freckles_and_doubt | revenge of the pod people

Right, so this is the bit where

mac1235 gets to gloat a lot. I've been joyously bouncing around my gym routine to the strains of David Bowie from an Ipod for the last year and a bit. At the start of this process I professed myself happy with the Ipod and the functions it performed. This contentment has, alas, eroded over time, until I am Officially Not Happy. This is for various reasons:
1. ITunes. The assemblage of geeks who roasted me for my professed ITunes contentment was, alas, correct: the way that ITunes locks up your music is unacceptably fascist. I'd like an MP3 player to be a viable way of porting music from home to office without me having to rip each CD twice. Phooey.
2. Size. While I like the robust metallic finish of the IPod, it's actually too large for convenient gym portage - it lives in my pocket, and at intervals yanks out the earphone plug with the sadistic panache of a practical joker. Tchah.
3. Angst. Said IPod doesn't actually belong to me, it's a loan from

dragonroost, and it's a tossup whether he recalls it before I accidentally drop it into the pool at the gym and have to flee the country. Oops.

So, for extra credit, and writing on one side of the paper only, please specify and outline the features, pleasing or otherwise, of your recommended MP3 player for mainly gym use, with reasons for your choice. Topics may include, but are not limited to, interface, software, price, size, style and availability. Extra marks for dissing ITunes.

Last Night I Dreamed: weird SCA dreams, including a beautifully-costumed event held by my local Shire on a tennis court in Harare, and a subsequent sea voyage on a tall ship crewed entirely by hairy SCA fighters. Awoke strangely exhausted.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Any music player for gym must be flash-based, not containing a miniature hard drive. They're smaller and lighter, and more resistant to breaking when dropped. There are in fact iPod models that fit this description.

I'm happy with my iAudio 7. It is small and light, holds jiggerbytes of music, plays all kinds of formats like .ogg and .flac, and you can put music (or any other file really) onto or off it just by plugging into into a computer via a USB cable, then dragging and dropping files. You know, like a sane and functional piece of kit, not that weird and broken iTunes thing.

Edited 2008-05-09 11:14 (UTC)

It looks cute, actually - and thanks for the flash-based tip, useful to know.

I am deeply ignorant about these things: is it standard for a music player to play the wma files that Windows Media Player uses?

Fairly common, yes. Just not of much use. If you're going to go for locked up music, probably you've got Apple's AAC format. FLAC is for audio geeks and DJs. MP3 and ogg are for the rest of us.

I got my phone specifically for its mp3-playing capabilities. I hate redundancy in my gadgets. My new phone, the Sony Ericsson W910i has a separate memory card that slots into a usb card reader and holds 4gb. It's very drag and drop, the interface is easy to use (there's one button to switch on the player and then you can just hold the button and shake the phone to change the track). It also has "mood" settings, so you set each song's mood when you load it on, then tell the phone what mood you're in and it filters the playlist. Haven't used that yet, though. I like the fact that I can listen to the radio/mp3 player and it automatically switches off when a call comes in. I don't know about its suitability for gym use, it doesn't come with a pouch or clip, but I've seen armband things that hold Ipod Nanos and my phone is the same size so I guess I could get one of those. If you do get a smaller mp3 player, I have an armband pouch thing (like a moonbag that goes around your upper arm) for jogging, you are welcome to it.

I got it with my new contract. I have insured it (it's very expensive, I was horrified to learn) in case I drop it somewhere. It has loads of style (it's a muted bronze and very minimalist). Also, I've downloaded Sudoku for it. If it could make food and keep me warm, I'd leave P for it.

My better half also had a Sony Erickson. It had 1 gig memory, which she put audio books on for the traffic jams. When it broke, she got a replacement with less memory. Since she is due for an upgrade in 2 months and the new memory is expensive I got her a flash mp3 player, 1 or 2 Gb for 200 to 300 rand. (Can't remember if I got the 1 or 2 gig version. It's not intuitive to non-Chinese speaking people, but it works... It's actually a video player, but who wants to watch video on a 5 cm screen.

