Great Ipod/ Ipod-ish Hunt

jamesebaker

Ok, there are obviously a fair few people here who don't quite understand what ipods are, MP3 players, portable hard drives and all the other terms that keep springing up so I'll try and explain in simple terms without being patronising!

The 1st portable music system was the Sony Walkman where you could amazingly carry your music collection with you on tape and play music on the go.

Next came portable CD, it was an improvement in terms of sound quality but not much use when you're jogging as they were very prone to skipping.

The new kid on the block is the portable MP3 player and the most successful of these is the ipod. It is basically a compact version of the hard drives you get inside your PC or laptop but is only able to play special music files. There are a variety of different music file formats, all have the same aim, to make the file as small as possible without losing any quality. MP3 has become the worlds favourite file format because it has maximum compression while retaining maximum quality. MP3 generally shrinks songs to a tenth the size they were on CD and you can therefore fit 10 times as many songs in the same amount of space.

Because MP3 players use hard drives, there are effectively no moving parts and so they are ideal for using while running, working out at the gym or jumping up and down on the spot!

Because MP3 files are so small, you can fit many more songs in the same amount of space. MP3 players vary in size from the smallest 64Mb (mega bytes) which can hold around 40 songs to the largest 60Gb (Giga Bytes) which can hold 15,000. The number of songs you can fit in the given space depends on the length of the track and also the quality. The shorter and lower quality, the more you can fit in the space on your MP3 player.

B33fy

wrote:

Because MP3 players use hard drives, there are effectively no moving parts and so they are ideal for using while running, working out at the gym or jumping up and down on the spot!

Hard drives do have moving parts and may fail if they are trying to read info off the magnetic disc when subjected to sudden movement, I would be wary of recommending these devices for use during energetic exercise, gentle jogging maybe, otherwise a solid state mp3 player is a safer choice

We_Laugh_Indoors

joeyjoejoe wrote:

why would you want to ship from the US it wont be any cheaper because you will most likely have to pay import tax, secondly if anything goes wrong i doubt you could get the ipod serviced over here as it will be marked as a US model requiring it to be shipped back to the US to be looked at

i was paying attention to the post quoted in my previous post.

the link on the post sent me to the US site, which i assumed was a direct link to the recommended price by that poster.

so in answer to your question i wouldn't want to, i was just wondering if the poster meant to put the US link on.

shrek101

catalana wrote:

Hi,

I an new to the forum, so I apologise if this has already been discussed. I have found a website that gives free ipods away.

Cheers.

No refferals please.

raeble

will apple US ship to the UK?

No. Apple goes so far as to threaten any resellers that dare to try and sell Apple US products in the UK/Europe market and probably the rest of the world. They are happy to sell them but Apple has told them they can't and they will not be able to sell their products if they do - allegedly.

marsha8 wrote:

I am full of admiration and feel as though I am living on a different planet. Please,in simple terms, can somebody explain what ipod,MP3,shuffle etc are all about.I am a pensioner who goes to the Gym where noisy modern music is played & feel that one of these may be of use to me.I have a computer which I assume I need.I expect I could get information from a search engine but probably would not understand the technical terms.Thanks.

Have a look at the How Stuff Works website here. There is a simple guide to mp3 players and the diffent types.

freebird_3

I read with interest what was being said about ipod,iriver and creative etc..but found what I was looking for i.e. somthing simple to download/navigate/good bat. life/not too cumbersome/and robust, purely by chance when I returned my zen touch(40gb) which was none of these. Good old sony yet again! the nw-hd3. A hard disc drive that sony say you can drop from 1metre without damage,easy nav,fast download,mp3 and atrac3plus(sonys' own compression I think) 20 gb,13,000 songs,30 hour between recharges and all in the size of a pack of cards.Well happy,though surprised not to have heard a mention of this toy in the quest for the best.

rgjones79

binary0110 wrote:

Edit: on a related note, Apple price fix their iPods so it is usually quite difficult to find them heavily discounted in online or high street retailers. However, one way of getting a significant discount is to buy one from a Dixons tax-free store at an airport. You don't even have to be going abroad to do this: tax-free purchases can be made even on internal flights.

I'm heading to New York tomorrow and was going to buy a 60GB ipod out there. It would be $450 + the 8.625% NYC sales tax, totalling in roughly $488 which equates to about £270odd pounds.

Now is the Dixons Tax Free in Heathrow likely to have the 60gb version, and does the tax-free mean it eliminates the VAT resulting in a reduction from the standard £309 to £255?

This would save a lot of potential hassle and panic returning through Heathrow Customs!

Metallifux

I was in New York at the beginning of March. I wasn't looking for an Ipod but a Digital Camera. Tax free Dixons at Heathrow were trying to sell the Fuji S5500 for £246 when it is £249.99 in the regular store which certainly doesn't equate to tax free in my book. I ended up getting the S5100 (US version) with a 512MB card, a case and a 5 year international warranty for £240. Rip off Britain go figure. In the shops at JFK they had been selling ipods even cheaper than the stores in New York, but of course were sold out.

rsandham

I've recently taken delivery of a Creative Zen Xtra - 60Gb model - from Pixmania. Price was less than £190 (with the widely available £10 discount code).

Whilst it may not look as good as an IPOD, it is certainly well matched in terms of sound quality and has the advantage of a removable battery - something the IPOD doesn't have.

So far, I have been very impressed with the performance!

marsha8

Have a look at the How Stuff Works website here. There is a simple guide to mp3 players and the diffent types.

Thank you for your help.I'm trying to understand what the site is telling me.