Ipods and other MP3 players.

[gazgolf1]

I'm looking at grabbing some sort of MP3 player to play music in the car and work van because I have got tons of CD's and music on my computer. Apple seems to have the market cornered from my layman view but I have heard other brands mentioned.
Any advice on which way to go is appreciated.

[Jarro]

Get an iPod mate

[gazgolf1]

Do they work with Windows software mate?

[Jarro]

I don't think so ..... iTunes is what drives them.

Is that a problem ?

[gazgolf1]

Is that a problem ?

Yep I hate itunes.

[MegaWatty]

Well, iTunes with Windows, so yes.

[LarryLong]

You can run iTunes on windows, of course. However, if you don't want to run it on your computer (I don't at the moment) you can get a little manager application called yamipod that will allow you to just copy your files across to the ipod without worrying about all the other stuff.

Other mp3 players tend to be more readily set up to act like a plug-in usb hard drive so that you can just copy the files across without a dedicated application.

Failing that, there are a few other brands out there, iRiver and Cowon have good reputations - have a look at http://www.anythingbutipod.com for alternatives. For mine the big reason that the ipod still has the market covered is that there are lots of commercial stereos and portables out there with ipod docks on them so you can keep your ipod charged and use the remote to skip songs. That's pretty handy, and the reason I bought a clapped out second hand ipod this year so that I could leave it docked in a clock radio for our kitchen. If you're going to use headphones or just in the car through a line in connection, that won't matter too much and you could buy anything.

[markTHEblake]

Gaz, for about $25 get a MP3 FM transmitter that plugs into your cigarette lighter. You set it to an FM frequency and listen to it through your car stereo.
These will either be a USB connection to your computer so just drag and drop the files, or take the usual memory cards

either way its cheap, convenient, and no wires, and most of all, easy to use.

[MegaWatty]

Depends if he wants to put all of his CDs on at once.

[gazgolf1]

Depends if he wants to put all of his CDs on at once.

Can you do that?

[MegaWatty]

Can you do that?

A big enough iPod you can.

[Golfnut]

A big enough iPod you can.

+1...

Gaz, I've got about 7 days worth of solid listening on my iPod classic (160gb) and there's still loads of room left on it.

[markTHEblake]

Can you do that?

I put 80 hours of mp3's on my 1gb FM transmitter. Though these are podcasts not music files so music would be less i suppose.

[gazgolf1]

Ended up getting one of these.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=110596267255

[Jarro]

Looks good Gaz 8)

[MegaWatty]

Sandisk used to be number 2 in the US behind Apple. They never took off in Australia.

The whole iPod Nano with the wristband, to make it a watch, didn't appeal? ;)

[gazgolf1]

The whole iPod Nano with the wristband, to make it a watch, didn't appeal? ;)

Too Dick Tracy for me. ;)

[Rusty]

nice buy Gaz. between myself, wifey and relies i've had 4 of their previous model SanDisk Sansa e260 (4GB) & e280 (8GB) running well for quite a while. 2 run rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org/) and 2 still running Sansa firmware.

not an iTunes fan (after using for a while), i'm running Virtuosa under Windows for my music and initial conversion a while back of large cd collection. plenty more good music management programs to choose from.