Hmm, I never thought of putting audio books on. I think they'd require too much concetration (I have a very short attention span, my mind often wanders off in the middle of a paragraph and then have to reread half the page as I have no idea what's happening). I think concetrating on an audio book and driving are a lethal combination :P.

I mourn my Sony Ericsson W800i. It was orange and white, a most unfortunate colour combination but I loved it nevertheless because of its huge MP3-playing capabilities. It came with easy-to-use software to transfer files. The big plus was that I could get into my car, plug in my earphones, listen to a story and take calls in traffic if necessary. However I concede that this is not a plus at gym, people who take calls on their cellphones at gym look pretentious and can be irritating.

The only problem I ever had with the MP3 player function was a tendency to go all funny on me if the phone suddenly lost reception. The player would then reset to wherever I had last started listening.

Concentration in traffic is definitely an issue but I find talking on cellphones is even more distracting. It is also harder to tell a person you can't talk to them right now because you are focusing on traffic, than it is to just shut a story out. Sometimes I find traffic takes all my attention and I have missed some of the story, then I just rewind a little.

The little MP3 player I have now is called Alvin the Chipmunk because of its carrying case, a Macdonalds toy. It is tiny and has great sound quality but I do not know how to use it and that is my final word on the topic. It has 1 gig of memory I believe. If you want to borrow it to try it out, do let me know, you would be most welcome. (I am rather using my current phone, at least I can fit a couple of chapters on it.)

Also, we have Pratchett, Colfer, some recent McCaffrey and the Eragon audio books. And Philip Pullman too I believe.

What does it mean to "lock up" music? Intrepidly venturing out into the world of ipods as I have recently, I dutifully obeyed the manual and downloaded iTunes and then downloaded some podcasts. Are these podcasts now "locked down" and should I care?

This is the dread DRM issue - music files sold with sneaky software padlocks so you can't re-copy them or what have you. ITunes is moderately notorious for it. The Wikipedia article on DRM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management) will probably give you a more accurate introduction than I can. For ongoing scare and gloat updates, see boingboing :>.

You don't have to use iTunes.

I humbly recommend an iPod nano with Winamp instead of iTunes:
http://lifehacker.com/software/ipod/manage-your-music-with-winamp-276000.php

It probably also allows you to copy music from your iPod to your PC by now...

Interesting, when I borrowed the IPod someone (can't remember who) suggested that it wasn't a good idea to replace ITunes. I'd certainly feel happier messing with things on my own IPod rather than someone else's, and the nanos are cute :>.

I now have three iPods of varying sizes for all occasions :-)

A large sized video ipod for carrying everything... basically for work, attaching to the do-hickey in the car that send it to my radio and when I cant decided what portion of my 10 gig of music I feel like listening too..
An ipod nano for the child...
... and a shuffle for the gym... I joined the gym as an excuse to buy a shuttle and then quit the gym!

The shuffle is positively tiny (3 x 4 cm) and clips to the edge of your t-shirt. So small...

But then again I have been infiltrated and become an apple person... so disregard statements based on slavish customer loyalty ... :-)

Haha, yeah yeah the poddies have their drawbacks...
Anybody that tells you the big ipods are portable music players are LIARS, they are too heavy, scratch if you look at them funny and have a small problem (very small, but still it is there) of getting fragged everytime you walk through a metal detector. =)

I have no plans to recall the poor maligned ipod so feel free to drop it in the pool.....erm belay last comment.

For the record us geeks can get the songs off the ipod for transportingly goodness. It takes a little doing, but it is not too bad. For the double record the ipod mini is still the hardest core HDD one of the lot. It can almost function as the preverbial lucky hip flask in westerns. I would not put this to the test though as there is still much debate between C&M and myself about wether or not this will work if you are not actually on camera...

I can also get the music off the Ipod, it's just a pain in the butt to do. Life's too short for circuitous data transfer. And its pleasing solidity of the unit is not actually an asset in the gym, alas. When I want to push weights I push weights.

I have no actual plans to drop it in the pool, but I'm well known to be a total klutz and it's probably only a matter of time.

revenge of the pod people

no subject

no subject

no subject

Sony Walkman

MP4 player.

Audio books

no subject

no subject

no subject

Assumptions

Re: Assumptions

no subject

no subject

no subject