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Originally posted by moncster Get a mp3 CD player and not an Ipod. They won't skip because they'll be padded by around $200 you save.

I owned a 1st gen mp3 player, and my friend has had two for his car... they royally sucked back then (and from my friends experience iwth his head unit, they still do). Very low battery life for starters. It's hard to organize your tracks into a meaningful format and skipping forward a bunch is a pain in the ass (as is directory changing) etc. Plus battery life on them is pretty abysmal (hdd is hardly ever on in an iPod).. Plus one scratch on a cd wipes out an mp3 track more often than not... I recommend if you're going to use cds just get a regular cd player... You can organize your listening into a much more meaningful format that way (only 18 tracks per cd), has a much longer battery life, and, well they are even cheaper. CD's are negligibly expensive (~.08 per disk). Plus then you don't have to worry about what rate they are encoded at etc. (some mp3 cd players choke on VBR files especially)...

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Venus: And there are troops of savage giraffes whose necks are on fire, like the starry ejaculations of fireworks in the very pale sky of childhood ... Venus: Enter, enter here - men of all kinds and races, victims of reality! You who have the thirst for dreams. ... Venus: You, on life's bitter road, drenched in hard sunlight who have the thirst that once more the dark marvel of dreams...

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Originally posted by SuperFarStucker there seems to be a few problems with them

Ok, let's see here

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* irreplacable batteries

You can purchase 3rd party kits to replace them, it's actually quite easy and very much worth the price considering what you paid in the first place for the darn thing!

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* overpriced (nomad zen is like 25% cheaper)

Yes, it is rather steep, but it's so damn cool

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* weak headphone amp

If I crank mine up to the max, it doesn't get nearly as loud as a my discman would, but I like to keep it at about 60% anyway so this isn't a problem for me.

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* jacks bust in them

11 months old and still going strong. knock on wood

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* firmware bugs (playback irregularities in older models)

Early on I experienced some of these problems. For instance, the battery indicator would read full when it was almost dead. Those issues have been fixed on the newer firmware versions. I don't have any such problems now.

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* cannot use on both platforms at the same time (you have to reformat your iPod to use it on a mac if you've been using on pc, etc.), which isn't really a disadvantage considering none of the other ones work on mac at all AFAIK.

I don't know where people get this idea but it is FALSE. Mine is a G2 iPod and I have always been able to use it with my cousin's iBook or any other mac so far with no problems whatsoever.

You misunderstood the cross platform incompatibility issue. If you have a iPod formatted for Windows based machines (FAT) then it won't work on Macintosh machines (HFS) or visa versa. You're free to go between PCs or between macs, but not both at the same time.

Also, for what it's worth, you can make/purchase your own CMoy pocket amplifier which, will make it so you can use really big inefficient headphones at decent sound levels or rip your eardrum in half with tiny efficient neodynium (sp?) magnet driven ones. But that's even more money, and from what I understand, the Nomad Zen(which is practically a clone of the iPod) has a very sufficient built in headphone amplifier.

Reviews tend to say positive things about both the iPod and the Zen but... you don't really get the whole "time test" when you read a review. Build quality and durability is a huge issue for devices like this

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Venus: And there are troops of savage giraffes whose necks are on fire, like the starry ejaculations of fireworks in the very pale sky of childhood ... Venus: Enter, enter here - men of all kinds and races, victims of reality! You who have the thirst for dreams. ... Venus: You, on life's bitter road, drenched in hard sunlight who have the thirst that once more the dark marvel of dreams...

Apparently there is a "Dell DJ" out now as well. I know nothing about it, but check it out and compare.

-Keith

i have the old 5gb one, its dope though, i dont think you need 10000 songs on the mp3 player, you would have to maek a ton of playlists

i just got a 40 Gig Ipod. thay are too cool. i have owned a few mp3 players, (creative zen, archos jukebox, iriver) and this is by far the best one on the market. eye heart apple.