I wanna MP3 player

boufje

I have done a search on this thread, without finding anything.
My iPod mini is on its last legs and so I need to replace it. wheel keeps sticking, battery life increasingly short. I got it in October 2004 so it has had about 18 months use - I have been informed that this planned obsolence is part of apple's profit making strategy. I am therefore reluctant to buy an iPod nano , as I think that will only last for 18 months too. I also find apple's customer service really poor.

I am happy to buy any brand MP3 player, but I do want one that is small, has a long battery life, not a shuffle type as I like to create my own playlists. I am DEPENDANT on it for the gym, so I'd need to buy a holder too, but I want something that can take a bit of being bashed about in my bag

The other thing I do is borrow other people's CDs to put into my iTunes, so Ideally I'd like one that I can just plug into iTunes as well as can't face rescanning my whole music library. Does such a thing exist?

Also, I'd like a decent amount of storage space - maybe 200 albums - am I stuck with apple for this?

jenza8

I bought my husband an Iriver 5gb for christmas, it stores up to about 5000 songs and is not too large. I got it for £100 from an argos offer (it was half price) and deliberately avoided the ipods because of what you have found with yours. (Iriver do replacement batteries etc at a very reasonable price). Not sure if the 5gb version is still around but they also do smaller ones and larger ones depending what you're looking for.

GoofyGAT

Consider the Creative Zen Touch (Creative UK link).

The 20Gb model is £135.50 (all incl - cheapest I could find), while the 40Gb model is £171.50 (all incl). Or £175 if you prefer to pick it up from Argos (no delivery charge or wait).

Reviews at PCMag & Xbitlabs, plus some user reviews.

jenza8 wrote:

...it stores up to about 5000 songs...

I think 5Gb will hold 1000-1200 mp3s max, but may be able squeeze in double that in wma format at a lower bitrate - which would meet boufje's requirement of 200 albums (or around 2000 songs). However, 2000 mp3s would need a larger capacity of at least 8-10Gb. G

boufje

Thanks for the very useful advice. however I have discovered that I have amde a rod for my own back, by storing all my music in Itunes and then disposing of the original CDs - I thought I would be able to transfer the music from iTunes onto another MP3 player, but this doesn't appear to be the case, so I am stuck buying another iPod! I am going to have to do alot more research into this, I think - as I might be prepared to lose a lot of my music to avoid being stung by aple - my mini is only 18 months old! however from the reviews, it appears that some users were also expereincing problems with the creative zen packing up on them too..