MP3 Player

[Makeo]

I'm interested in purchasing a portable music player that will allow me to listen to all the music stored on my computer. I don't know anything about what I should be looking for however.

Help me out, what should I look for?
How much should I pay?

[Az]

You should get an MP3 diskman, and a CD burner.

[Makeo]

I have a burner. Why should I burn it to a cd, wouldn't it be more convenient on a smaller player? I'm not a OMG QUALITY SUX freak. As long as i can tell what song i'm listening to, thats all i need.

[Az]

that's why I said MP3 diskman. They're $#%% cheap.

[Zopperoni]

How much music do you have (in GB)?

How much are you willing to pay?

[Q Classic]

ipod.
no, ipod sucks. get a zen nomad.
no, ipod rules.

just go to cnet.com and look at what the people say.

[Makeo]

I have about 5 gb. ie, i want something that I can transfer five hours or so of music to one day and a different five hours the next day etc.

[Zopperoni]

You can do two things then:

A) Buy an MP3-discman, and burn all your music on seven or eight CD-Rs. This solution is pretty cheap.

B) Buy an MP3 jukebox, which has an internal hard disk. Capacity varies from 5 to 20 GB, so you could put all your music in the player's hard disk. This solution can be quite expensive, but you have more capacity and the player is more compact.

[Makeo]

Ok, cool thanks for the help fellas.

[Agathon]

I'd take a look at the software that each player utilises.

You are best off with something like musicmatch or itunes which will save you having to transfer all the songs manually.

The Zen's software sucks, but there may be good third party alternatives.

If you want to listen to WMAs buy a Zen or Dell's new player. If not buy an ipod.

[ahenobarb]

Find a good MP3 player with plenty* of memory. It beats the hell out of a Discman. I keep my mp3 player in my shirt pocket on the subway, it's always kinda funny to see someone holding a gigantic discman in their hand to get less music.

* plenty = You can shrink your MP3 to fit more on and since you're going to be using tiny earpieces anyway, as long as you don't shrink the files too small, you won't notice the difference in quality. Get one with 512MB -- minimum -- and store ~3-5 CDs worth of songs at a time. Save the layouts and cycle things in and out as you get tired of it. Cheap, effective, very portable.

[Verto]

Go for a CD/MP3 player. I'd much rather use that, than a real MP3 mem. card/hard drive player.

[Asher]

iPod:
Mediocre sound quality, poor battery life, small size, stylized design, excessive price, MP3 & AAC

Zen NX: Excellent sound quality, great battery life, larger size, not as sexy as iPod, great price, MP3 & WMA

I don't use the Zen software, so I wouldn't know.

[Drake Tungsten]

ipod.
no, ipod sucks. get a zen nomad.
no, ipod rules.

Way to beat Asher and Ag to the punch, Q Cubed.

Too bad it didn't actually prevent the argument from relapsing.

[Dinner]

Skip the disk man because disk players skip while pure digital music doesn't even if your jogging with your MP3 player on. I'd buy a Rio or one of Dell's new Digital DJs.