use itunes to rip them into unprotected .m4p's and import them into your music library in that manner if you want. or you can rip them as .mp3 for use on other players it's just in how you set up iTunes. So far I have not had an application instability issue running itunes on vista ultimate and that was even before itunes was vista compatible. Also more music players are compatible with the itunes music manager but your music has to be .mp3 not .m4p
It's more the backend stuff. My wife ripped all her music through itunes. Then that computer died. Trying to pull everything back off the ipod is a royal pain in the ass. For my Rio, I just plug it in and it's like a file folder.
Also, in trying to navigate music on the player (as a drive), it seems to arbitrarily assign file names to the music - making it difficult to use the player while sitting at a computer. Maybe I'm just trying to use it in a way that Apple did not intend, but it's annoying to me.
As for itunes itself, it's a decent product. It can be frustrating to navigate sometimes but I don't use it every day. I've always just ripped my own stuff and drag/dropped it on to the player. Being forced to use itunes is an inconvenience when I want to do something quickly, or am not at the one computer that has it installed. I refuse to load itunes on my good machine ... which is also where the 350gb of music is.
Not to toot the Apple horn or anything, but:
My roommate is a video game freak and has a PC with 4gb RAM and a 2.66 Core 2 Duo, my little Macbook with it's 2gb RAM and 2.0 Core 2 always outperforms his. Not to mention; I just ran a spyware/virus scan for the first time in over a year and returned not a single item :icon_mrgreen: The only bitching I have is that Apple needs to create a firewire cable for the iPod/iPhone line. Switching movies out over USB sucks.
So, yeah, This is my first Mac and I will absolutely never touch a PC again. All the gamers that need windows to run your little games; it's called 'bootcamp', works like a charm if you really want to put an inferior OS on your Mac.
I'm also using Apple's brand new OS, Leopard, and haven't had a single glitch or error, nor any incompatibility issues.
I'm seriously considering switching to a mac when my current machine dies ... then again, for top of the line specs 9 months ago, I spent $1200. for comps on a mac would be like $4000. that's really the only reason I haven't switched yet.
still don't like itunes though :)
I absolutely love the reliability of my Mac. It hasn't crashed a single time.
The thing to remember when switching to a Mac from PC is that a mac with similar hard statistics is going perform significantly faster than the PC and much more reliebly.
If you are seriously considering a Mac, go to Apple.com, and check out their refurbs. They do a very thorough inspection of every refurbished machine and update all software. I believe they have a few MacPro's refurbed.
They have an iMac (desktop, all in the screen) refurbed for $700 with 1.83ghz core 2, 512mb Ram and I believe a 160gb hard drive that I'm thinking about buying just to have something to store my media on. Upgrading Ram in all the macs takes a matter of minutes, a couple quick screws a flick of a lever and push :thumb:
The question is, will it play a brand new video game like Crysis or GRAW2 that has major requirements ...
Here's the specs of a refurbed MacPro for $2200
(note if the game is windows only, all Mac's can run bootcamp these days)
2- 2.66ghz quad core xeon processors
1gb RAM (expandable to 16gb and yes the cheap shaZam! RAM works just fine)
250gb hard drive (3 more HD bays for expansion)
16x superdrive (writes/reads in all current formats)
forgot to include, that they all have warranty's and are all eligible for AppleCare
GeForce 7300 graphics card
Keyboard and mouse are including along with all documentation and software and a DVI-VGA converter
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?nplm=FA356LL/A
The only thing I will say:
These computers aren't specifically designed for video games, the aim is more towards media editing and creation.
QuoteI refuse to load itunes on my good machine ... which is also where the 350gb of music is.
I assume you have a networked environment, I tunes on my wifes computer access the music stored in an as/400 netserver windows directory via a mapped network drive.
Again never had an issue there, how many people actually have their own personal mini computer to test on though.
Never had to dump from the pod back into iTunes but it's supposed to handle 2 way synching. Guess I will have to try it. Last but not least do yourself a favor and use iTunes 7.5, the latest version has been rock solid so far.
+1 BP. iTunes 7.5 is practically flawless and yes you can 2 way synch I just did it with my mother's iPhone when she finally broke down and bought a Macbook. Took seconds to do.
ok - so same gfx card i got a year ago. which means no new high end games which require an 8 series card.
i'd use my own keyboard/mouse assuming i could. the 20" dells are dvi/vga/svideo so that's a nonissue.
