MP3 Player Help For Dummies Help!!!

Millionaire

Hi

Can someone help me with this..I am a complete technophobe. I still have a cassette player walkman :eek:

I want to buy an MP3 player or one of dem dar IPODs...nothing too fancy or expensive. (not sure which)

Can anyone advise me of a decent brand, easy to use, not OTT expensive.?

Also what is the best and easy to use websites for down loading music etc?

any other relevant info?

Thanks

G

copacetic

Millionaire wrote:

Hi

Can someone help me with this..I am a complete technophobe. I still have a cassette player walkman :eek:

I want to buy an MP3 player or one of dem dar IPODs...nothing too fancy or expensive. (not sure which)

Can anyone advise me of a decent brand, easy to use, not OTT expensive.?

Also what is the best and easy to use websites for down loading music etc?

any other relevant info?

Thanks

G

apple, sony, creative or iriver and you can't go far wrong.
people will insist that one or other of them is crap and only the one they
happen to have is any good so take all advice with a pinch of salt.

I have a sony one, excellent battery life, only real fault I know people have with it are that they don't like the SW but it works ok for me.

You need to decide do you want a HD based player - more storage(5-60GB), or a flash based one (only up to 4GB) which are much more sturdy that HD ones.

I have a HD sony one and use my phone as well for day to day mp3 listening.

As for websites, there aren't really many for getting free mp3s anymore, download a shareware program like limewire or similar to find mp3s. Your best bet is usually friends for finding mp3s, I got 120GB that way. Usually only get one hit wonders songs online..

Tom Dunne

Millionaire wrote:

I want to buy an MP3 player or one of dem dar IPODs...nothing too fancy or expensive. (not sure which)

Can anyone advise me of a decent brand, easy to use, not OTT expensive.?

Also what is the best and easy to use websites for down loading music etc?

Right, there are two types you need to consider. The first type is flash (or memory chip) based mp3 players. These tend to be very small and have no moving parts, so you can throw them around, drop them, kick them (and drop-kick them) and you wouldn't do an awful lot of damage. They tend to be limited in size up to 1 Gig.

The other types are hard-drive based players (yes, just like the hard-drive in your PC). These tend to be a little bigger, but hold a hell of a lot more (up to 60Gig). As they have moving parts, they tend to be a little bit more delicate. Some of the newer models can also play videos.

So, first things first - decide on how much you are willing to pay. I got The Better Half her first mp3 player last week from shop4memory.com (based in Celbridge). 49 Euro, holds 256Mb and has a built in FM radio. Holds 6-7 CDs.

Give us your price range and we can help narrow down your search. Remember, you can pay anything from 30 Euro up to 400 Euro - your call

Millionaire

Thanks lads, advice looking good so far...keep it coming.


The HD ones, can you got joggind and stuff , without the music skipping??

this is my situation.

Good chance I am going abroad in Jan 2006, for a few months..up to a few years...depending on how things go. where I am going there will be very little entertainment, so good music will break the boredom.

Now I love me heavy rock, old metail ACDC, Lizzy etc. And what I wanted to do was to put all my favuorite songs on a MP3. so there is going to be quite a lot of music to put on. more then 6 or 7 CDS lets say.

I do not want one with videos, or a camera, or one that will wash the dishes for me!!! LOL!

Maybe I should get a bigger one so that I can get all my music on there a HD one? so whats a good HD , mid range ish

and i I got a cheap one , 50 60 euro for a few of me favs etc in case I lost the other one?

also if you want to pay for songs to download, where do you go and what costs etc?

Thanks all!

G

Tom Dunne

Millionaire wrote:

The HD ones, can you got joggind and stuff , without the music skipping??

You can, no skipping.

Millionaire wrote:

so there is going to be quite a lot of music to put on. more then 6 or 7 CDS lets say

If it's only 6 or 7 CD's then you would fit them all onto a 1 Gig mp3 player without much difficulty.

As a very rough guide, allow 3Mb a song. 7 CD's at 10 songs each, is roughly 210Mb. 1 Gig = 1000Mb (again, figures are very rough).

Millionaire wrote:

also if you want to pay for songs to download, where do you go and what costs etc?

In Ireland, I have only used Apple's i-tunes. 99 cent a song, 9.99 for an album. The one thing about these is that you cannot easily transfer the downloaded songs onto an mp3 player. You would really need an ipod. This is because i-tunes uses a different music format to mp3. There are ways around it, but it's a little messy.

I have no real experience using a hard-drive based mp3 player, so maybe someone else can give you an alternative viewpoint.

copacetic

tom dunne wrote:

You can, no skipping.



If it's only 6 or 7 CD's then you would fit them all onto a 1 Gig mp3 player without much difficulty.

As a very rough guide, allow 3Mb a song. 7 CD's at 10 songs each, is roughly 210Mb. 1 Gig = 1000Mb (again, figures are very rough).



In Ireland, I have only used Apple's i-tunes. 99 cent a song, 9.99 for an album. The one thing about these is that you cannot easily transfer the downloaded songs onto an mp3 player. You would really need an ipod. This is because i-tunes uses a different music format to mp3. There are ways around it, but it's a little messy.

I have no real experience using a hard-drive based mp3 player, so maybe someone else can give you an alternative viewpoint.

all good info, but would disagree on the HD ones not skipping, generally they have 20 mins or so of memory to avoid skipping, if you are doing an intense exercise like running for >20 mins it is going to skip, unless you carry it carefully or take it really easy to avoid it skipping.
At least thats my experience of the ipod and sony ones. online you see some people say they don't skip at all, but usually 50% of people disagree.

to be safe would go for a flash based one if you are planning on using it for intense sports.

On the capacity sounds like you need a 1GB one as said above it will fit enough for you, although I think 3MB is a little low to take as an average.
My average mp3 size is more like 5MB out of 120GB recorded at various bit rates, only lower quality short songs of mine are less than 3MB.
if you are recording in high quality they are much bigger, eg damien rice 0 on my HD is over 10MB/song at 256KB.