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iPods Around the World
Joey Patterson writes "Did you ever notice how well the Apple iPod always fits in with the local scenery, no matter where you take it? Well, ipodlounge.com has a photo gallery featuring 800+ photos of people and their iPods in various places around the world. Some of these pics are very cool (like this one, taken by the Kuwait water towers), while others are downright odd (such as this pic from Sierra Leone, Africa)." I just want a picture of an iPod on my desk. I have a camera ...
Here is my iPod and me on new year's eve
o ooooooooooo
Here's my iPod and me on vacation to rome
Here's my iPod and me doing shower
Doing shower? nooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooo
iPod nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
I bought myself an Archos Jukebox, and then returned it to get an iPod. To be honest, the Archos kinda sucked.
... I like listening to my music on random (so I can eventually hear everything rather than focusing on a few albums over and over).Sometimes when I hear a song I want to restart that particular song to hear the beginning again -- but when the Archos is set to shuffle, hitting 'back' will move to a new song, and then hitting 'forward' will move to a completely new song -- there's no consistency in the shuffle algorithm.
There's no 'hold' on it to prevent you from accidentally turning it off -- the hold is like a 'soft hold' of sorts that works only for not changing the song that's playing. You can still turn it off or change the volume while it's on hold. And, the hold is set/unset by just pressing and holding the 'on' button, which can easily happen accidentally.
The controls for it are not very well-thought out
The manual for the Archos is awful -- it doesn't explain what anything on the screen means. While charging it, I had absolutely no clue what the random XX:YY numbers were while charging -- were they hours:minutes, or minutes:seconds, or just random numbers? And why would it sometimes say 'Batteries Fully Charged' and then 5 minutes later go back to charging for another hour or two.
It would turn off occasionally, too. And it would skip on songs that play fine on my computer, or randomly get stuck on songs and repeat them forever.
In all, the Archos just seemed to be a very flaky mp3 player. Luckily, Circuit City let me return it for the full price 33 days after I bought it.
I don't have my iPod yet (it should be arriving in the next few days), but I am very much looking forward to it. Everything I've read, and everyone I know who has one absolutely loves it.
IMO yes it is worth every penny. i had a hango PJB100 which was also 20 gig.
first off, the music management app was crap! iTunes is VERY straight forward.
second, USB when talking about collections of this size is a nightmare. the pain of waiting literally hours for progress bars was just too much! firewire makes the process so fast, you hardly notice.
thirdly, the ipod uses a 1.8 inch HD and as such, is about the same size as a pack of ciggys and is light enough for its presence to not be felt in a pocket. any other portable MP3 player that has anywhere near a decent amount of storage space uses 2.5 inch disks and are bricks in your pocket!
fourthly, the ipod acts as a 20gig portable firewire HD
lastly, contacts and calendars are synched to it as well
each to their own though i guess....
Several reasons.
1) Yes. Firewire is worth it. Fililng 20 GB at 1.5 (theoretical) MB/sec will take a bit longer than at 50 MB/sec (theoretical). We're talking minutes instead of hours here.
[Apparently the newest Jukebox support USB 2.0. I stand corrected.]
2) Dimensions. The Archos Jukebox looks and feels like a brick. An iPod will fit in your pocket, an Archos will not.
Archos [archos.com]
Dimensions: 115x83x34 mm. (4.5"x3.2"x1.3")
Weight: 350 g (12.3 oz.)
iPod [apple.com]
Size and weight (20GB model)
Height: 4.0 in
Width: 2.4 in
Depth: 0.84 in
Weight: 7.2 oz (204 g)
In every category, the iPod is at least half an inch smaller. Not to mention an archos has those huge rubber feet things. By weight, an iPod is 66% of an Archos. 66%!
3) Batteries. An archos runs off 4 AAs, an iPod has an internal rechargeable battery, which charges fully in 3 hours.
4) Interface.
Having used my roommate's Archos (before it broke for no apparent reason) -- the user interface is abysmal. The screen is small, poorly lit, and it's difficult to tell what you're doing, what song you're playing, etc. The buttons are small and poorly designed.
None of these are problems with the iPod.
The iPod has large, easy to use buttons. The scroll wheel is a marvel, letting you get from one song to another in seconds. The screen is huge and well backlit. (160-by-128 pixels for the iPod, "Up to 8 lines" for the Jukebox).
4) Internal memory. The iPod has a 32MB internal buffer, the Jukebox 2. More memory means less hard-drive reads, and more continuous music.
Seriously, they don't even compare. You definitely get what you pay for.