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iPod Mini Hits The 'Sweet Spot'?
Tooky writes "The BBC is reporting on a survey carried out by Jupiter Research which found that most consumers were only storing about 1000 songs on their portable MP3 players, claiming that ' The finding seems to be borne out by the demand for Apple's Mini iPod'." According to the piece: "Jupiter said digital music players with capacities of 5,000 songs will provide too much space for most people. It added that consumers rate other features as highly as the ability to store all the songs held on their PC."
I can't afford one you insensitive clod!
iDon't buy it.
Hey, there's a limit to how much I can get through this P2P pipe. The university keeps shutting down my Internet connection for filesharing. Give me time!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Sure, you may not have enough music to fill up that 20GB, but that doesn't mean that you'll never use the space.
I have a 10GB Archos MP3 player, and while I only keep about half of that full of music, I find it incredibly convenient for transporting groups of large files between places. It works just like an external hard drive.
By buying a 30$ mp3 cd player and a spool of 100 disks for 20$
- 05 -28&res=l
And those of you that complain about skipping. Thats okay, mine doesnt skip, I cushion it by about three hundred dollars IN CASH.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003
no
Thought I'd share a data point for what it's worth...
About the only thing more worthless than simple anecdotal evidence would be attempting to extrapolate trends from data gathered on Slashdot.
I have a 100Gb of MP3s on my hard drive at home (and the CDs they were ripped from), and so the 20Gb on my 2nd generation iPod requires a lot of reloading. On the other hand, my step-daughter has a 3rd generation 30Gb iPod (which she got for babysitting the children of somebody who works at Apple) with only about 5Gb of songs. And do you think she'd swap iPods? No way! She's *so* selfish.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
That's nothing, I picked up an old Dell on eBay for $185, and it came with a 40GB hard drive!
Who needs an overpriced iPod when you've got a backpack with a P4, 40GB ATA drive, and a 1000VA UPS? Portable music just doesn't get any better this, folks!
And it runs LINUX!
The plural of anecdote is not data. And only asshats call people asshats.
Yes, but our personal preferences and "better-than-you attitudes" could be the basis for a valuable new market research tool. Whenever the consensus on Slashdot is that a new product is "lame," the only proper conclusion is that it is going to be a big hit. If you're lucky enough for the Slashdot consensus to be that your product "sucks," then, Yoo Hoo!, buy your company's stock.
On the other hand, if the Slashdot crowd praises your product -- particularly if they go on and on and on about its infinate configurability and the fact that there are many ways to accomplish the same task -- you might want to take a second look.
For example, I just criticized the new WiFi radio as a crippled WiFi laptop. So how do I buy the stock?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Cushion your audio portable.
Yeah, Compusa.
I see the following scenario..
It was $999 with a $300 instant rebate, $300 mail in rebate from CUSA, a $100 mail in rebate from Apple, a $50 bundle rebate, and when purchased with a 5 year contract on a cell phone along with TurboTax and Norton Antivirus, you got a $50 gift card that can be used in the next 3 days on 2 different items in the store.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Actually, /. is really terrific for predicting the success of consumer products. Almost any product that gets ripped a new one when it's introduced is going to be a success (iMac, iPod, Windows XP, OS X, Photoshop...). And anyone that gets lots of favorable comments it going to fail miserably as far as mass adoption is concerned most of the time (OggVobis, the Linux-based Zaurus, GIMP, Linux on the desktop, the WiFi internet...). The only one better at being wrong than the /. consent is Taco who's track record is basically pefect.
You might have a ton of songs on your PC's HD, but How many tracks do you actually listen to?
$find ~/media/music | mplayer -playlist - -shuffle
The average radio station might have access to thousands of songs on their premises, but in a typical broadcast day they're only going to use about 40 to 50 of them.
That's because the average radio station is getting kickbacks for saturating the airwaves with the newest hot track from the latest flash in the can pop star, and if they played a different track off her cd, people would realize they're all the same.
1000 songs at roughly 3 minutes each is 3,000 minutes. That's 50 hours. We're talking enough music to go two days without having to re-dock to swap songs without having to repeat anything during constant playback. By that point, you'd want to hear your favorite songs again.
Ahh, but if you're a deadhead the average song is more like 8 or 13 minutes, and you could listen to the same song all day and never hear it played the same way twice.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If your iPod is too big for you to handle, perhaps you need to work out some more?
as for exp(pi*sqrt(163)), that's approx 261447868023771980, yes? Any significance?
Saying a portable device has too much space is like saying your bathroom has too much toilet paper, your bank account has too much money, or that your S.O. gives you too much sex.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Here is why I like my 15GB ipod better than the mini
Nah... You're just compensating.
Here is why my wife likes her ipod mini better than the 15GB iPod:
Again... Just proves the point... She is used to small things.
Dear Mr. Phector:
Yes, I have enjoyed your fine products, specifically the 2 to 3 good songs per disc on the 350 or so CDs I own. Unfortunately, I also had to pay for 10 or so terrible "filler" songs per disc which I did not want and never listen to. By my reckoning, the RIAA still owes me approximately 1500 good songs. I will continue to use p2p until such a time as my downloading of free songs reduces that count to zero.
Best Regards,
Anonymous Coward
Pissed-off Consumer
Ummm, you're using girlfriends as an analogy on /.?!?
Most people listen to the same crumby 10-20 songs over and over and over and over again, so I don't know how this is such a big issue.
Being able to have your entire Menudo collection plus the entire works of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart and Brahms on one portable unit is great, but how often are you in the mood to mix Menudo with Mozart?.
Karma Schmarma
I think 640kb ought to be enough for anybody!
-BillG.
...because it has excellent sound quality, it can host most of my music, and I can take it with me almost anywhere.
My girlfriend has an iPod Mini because it is pink.
4 giga-what? Pink.
I recall years ago speaking to a customer representative of a large long distance telecom provider. Her office was located in Florida and she spoke with a soft Southern drawl. Her name was Charlotte. I remarked to my colleague that half the women from the south are name Charlotte. Coincidentally, my colleague had also finished talking to another customer service representative from another telecom company who was also a daughter of the south. However, her representative's name was not Charlotte. Based on the our sampling, I concluded that my observation was correct.
>I cannot tell you how important factors like "pink" and "small" and "easy to use" are to people outside of the 18-25 yr old males.
:q!
Hey, I'm almost 27 and I can still figure this technical stuff out!
.
quit
exit
bye
^X^S
^C^C
I'll take a shot: There are other people in the world besides you. These people think and act differently than you.
You're referring to the people I keep calling idiots?
"...I cannot tell you how important factors like "pink" and "small" and "easy to use" are to people outside of the 18-25 yr old males."
And they say size doesn't matter.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
I got a laugh when reading that line out of context. ;)
Random is the New Order.
And only asshats call people asshats.
so, by from your premise, if an asshat and a non-asshat were locked in a room, it would be a pardox for the non-asshat to say to the asshat, "you're an asshat."
Still, it's probably more reliable than any slashdot poll...