The Whole iPod Thing

[Hat]

i though apple price-fixed all their products?

[Rakey]

Quote: Originally Posted by Hat

i though apple price-fixed all their products?

they try to

but you can find deals and people brave enough to under cut them

best place for price is Hong Kong, but I wouldn't do mail order from someone there or buy one off eBay as you never know what you might get, as yes, there are copy ipods too

[laura f]

Quote: Originally Posted by Rakey

not if I can help it

good place to shop for is Amazon, last time I looked they were under the rrp from Apple

you can buy them in tesco too, i'm not sure how it works with clubcard points tho

[Hat]

best online price seems to be £195 for a 30G video ipod

[PMB]

I am still followint this thread and see nothing that changes my mind in the slightest.

Ok, so you get your iPod and load all your CDs into itumes, clogging up most of your spare disk space and slowing your PC down. You load them onto you iPod and think great. You then find a download of a concert that you like but iTunes does not recognise the codec so will not allow it in iTunes. However, you can load it via realplayer and the iPod plays it fine. A few days later you get a new CD and load it to iTunes and syncronise, hey presto your concert disappears.

iTunes is crap. Real is far better for the iPod but still not good. If you don't have a PC with you how can you load songs onto the iPod? Once on the iPod you cannot get them off. You can delete them but they cannot be downloaded. Say you want to transfer something to the iPod from LP, cassette or, well pretty much anything else?

Two years later your hard disc on your PC crashes and you lose your iTunes library. It is basically start again with the iPod.

Those are just a couple of the reasons I wish I had spent half the money and bought a superior sounding MP3 capable minidisc recorder.

For you, if your head unit will play MP3 data disc as my mini's will you can fit as many songs as an iPod Mini will hold on one disc for less tha one dollar, and it will sound better. For the price of the iPod and all the connections required you can buy a lap top with a cd writer and a load of blank discs. Which do you think you will get better use out of?

[jilgal]

I had the factory fitted iPod connector when I ordered my 06 MINI, I think it's great. Sounds fine to me but I suppose I'm not a real audiophile. I like that it charges the iPod battery while you're driving. MP3 discs are a good option too, loads of music on one disc.

[SiBradbury]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

ITwo years later your hard disc on your PC crashes and you lose your iTunes library. It is basically start again with the iPod.

This would be a problem with any programme, not just itunes. Plus your music will STILL be on your ipod.

[SiBradbury]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

Ok, so you get your iPod and load all your CDs into itumes, clogging up most of your spare disk space and slowing your PC down. You load them onto you iPod and think great. You then find a download of a concert that you like but iTunes does not recognise the codec so will not allow it in iTunes. However, you can load it via realplayer and the iPod plays it fine. A few days later you get a new CD and load it to iTunes and syncronise, hey presto your concert disappears.

Annoying, but not a regular occurence. Its easy to convert to mp3 tho which itunes will happily accept. I think all legal downloads will go onto itunes (?)

[SiBradbury]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

iTunes is crap. Real is far better for the iPod but still not good. If you don't have a PC with you how can you load songs onto the iPod?

Why does that make itunes crap? If you don't have a PC why would you want ANY mp3 player?

[SiBradbury]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

For you, if your head unit will play MP3 data disc as my mini's will you can fit as many songs as an iPod Mini will hold on one disc for less tha one dollar, and it will sound better. For the price of the iPod and all the connections required you can buy a lap top with a cd writer and a load of blank discs. Which do you think you will get better use out of?

From experience? The ipod. Easily. It so nice not having tons of cd's in the car and much easier to search for the track/album/artist/playlist i want.

Thanks for putting your points across so calmly and eloquently tho PMT, sorry, PMB

[PPE]

I have a black 60gig Ipod with my entire music collection loaded on. You never know when going over to a friends place what strange requests you get for artists and songs. Only the other day a good friend sent me searching through the Ipod for Nana, and to my complete surprise, I had a few of her songs.
I have it connected up to the BMW Ipod interface whenever I get in the car, so I don't have to worry about bringing a cache of CD's with me to suit my changing tastes in music (or the danger of trying to change a disc while in traffic).

[AdirondacksRob]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

I am still followint this thread and see nothing that changes my mind in the slightest.

I agree that iTunes is not great and Apple has made a very concerted effort to "lock down" the music with it and the iPod...but if you're willing work within their confines, it works pretty well IMO.

A way to keep free the disk space on your computer is to do what I've done. I went and purchased an external hard drive...I use it to store my MP3's (about 70 Gb worth) and back up my personal data (documents, financial and photos). I actually bought a dual drive external and have my important stuff mirrored.

It was around $300 (US) but to me it was well worth it. It sits on the network (no need to connect it directly to any one computer) and I connect to it like any normal network drive. This keeps my computer free for other stuff...

There are many many choices out there for obtaining / storing / listening to a music collection, but for me the iPod (and hence, iTunes) is the way to go.

[cct1]

Quote: Originally Posted by SteveM3

I have an iPod and love it. The iPod and iTunes operate so easily it is very convenient.
However quality is an issue. I had already tried various mp3 coders but the results were
awful. So I swapped to iPod and while AAC was better it was still wasn't that good. I now
use Apple Lossless and while better again it just isn't up to CD quality when played on
my home system. It certainly isn't lossless! However in the harsher environment of a car
the quality is less of an issue unless you are listening while waiting with engine off. I also
use it when walking and with a set of Koss Sparkplugs it's good enough. I do fill up my
Mini iPod when using Lossless. I wouldn't be without mine but it does have limitations.

A stereophile magazine did a blinded, direct comparison of CD versus MP3 encoded with the LAME encoder (--alt--preset standard), on a home stereo setup. 50% couldn't tell the difference, 25% thought CD better, and 25% actually thought MP3 sounded better. For most people, a high quality mp3 is transparent with a CD.

[SiBradbury]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

A few days later you get a new CD and load it to iTunes and syncronise, hey presto your concert disappears.

Go to 'PREFERENCES' and set your ipod sychronising to manual and not automatic and this won't happen.

[AMW]

Quote: Originally Posted by PMB

iTunes is crap. Real is far better for the iPod but still not good. If you don't have a PC with you how can you load songs onto the iPod? Once on the iPod you cannot get them off. You can delete them but they cannot be downloaded. Say you want to transfer something to the iPod from LP, cassette or, well pretty much anything else?

Two years later your hard disc on your PC crashes and you lose your iTunes library. It is basically start again with the iPod.

You may be right about most of the other stuff. I have an ipod (I got it as a gift) but I have not tried the other products out there. However, you CAN download your songs off the ipod, you just have to know HOW (apple doesn't make it easy for you, but it really isn't very hard). I've copied my entire itunes library onto my sister's computer using my ipod to do so...it was a lot faster than burning 20 GB worth of mp3's onto DVDs and transferring the files that way. My PC has some 120GB of space on the hard drive. I've decided to get a second, external hard drive to provide a back up of my itunes, essentially to prepare myself for the unlikely situation that my computer blows up. I usually have no problem importing mp3's into my itunes library that were not originally in the apple codec. Ipod plays them without a problem, so I don't quite understand the issue you outlined there.

As for uploading from LPs, etc., yeah, you're out of luck unless you have a way (like a minidisc) for helping that conversion along. I could easily put the output jack from the stereo going to the speakers into an input on my soundcard and create a digital recording, then transfer it to mp3 format and go from there. But it's not something an ipod can do on the fly.