That's true but iTunes is still required. The music is stored in a hidden directory with names like "AVGBS". I want to move the music on or off with nothing more than a filemanager. Third party utilities help with this brain damage if the files are well-tagged but it just isn't something I want to bother with. The iPod also becomes slaved to particular copy of iTunes (and another copy will insist on full erase before you can use it elsewhere!?!?). This is also a misfeature as far as I am concerned.
I understand that the way the iPod works is more than acceptable for many people but these things make it not acceptable for me.
I'm sure you knew what I meant but the "two weeks" is "two weeks of domatic's typical use". The actual run-time is somewhere north of 10 hours. The player is otherwise quite plasticky, cheap, and nasty but it does work acceptably for me in ways iPods don't.
The iPods are fashionable if nothing else and anyone who buys it will get good industrial design for their money. iPods also have the accessories market locked up and there is also the iTunes store to think about. That said, I use $45 two gig flash player. It is nothing to write home about but it does have the cool feature of lasting two weeks on an ordinary AAA battery and it mounts and is loaded with music as though it were an ordinary flash drive. iTunes is UI nirvana for many but it just grates on my nerves. I find just dragging the music I want on and off the player to be far friendlier. If I were inclined to spend more on a player, I'd still insist on the ability to file-manage my music.
Funny thing is, that I think 2000 is a solid OS. It is the easiest MS OS to make lean, mean, and stable. I can have a patched, drivered, and misc-utilitied install of 2000 come in around 200 MB. It could be pared down a bit leaner but I do like having things like putty and unarchivers ready. I don't know if it was MS' priority to create a lean featured solid OS but after XP and now Vista, I've come to appreciate it more. Incidentally, I see lean-featured as a feature in itself. Like FireFox used to be, have it come with a minimum of crap that can break and then just add the things you want.
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That's true but iTunes is still required. The music is stored in a hidden directory with names like "AVGBS". I want to move the music on or off with nothing more than a filemanager. Third party utilities help with this brain damage if the files are well-tagged but it just isn't something I want to bother with. The iPod also becomes slaved to particular copy of iTunes (and another copy will insist on full erase before you can use it elsewhere!?!?). This is also a misfeature as far as I am concerned.
I understand that the way the iPod works is more than acceptable for many people but these things make it not acceptable for me.
I'm sure you knew what I meant but the "two weeks" is "two weeks of domatic's typical use". The actual run-time is somewhere north of 10 hours. The player is otherwise quite plasticky, cheap, and nasty but it does work acceptably for me in ways iPods don't.
The iPods are fashionable if nothing else and anyone who buys it will get good industrial design for their money. iPods also have the accessories market locked up and there is also the iTunes store to think about. That said, I use $45 two gig flash player. It is nothing to write home about but it does have the cool feature of lasting two weeks on an ordinary AAA battery and it mounts and is loaded with music as though it were an ordinary flash drive. iTunes is UI nirvana for many but it just grates on my nerves. I find just dragging the music I want on and off the player to be far friendlier. If I were inclined to spend more on a player, I'd still insist on the ability to file-manage my music.
Funny thing is, that I think 2000 is a solid OS. It is the easiest MS OS to make lean, mean, and stable. I can have a patched, drivered, and misc-utilitied install of 2000 come in around 200 MB. It could be pared down a bit leaner but I do like having things like putty and unarchivers ready. I don't know if it was MS' priority to create a lean featured solid OS but after XP and now Vista, I've come to appreciate it more. Incidentally, I see lean-featured as a feature in itself. Like FireFox used to be, have it come with a minimum of crap that can break and then just add the things you want.