Reply With QuoteWell, I read some articles on Cnet and it looks like they're big fans of the Toshiba Gigabeat. I was able to find this on Amazon for $193, looks like a pretty sweet deal. I think I'll be going with that.
My current MP3 player is a 3rd generation Ipod that I've had for over 2 years now and I'm looking to replace it. I was reading through the Zune thread, and I'm not exactly sure what I want to get yet. I want to also be able to play videos, and while I've been using Itunes to manage my music, I'm not attached to it. From what little research I've done it looks like the various choices are the Toshiba gigabeat, the Zune, the Zen Vision and the Ipod video. What are the pros and cons of these various devices? Is there any site that compares these? Stuff like battery life, screen size, weight and whatnot? Thanks for any help in my quest.
Well, I read some articles on Cnet and it looks like they're big fans of the Toshiba Gigabeat. I was able to find this on Amazon for $193, looks like a pretty sweet deal. I think I'll be going with that.
The Gigabeat S, which the Zune is based on, has a problem where the harddrive formats itself when being disconnected from a computer. The error was fixed in the Zune, but hasn't been fixed in the Gigabeat S, apparently. It could that new versions of the S are OK, while Toshiba hasn't released a firmware fix for the older versions.
So when you disconnect it the hardrive gets destroyed?Originally Posted by tromik
Here is a somewhat related problem I've been having: I've been using Music Rescue to upload my Ipods songs to my computer, they're encoded in MPEG-4. Now I want to move these files to WMP, but it Doesnt support this format. I would us dBpower Amp to convert these files, but it also doesnt recognize MPEG-4. How can I convert these files?
Thanks!
Well, "destroyed" isn't the right word. But everything is lost, and it flashes back to factory defaults. It's not something that is going to happen every time, it may never happen to you at all, but it's a documented problem that Toshiba hasn't fixed yet.
http://dapreview.net/zune_vs_ipod_vs_zvm.html
That's a site with the comparisons. From a more owner based test here at work, I have an iPod G5, a friend has the Zune, and another friend has the 60G version of the Creative Zen.
The Zen trumps us all. Period. It plays nearly any format, doesn't require you to use a specific program for transfer. It will let you grab things directly from the drive or, *gasp* move them off at will. It will allow you to partition the drive and has a selector setting to make a bootable partition as a backup for a PC. It will record voice, play FM radio, and supports video out at larger resolutions than the iPod and Zune. It will connect to the "download as much as you want to your media player for a flat fee" networks (Napster, Rhapsody, Yahoo.) Example: Download a TV show from somewhere. The Zen just plays it, no problem. The iPod and Zune both reqire conversion to their file format.
And if all that didn't get ya it's cheaper. I only wish I'd gotten one. Here's a 60G model from NewEgg with a 30 dollar rebate coming in at $249.99 afterward. Put the extra money into a license for MediaMonkey and a subscription to Rhapsody.
I like my Zen Vision M a lot, but it does have a few faults.
The scrolling bar is touch-sensitive, and *really* sensitive at that. Even with the sensitivity option turned down, it took a bit of practice before I was no longer accidentally flying through unwanted menu choices. The annoying part though, is that in the regular music-playing mode, the bar is used for both volume control (sliding up and down), and switching to the rating adjustment mode (a single touch), and it's too easy to accidentally register a single light touch and put yourself in the rating mode when you just wanted to adjust the volume.
Plus, the bar's position relative to the hold switch makes it a bit awkward to use from a single orientation. To skip ahead a track, I find myself flicking off the hold switch, rotating the unit 90 degrees, finding the bar and pressing on it (sometimes accidentally pressing the stop/play button), rotating it back, and flicking hold back on. Maybe I'm just spoiled by my old iRiver player, where all of the controls were reachable with a single hand in the right place, but it was a much smaller player. And it had a different set of quirks, like the shuffle mode being too easy to accidentally toggle.
The Zen has also locked up on me a couple of times while transferring files to it, and needed to be manually reset via pinhole.
Feature-wise it's great though, and these haven't been fatal, "damn I wish I'd bought an iPod" faults.
Well I found a pretty good deal on buydig.com for the Zen Vision, a case, a FM transmitter, AV cables and an AC adapter. Save around $50 and get free shipping, so I think I'll go with that. Any reccomendations for some good in ear headphones? Preferably not more then $20 or so.
If I actually had a need to watch video on my iPod I would want a Zen Vision M, but since I don't the iPod works fine for me (although iTunes crashes all the time in Vista-- no surprise there!!)
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