$2099 for a macbook pro built out similar to my current machine minus the tb raid. didn't find anything for $700 and not sure if a mac is worth double what i paid .. but i'm intrigued.
you can add the Raid card in, not a problem.
The $700 iMac sold out pretty fast, go figure.
Quote from: bettingpython on December 28, 2007, 10:39:47 AM
QuoteI refuse to load itunes on my good machine ... which is also where the 350gb of music is.
I assume you have a networked environment, I tunes on my wifes computer access the music stored in an as/400 netserver windows directory via a mapped network drive.
Again never had an issue there, how many people actually have their own personal mini computer to test on though.
Never had to dump from the pod back into iTunes but it's supposed to handle 2 way synching. Guess I will have to try it. Last but not least do yourself a favor and use iTunes 7.5, the latest version has been rock solid so far.
Ya - had a network running till the router fried. Just got it back yesterday after a week at Netgear and 2+ with DHL (fuckers). Last time I tried, the 2 way syncing didn't work but I haven't tried on 7.5 - installed since the router died. I'll give it a go.
As for the raid - any hardware issues throwing what i currently have in? might not be space for the 4 raid drives .. dunno. And I use the machine heavily for gaming which is why the mac was never an option until recently (maybe?)
Quote from: bettingpython on December 28, 2007, 10:39:47 AM
Never had to dump from the pod back into iTunes but it's supposed to handle 2 way synching. Guess I will have to try it. Last but not least do yourself a favor and use iTunes 7.5, the latest version has been rock solid so far.
As long as you dont have auto synch enabled you can switch around music without it deleted everything on the ipod when you use it on another system or try to add music that isnt on hte computer- learned that the hard way.
Well I got the Mach Speed Onyx.Well I think it Sucks.Maybe it's just me but I have been able to transfer from Napster to Windows Media Player and Actually onto the Player but it won't Friggin' Play.I've transfered several CD's and they Play Flawlessly.It must be because of the 7 day free Trial. :dunno_white: If I ever get it figured out I'll be one tickled Mofo.
My 1 gig Nextel works great. 49 bucks if I remember correctl
Oh OK Vista Sucks and Napster sucks just as Bad.A little Misleading.I thought for $15 per month I got to Download unlimited Music BUT you have to pay Per Track. :mad:
iTunes????
I think I got it covered now. :thumb: Me and this POS Should get Along now. :laugh:
itunes is teh suxorz
Back to the original thread --
Woot! has the Sansa 4GB e260 today for $49.99 + $5 shipping. Pretty good deal (same as I paid a couple of weeks ago).
OK I've got my MP3 Player figured out. :thumb: I don't know what I would do without it now. :icon_lol: Got everything from AC/DC to Type o Negative to Danzig to Weezer on it. :thumb: I think I got Everything Covered.Even Love songs from Tesla,Slaughter,Motley Crue for that Special night Breaking my Truck Seats in. :laugh: :laugh: (I know there has to be a Redneck Girl out there somewhere thats still into that sort of stuff. :icon_lol: :icon_lol:)
It even breaks the Loneliness at work.I had Hank III and Johnny cash to Keep me Company the Other day until the Battery went Dead. :mad:
So far I have Around 154 Songs and the JPG of Christine Bouncin' and there's still plenty of Room. :thumb:
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:, you know talkin like that, youll be gettin an all hot and bothered :laugh:
Don't Know About Hot but I stay Bothered. :laugh:
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
Excellent Music Taste Btw :thumb:
Why Thanks. :thumb:
Quote from: yamahonkawazuki on January 15, 2008, 12:25:03 AM
:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:, you know talkin like that, youll be gettin an all hot and bothered :laugh:
Need to Get An down this way and Give him his "Get An Laid Fund" turn Him loose with some Pills,Weed and Beer and see what he Can turn up. :laugh: I know of 3 Possibly 4 Girls that would take Him for the ride of His Life. :laugh:Actually they'd probably pound Him in the Ground. :laugh:
speaking of computers, i bought an HP last year. it's been great. no problems. we run windows xp. i was offered a free vista upgrade. i installed it. then i had problems. so i had to do a destructive recovery, twice, to get my computer back to the way i had it before. but, after that, no problems. :icon_mrgreen: