Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the no-beefs-with-better-battery dept.
X Bass writes "Available Tuesday, Dell's 15 and 20GB DJ adds to the growing field of iPod wannabes. Is it worthy or is it just another player that falls short of the iPod's greatness?"
iPod greatness!?
by
daBass
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I am not disputing that the iPod is a good player, but what is great about only 8 hours battery life (and that much only when playing disgusting sounding 128Kb MP3s) without the option of taking a spare? How good are controls so sensitive it's way too easy to make the player do things you don't want? And did I mention soundquality is not oustanding, but just OK? So how does a 50% greater price tag make up for the slightly smaller size?
There was a time when the iPod was the only game in town, but it isn't anymore and there are other good players out there. I am a very satisfied owner of a Creative Jukebox Zen NX 30GB.
Maybe all those spammer are right, size does matter and bigger is better.
Re:iPod greatness!?
by
darnok
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
As a proud iPod owner, I have to respond to this;->
The controls are pretty sensitive, but when you're carrying it around with you, you use the remote and disable the controls on the iPod itself. The remote's buttons aren't anywhere near as sensitive - you have to give them a decent push to use them.
The sound quality is winning "audiophile" recommendations; it's more than "just OK".
With respect to the high price tag, Apple got smart when they put a (token) address book and calendar on there. They're very close to useless, but the existence of these features qualifies the iPod as a tax deductible expense for lots of people. If you like, the "50% greater price tag" is being subsidised by the government. The lack of these features on other MP3 players means they don't qualify as being tax deductible, so they "cost more" as a result.
The addition of several 3rd party add-ons is also helping to push the iPod. Along with the expected car charges, battery kits etc., there's a FM transmitter (listen to your iPod through the car stereo without wiring it up!), an addon to dump your digital camera's card contents onto the disc and a few others that aren't of any interest to me personally. The 3rd party market sets the iPod apart from the rest; these features simply aren't available on other MP3 players.
I have to agree about the 8 hour battery life, though; it's not enough to commute to and from work and to use at work, which is what I'd like. Furthermore, since the life of the internal battery is limited to so many recharges, I suspect the iPod becomes a throwaway item after a couple of years when the batteries won't hold a charge any more.
Re:Why is the iPod so much better?
by
FatAlb3rt
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I've had Creative's Nomad Jukebox 3 (20G) for almost a year now. It's about the size of a portable CD player, so it's bigger than an Ipod. I don't see it's size as a problem, but the biggest drawback is the interface - it's a bit clunky, doesn't have a fast response, and navigating for a song isn't as easy as an Ipod. That's why I think Ipod is the standard - they produced an outstanding and compact product from the beginning.
It's an MP3 player ...
by
peatbakke
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
... and... well, I guess that's it. Can I use it as a portable hard drive? Can I use it to sync calendars and contacts between work and home? Can I extend it with accessories for voice recording, download from compact flash cards, play games, or hack away with my own scripts?
I dunno. If I'm going to spend $300 on a gadget, it better do a hell of a lot more than simply play music. I think a full featured iPod with 10 GB of space is hell of a better deal than a 20 GB hard drive with a head phone jack.
Close but no cigar
by
SuperBanana
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Is it worthy or is it just another player that falls short of the iPod's greatness?
Let's see:
iPod: revision #3 or 4(I've lost track.) Like the rest of Apple's electronics, each revision is better than the last and encorporates everything they learned from the previous. Dell: first shot. Probably went to taiwanese companies and said "make us an iPod".
Larger all around
buttons versus iPod's touch-sensitive, sealed, no-moving-parts interface
No remote, no mic, no flash reader, no nifty powered-from-iPod FM transmitters.
Not cross-platform
Not useable as a storage device(or is it? Couldn't tell)
Not nearly as pretty(chrome, white.Tough to beat)
World's most popular online music service versus...musicmatch.
Re:a link that doesn't suck
by
watzinaneihm
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The poster of the story missed a lot of stuff in the blurb. Dell has launched a Musicplayer, a music store, high speed internet connection and a HDTV. Its all there on the page jbellis linked to.
So Dell is no longer a PC maker?
We may joke about this being YAiPOD, but i think having things like the Dell DJ and the Rio Karma out on the market will are a great thing for the iPod.
When the iPod originally came out, it was out of this world. Nobody had seen anything like it. Now it's a couple of years later, and yes it's smaller, and got a bigger hard drive, but not a lot has changed.
Having these new music players on the market is going to make Apple have to start thinking again. I'm not saying that Apple has to come out and give us a brand new, kick ass iPod (although I wouldn't be supprised if they did), it's just that now, they're going to have to work for that marketshare.
Loads of the greatest classical works ever written were only written so the composer could make some scratch. However a lot of these composers would be working on something amazing on their own time and composed for roalty and richies to put food on the table and get their music heard.
Today the same thing still happens, however I think the artists you're talking about are the ones who are created by the record companies and who are not actually contributing greatly to their art. They just spend money in their spare time and make others look bad.
Paying for good music is a great idea as it keeps great music coming. It's paying for shit that is stupid and detrimental.
The importance of iPod
by
DeepDarkSky
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
it isn't so much that it's a nice sleek design that makes everyone - not just geeks - lust after it. Partly, it's the higher, mass-perceived "premium" price tag that makes people think it's better. The iPod is a well-design little gadget, but hardly the best, nor the most cost effective. No, the iPod is successful because it is part of a complete marketed solution.
You want to listen to MP3s you ripped from CDs? no problem. You want to listen to MP3s you downloaded from IRC/Usenet/? Sure. If you are a regular consumer who is not tech savvy, who don't know where to get MP3s, you can now purchase from the iTunes store, and get legally, and worry-free, the music files that you'd like. Hate to break this to you - not everyone LIKES to download MP3s illegally - especially those who can afford to pay for it. Those who cannot afford to, or just plain don't want to, well, they have to turn to illegal means.
So what Apple has done is say, look, we have a complete solution for you. You can easily go anywhere with this iPod thing, it's pretty, it's "premium", and we will make it easy for you to get MP3s without worry about legal issues, without having to know how to rip CDs, without having to know how to download MP3s illegally using P2P programs, which may contain malware and cause you to share files that you are not aware of which can then get you sued by RIAA.
The RIAA's suits' merit notwithstanding, people just don't want to even take a chance that they'd be put into that position (which is exactly RIAA's scare tactic).
And that, is the greatness of iPod. It's not the device itself, it's the whole thing.
Re:Can't load music from outside sources
by
jdreed1024
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Is it really too much to ask for a USB mass storage interface? It's so simple, and everyone who has a computer understands it- it's just a new disk.
Which is another benefit the iPod has going for it. It's a simple firewire disk drive (I think the second generation ones are USB2 drives or firewire drives - I have an older model). Plug it in, and your Mac (or PC, if you formatted it as FAT32) will see it as a plain vanilla firewire drive. You can dump files on there without affecting your its use as a music player at all (well, unless you specifically go in and erase the hidden directory structure containing the MP3s, but that takes effort and it's your own damn fault).
My iPod has saved my ass more than once - once when I had to take my laptop in for servicing, I simply backed up my important data to the iPod, and wiped the laptop drive (I don't trust the technicians). Again when I had to bring a large (read ~2.3GB) data set into work. I did not have a DVD burner (nor did work have a machine that reads DVD-ROMs), and uploading that much data via a cable modem that's throttled to 256Kbps upstream sucks hard. So, I could either have archived the data set with zip or rar and split it across several CDs, or used my iPod. The latter option was decidedly faster, and worked great.
A friend was telling me how I got screwed by spending twice as much on my iPod as he spent on his Nomad, but I told him, add up how much you spent on your Nomad and how much you spent on your 1GB pendrive, and now see who got the better deal. Of course, if you care about WMA audio, then maybe this Dell player or something similar is the way to go for you. Me, I prefer to keep my MP3s on an open filesystem.
-- There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Re:Why is the iPod so much better?
by
krs-one
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Probably because it was the first, or at least the first one that combined function with style extremely well.
-Vic
Re:Why is the iPod so much better?
by
Talez
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Re:Why is the iPod so much better?
by
matthew.thompson
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The usual apple reasons.
- It just works.
- It's industrial design is a notch above the rest - the latest version has no moving buttons on the main control area - no pocket fluff can get in and clog the works.
- Firewire syncing and charging from one cable. This is far better than USB syncing as it provide more current and allows for just as fast, if not faster syncs than USB 2.0
- It's smaller - it's about the smallest hard drive based play you can buy
- Sound quality - the iPod doesn't sacrifice sound quality, there are technically better sounding units but the tradeoffs make the iPod a leader
- iTunes integration - ratings, sound check, play lists, etc - make a change on the iPod to a rating and it syncs back to the iTunes database.
- add-ons - line out on the dock, media card reader, microphone etc - the iPod has loads of accessories that are tailored specifically for it rather than generic add-ons which may or may not work.
- User interface - even with the revised top 4 buttons instead of the buttons around the you can operate it one handedly and everything is easy to read and get through.
There's probably more but I can't sit here and type all day - I have 2200 tracks to listen to on my iPod:o)
-- Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
same OS as iPod
by
mydigitalself
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
looking at the screenshots, dell appears to have licensed the same OS that apple has for the Dell DJ. apple must be a bit annoyed about that one!
Re:Why is the iPod so much better?
by
nuxx
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
3. AAC support. Okay, Ogg Vorbis is more Stalmanist, blah blah blah, but AAC at 128 sounds as good or better, at least to me, as VBR MP3 while taking up less space on the HD.
Psst. Not to be rude, but at 128kbps MP3 and AAC will take the same amount of space for the same length track. AAC will sound markedly better.
I personally used to be a huge Ogg Vorbis fan, then I got an iPod and went back to MP3s for convience. Having acquired a G5 earlier this month, I decided to try reripping parts of my collection to AAC, just as a test. And there is a difference.
I have my iPod running line in to my car stereo, and with 192kbps MP3s (using Apple's encoder, which is very good), they'd occasionally sound flat, somewhat muffled, and just generally not as good as the in-dash stereo. Switching to same-bitrate AACs, everything sounds a bit brighter, almost indistinguishable from audio CDs in the player itself.
I've seen the same results in my living room as well, where I have a second dock running line out straight into the stereo.
Regarding the parent post, though, I think that the big seller with the iPod is the interface. It works night and day better than the competition, and the menuing system is very, very similar to the 'Browse' layout in iTunes.
Apple is big on design and style. Combine this, with a product that works very well and is priced reasonably, and you've got a winner....and it's been proven.
Re:Anything that relies on MusicMatch Jukebox
by
nuxx
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I purchased a 30GB iPod back in May.
And almost returned it.
MusicMatch is such garbage that I had a very, very hard time getting it to see my iPod. Once I did, I had a hard time getting any of my personal music in it. I too had the problem with my iPod being 'full' with only a few songs in it...
Then I found EphPod. This piece of software kept me using my iPod under Windows for a few months. After that I got a used PowerMac G4 Cube, switched to iTunes, and never looked back.
With iTunes for Windows I think that Apple finally has a complete system in place for users to rip and sync music properly. Not the MusicMatch hack...
This is a good thing, in my opinion.
Absolutely iTunes
by
JayDiggity
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
So I just bought a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra (what a long time!) from the store a couple of days ago, and you know something? I returned it. I'm a PC user and a fairly faithful one at that, but I love iTunes. For me, it's entirely in the rating system. I can create a playlist that has only songs that I rate highly, and it's amazing. Too bad I can't sync those playlists to my Nomad. I have to use their crappy software, which I hated. Apple releasing iTunes for Windows is "first hit's free" mentality - you get a taste of how good to iPod software is, and suddenly you have to have an iPod. It's awful. And I'm buying one. Unless Dell's bundled software is as good as iTunes (and it's MusicMatch, which means it can't be anywhere near as good), then I won't even think twice about it.
Is there still a pause between tracks?
by
Deslock
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Looks cool, but I'd still get iPod instead. However, all MP3 players I know of have a serious flaw:
There is a pause between tracks during playback (while the next song is loaded into memory). When I'm listening to the new Rush live album on CD, I can close my eyes and imagine being at the show. When I listen to MP3s, there is an annoyingly abrupt pause every ~6 minutes. Crossfading doesn't solve the problem.
Does this new player finally get rid of the pause?
Re:The Problem with Many Players
by
Robert+Hayden
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
And what if you don't have ID3 tags? You're fucked. All mu stuff is sorted by subdirectories, not by ID3 tags.
iPod is useless unless I plow through my 200GB collection and I have other life to live.
Re:Why is the iPod so much better?
by
b-baggins
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Yeah, she was so dumb, that she called up the University to find out what the actual requirements from the University were and to verify her son's requests.
What is really dumb is confusing ignorance with stupidity.
-- You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
What DRM issue?
by
SuperKendall
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I was not aware MP3's had "DRM" issues. The iPod can play any number of unprotected MP3's. Even unprotected AAC's in fact, which is another open format, similar to WMA only not as annoying.
Quality control problems?
Stability issues?
I have a old (now really old) 5MB iPod. I would wish that everything else on the planet had the same stability and quality control issues the iPod does!
I think you ended up rationalizing yourself out of the best MP3 player on the planet, for no benefit whatsoever!
-- "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Re:a link that doesn't suck
by
gamgee5273
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Or they could be the next late-'90's HP or mid-'90's Apple. Remember the QuickTake? The MacTV? The Pippin, the Apple set-top box, the printers, the floppy discs, the cds...I think Apple even branded small children who just happened to walk by 1 Infinite Loop.
Dell is on the line between becoming the next Sony or completely losing focus, like Apple and HP did in the '90s. The thing to keep in mind about Sony is that they grew to where they are in a different era, and consumer electronics is a completely different starting point than computer manufacturing.
And, also keep in mind that the layoffs are because of losses Sony is incurring due to poor sales of the PS2 (who doesn't have one? I saw a homeless guy playing one the other day...) and their Trinatrons. Once there is a reason for more people to buy a PS2 (or PS X or PS3 or whatever), once they start moving massive amounts of Wega sets (you've seen the commercials, right?) and if there is reason to buy a PSP, then Sony is on top again. Now, will #1 happen any time soon? No, I don't think it'll happen without a move to a $99 price for the PS2 or introduce the PS3 early. But the other two could, possibly, bring some of those 20K jobs back, especially the move to the flat panel sets (the PSP is in an uphill battle against the GameBoy). So Sony is not out of the game. Far from it.
So, if Dell is aiming for Sony, I would suggest they look closely at the lessons Apple and HP have to offer and think very carefully about what they're up against. Sony isn't rolling over for anyone, least of all a cut-rate PC vendor.
Slashdot Mirror
the dell dj (gah) is not as good-looking as the nomad zen nx let alone the ipod. Disappointing. :-|
What do OEMs contemplate?
So, everyone who wants a computer has one now, no new market there. Everyone who wants a laptop has one now, no new market there either... Now what?
Cell phones? nah-- not dependent on PCs, and hardware too disposable.
PDAs? Yea, we tried that, but market not really that big (mostly just businessman toy-mongers). We have some products there, and they are doing okay.
Hrmmmm... peripherals, peripherals....
I know! That iPod thingy is pretty cool. And Apple usually makes new markets pretty well! Let`s make an mp3 player!
---
I would expect an mp3 player from Sony, Samsung, and maybe Hitachi. IBM and HP are too into the high-end server market to bother.
davejenkins.com |
I am not disputing that the iPod is a good player, but what is great about only 8 hours battery life (and that much only when playing disgusting sounding 128Kb MP3s) without the option of taking a spare? How good are controls so sensitive it's way too easy to make the player do things you don't want? And did I mention soundquality is not oustanding, but just OK? So how does a 50% greater price tag make up for the slightly smaller size?
There was a time when the iPod was the only game in town, but it isn't anymore and there are other good players out there. I am a very satisfied owner of a Creative Jukebox Zen NX 30GB.
Maybe all those spammer are right, size does matter and bigger is better.
I've had Creative's Nomad Jukebox 3 (20G) for almost a year now. It's about the size of a portable CD player, so it's bigger than an Ipod. I don't see it's size as a problem, but the biggest drawback is the interface - it's a bit clunky, doesn't have a fast response, and navigating for a song isn't as easy as an Ipod. That's why I think Ipod is the standard - they produced an outstanding and compact product from the beginning.
... and ... well, I guess that's it. Can I use it as a portable hard drive? Can I use it to sync calendars and contacts between work and home? Can I extend it with accessories for voice recording, download from compact flash cards, play games, or hack away with my own scripts?
I dunno. If I'm going to spend $300 on a gadget, it better do a hell of a lot more than simply play music. I think a full featured iPod with 10 GB of space is hell of a better deal than a 20 GB hard drive with a head phone jack.
Let's see:
I take it back- not even close.
Please help metamoderate.
The poster of the story missed a lot of stuff in the blurb. Dell has launched a Musicplayer, a music store, high speed internet connection and a HDTV. Its all there on the page jbellis linked to.
So Dell is no longer a PC maker?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
When the iPod originally came out, it was out of this world. Nobody had seen anything like it. Now it's a couple of years later, and yes it's smaller, and got a bigger hard drive, but not a lot has changed.
Having these new music players on the market is going to make Apple have to start thinking again. I'm not saying that Apple has to come out and give us a brand new, kick ass iPod (although I wouldn't be supprised if they did), it's just that now, they're going to have to work for that marketshare.
I think paying the wrong artists hurts music.
Loads of the greatest classical works ever written were only written so the composer could make some scratch. However a lot of these composers would be working on something amazing on their own time and composed for roalty and richies to put food on the table and get their music heard.
Today the same thing still happens, however I think the artists you're talking about are the ones who are created by the record companies and who are not actually contributing greatly to their art. They just spend money in their spare time and make others look bad.
Paying for good music is a great idea as it keeps great music coming. It's paying for shit that is stupid and detrimental.
it isn't so much that it's a nice sleek design that makes everyone - not just geeks - lust after it. Partly, it's the higher, mass-perceived "premium" price tag that makes people think it's better. The iPod is a well-design little gadget, but hardly the best, nor the most cost effective. No, the iPod is successful because it is part of a complete marketed solution.
You want to listen to MP3s you ripped from CDs? no problem. You want to listen to MP3s you downloaded from IRC/Usenet/? Sure. If you are a regular consumer who is not tech savvy, who don't know where to get MP3s, you can now purchase from the iTunes store, and get legally, and worry-free, the music files that you'd like. Hate to break this to you - not everyone LIKES to download MP3s illegally - especially those who can afford to pay for it. Those who cannot afford to, or just plain don't want to, well, they have to turn to illegal means.
So what Apple has done is say, look, we have a complete solution for you. You can easily go anywhere with this iPod thing, it's pretty, it's "premium", and we will make it easy for you to get MP3s without worry about legal issues, without having to know how to rip CDs, without having to know how to download MP3s illegally using P2P programs, which may contain malware and cause you to share files that you are not aware of which can then get you sued by RIAA.
The RIAA's suits' merit notwithstanding, people just don't want to even take a chance that they'd be put into that position (which is exactly RIAA's scare tactic).
And that, is the greatness of iPod. It's not the device itself, it's the whole thing.
Which is another benefit the iPod has going for it. It's a simple firewire disk drive (I think the second generation ones are USB2 drives or firewire drives - I have an older model). Plug it in, and your Mac (or PC, if you formatted it as FAT32) will see it as a plain vanilla firewire drive. You can dump files on there without affecting your its use as a music player at all (well, unless you specifically go in and erase the hidden directory structure containing the MP3s, but that takes effort and it's your own damn fault).
My iPod has saved my ass more than once - once when I had to take my laptop in for servicing, I simply backed up my important data to the iPod, and wiped the laptop drive (I don't trust the technicians). Again when I had to bring a large (read ~2.3GB) data set into work. I did not have a DVD burner (nor did work have a machine that reads DVD-ROMs), and uploading that much data via a cable modem that's throttled to 256Kbps upstream sucks hard. So, I could either have archived the data set with zip or rar and split it across several CDs, or used my iPod. The latter option was decidedly faster, and worked great.
A friend was telling me how I got screwed by spending twice as much on my iPod as he spent on his Nomad, but I told him, add up how much you spent on your Nomad and how much you spent on your 1GB pendrive, and now see who got the better deal. Of course, if you care about WMA audio, then maybe this Dell player or something similar is the way to go for you. Me, I prefer to keep my MP3s on an open filesystem.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Probably because it was the first, or at least the first one that combined function with style extremely well.
-Vic
6) iTunes.
The usual apple reasons.
:o)
- It just works.
- It's industrial design is a notch above the rest - the latest version has no moving buttons on the main control area - no pocket fluff can get in and clog the works.
- Firewire syncing and charging from one cable. This is far better than USB syncing as it provide more current and allows for just as fast, if not faster syncs than USB 2.0
- It's smaller - it's about the smallest hard drive based play you can buy
- Sound quality - the iPod doesn't sacrifice sound quality, there are technically better sounding units but the tradeoffs make the iPod a leader
- iTunes integration - ratings, sound check, play lists, etc - make a change on the iPod to a rating and it syncs back to the iTunes database.
- add-ons - line out on the dock, media card reader, microphone etc - the iPod has loads of accessories that are tailored specifically for it rather than generic add-ons which may or may not work.
- User interface - even with the revised top 4 buttons instead of the buttons around the you can operate it one handedly and everything is easy to read and get through.
There's probably more but I can't sit here and type all day - I have 2200 tracks to listen to on my iPod
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
looking at the screenshots, dell appears to have licensed the same OS that apple has for the Dell DJ. apple must be a bit annoyed about that one!
3. AAC support. Okay, Ogg Vorbis is more Stalmanist, blah blah blah, but AAC at 128 sounds as good or better, at least to me, as VBR MP3 while taking up less space on the HD.
...and it's been proven.
