PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post

G-Benz · #5 10-27-2005, 12:30 PM

I've just finished dealing with the same issue right now.

I bought my daughter an mp3 player for her birthday last summer. the iPod-types players are nice, but I didn't care to spend that kind of money (and have her accidentally lose it later).

Here's the scoop on players:

Many mp3 players available costs ranging from $70 - $300. Pricing is usually based on memory and features. My daughter wanted a player and a tuner, so I got one for $80 that allows you to preset favorite FM/AM stations, holds photos and text, mp3 or .wav files, and has a line in feature that allows you to record from an external source or directly from the tuner. Memory is 256MB. Doesn't use an SD card but like the others out there, has a USB 2.0 plug-in, so you can maintain your files from your PC. Personally, an SD card would be a PITA to have in a compact personal player IMHO. Having one limits the design aspect of the player, and I've seen a lot of cool designs! I'm thinking of getting the $99 Philips mp3 player...red anodized case with display, a bit larger than a flash drive!

The Apple iPod units range from $99 for the shuttle to $399 for the 4GB iPod. The Nano goes for $299 and I believe it's 2GB. The iPod and Nano have view screens...the shuttle does not. The Apple units support mp4 (which is what iTunes downloads are formatted to), but owners I've talked to say that you can't selectively delete songs from the players unless you want to dump the entire library.

On download sites:

There are others, but the most prevalent are Napster and iTunes. Napster allows unlimited downloads for a $19.99/mo subscription, while iTunes requires no monthly service fee. Each iTunes download is $ 0.99. I chose iTunes because I don't download massive amounts of songs per month, but either way is fine. Napster's music library may be larger though, and the downloads are formatted to mp3.

Again, iTunes is designed to support Apple products, so the downloads are formatted to mp4 for the iPods, although it will convert mp3 and .wav files to mp4 so you can load those into the iPod as well. iTunes copy-protects the internet downloads however, and the utility software won't let you convert them to mp3. You have to burn a CD then import back to the PC as mp3. iTunes has some weird OS issues with Windows with are non-existent with the Mac (go figure).