Psst. Not to be rude, but at 128kbps MP3 and AAC will take the same amount of space for the same length track. AAC will sound markedly better.
I personally used to be a huge Ogg Vorbis fan, then I got an iPod and went back to MP3s for convience. Having acquired a G5 earlier this month, I decided to try reripping parts of my collection to AAC, just as a test. And there is a difference.
I have my iPod running line in to my car stereo, and with 192kbps MP3s (using Apple's encoder, which is very good), they'd occasionally sound flat, somewhat muffled, and just generally not as good as the in-dash stereo. Switching to same-bitrate AACs, everything sounds a bit brighter, almost indistinguishable from audio CDs in the player itself.
I've seen the same results in my living room as well, where I have a second dock running line out straight into the stereo.
Regarding the parent post, though, I think that the big seller with the iPod is the interface. It works night and day better than the competition, and the menuing system is very, very similar to the 'Browse' layout in iTunes.
Apple is big on design and style. Combine this, with a product that works very well and is priced reasonably, and you've got a winner.
I purchased a 30GB iPod back in May.
And almost returned it.
MusicMatch is such garbage that I had a very, very hard time getting it to see my iPod. Once I did, I had a hard time getting any of my personal music in it. I too had the problem with my iPod being 'full' with only a few songs in it...
Then I found EphPod. This piece of software kept me using my iPod under Windows for a few months. After that I got a used PowerMac G4 Cube, switched to iTunes, and never looked back.
With iTunes for Windows I think that Apple finally has a complete system in place for users to rip and sync music properly. Not the MusicMatch hack...
This is a good thing, in my opinion.
So I just bought a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra (what a long time!) from the store a couple of days ago, and you know something? I returned it. I'm a PC user and a fairly faithful one at that, but I love iTunes. For me, it's entirely in the rating system. I can create a playlist that has only songs that I rate highly, and it's amazing.
Too bad I can't sync those playlists to my Nomad. I have to use their crappy software, which I hated. Apple releasing iTunes for Windows is "first hit's free" mentality - you get a taste of how good to iPod software is, and suddenly you have to have an iPod. It's awful. And I'm buying one.
Unless Dell's bundled software is as good as iTunes (and it's MusicMatch, which means it can't be anywhere near as good), then I won't even think twice about it.
There is a pause between tracks during playback (while the next song is loaded into memory). When I'm listening to the new Rush live album on CD, I can close my eyes and imagine being at the show. When I listen to MP3s, there is an annoyingly abrupt pause every ~6 minutes. Crossfading doesn't solve the problem.
Does this new player finally get rid of the pause?
And what if you don't have ID3 tags? You're fucked. All mu stuff is sorted by subdirectories, not by ID3 tags.
iPod is useless unless I plow through my 200GB collection and I have other life to live.
Yeah, she was so dumb, that she called up the University to find out what the actual requirements from the University were and to verify her son's requests.
What is really dumb is confusing ignorance with stupidity.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
I was not aware MP3's had "DRM" issues. The iPod can play any number of unprotected MP3's. Even unprotected AAC's in fact, which is another open format, similar to WMA only not as annoying.
Quality control problems?
Stability issues?
I have a old (now really old) 5MB iPod. I would wish that everything else on the planet had the same stability and quality control issues the iPod does!
I think you ended up rationalizing yourself out of the best MP3 player on the planet, for no benefit whatsoever!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Dell is on the line between becoming the next Sony or completely losing focus, like Apple and HP did in the '90s. The thing to keep in mind about Sony is that they grew to where they are in a different era, and consumer electronics is a completely different starting point than computer manufacturing.
And, also keep in mind that the layoffs are because of losses Sony is incurring due to poor sales of the PS2 (who doesn't have one? I saw a homeless guy playing one the other day...) and their Trinatrons. Once there is a reason for more people to buy a PS2 (or PS X or PS3 or whatever), once they start moving massive amounts of Wega sets (you've seen the commercials, right?) and if there is reason to buy a PSP, then Sony is on top again. Now, will #1 happen any time soon? No, I don't think it'll happen without a move to a $99 price for the PS2 or introduce the PS3 early. But the other two could, possibly, bring some of those 20K jobs back, especially the move to the flat panel sets (the PSP is in an uphill battle against the GameBoy). So Sony is not out of the game. Far from it.
So, if Dell is aiming for Sony, I would suggest they look closely at the lessons Apple and HP have to offer and think very carefully about what they're up against. Sony isn't rolling over for anyone, least of all a cut-rate PC vendor.