I had a little accident yesterday and dropped my 2nd gen 20 gig ipod onto a concrete floor
It would no appear to be dead and just displays an error along with making a nice clicking sound.
It was on its last legs anyway and the battery life had become pretty terrible as well as all 20 gigs being full so i'm in the market for a new mp3 player.
What do people here use, i'm not sure if a new ipod is the best option, the Sony ones look pretty flash and are very tempting.
One which can stand a few knocks and has at least 40 gig space would be good.
Which? Online really rate the iRiver players, but the largest they do is only a 20GB model. The Sony players get an 'ok'. They didn't even bother reviewing the iPods!!!!
I'm still using an old IRiver HP140 (40 gig) and the thing is very durable. It's been dropped down the stairs, fallen in the bath, goes jogging with me on numerous occasions, sat on, had coffee spilled all over it, yet it's still going strong with not a sign of a hitch or dead sector on the hard drive. It's also over three years old now and after daily use the battery is only just starting to show some wear and tear, I'm actually planning to change the battery for a larger 1850mAh one (default is 1400mAh, that gives you about 20 hours of playback) and swap the hard drive for an 80gig one. With the Rockbox firmware (http://www.rockbox.org/) it's an absolutely fantastic player.
I bought my daughter an Ipod Nano last christmas (4gig) and it locked out after a day. Fortunately, the online help managed to unlock it again and in all fairness, it still runs ok. I was a little miffed at seeing the amount of things that can go wrong with these things given the cost!! :roll:
This christmas, I bought her a 5th Gen iPod (30gig) which worked fine for a few weeks then locked out :shock: This time, no amount of online help could unlock it so it was returned.. tested.. and found to be faulty so a new one was dispatched. Thus far, it continues to run (unless of course my daughter is too scared to tell me it's broken again)
I dunno really. You pay good money for something backed by a worldwide 'name' but these things seem far from reliable (iPods that is). Next time I fork out (if there IS a next time).. I think I'll go for another brand.. perhaps iRiver as suggested by Chris
Yep the only reason I-pod is sooo huge is the fact that they have the money to advertise.
I have so far kept well away from MP3 players as I can see me just breaking it.
Id be a bit dubious of ones that have hard drives tbh. You might get more storage space but a good knock will kill them. Solid state players are almost indestructible but you get less storage and they only have a limited number of writes.
I think I must be the only one left who uses a minidisc player
Error 482: Somebody shot the server with a 12 gauge.
See the ipods have a Hard Drive inside (the older versions not sure about the newer ones) where as the mp3 players dont. Thats why if you drop them it dont work!!! Ive got an Ipod Mini and a W800i phone, The ipod is great if i need upto 3.75 ish gigs of music in one place. But i have my fav music albums on the 1 gig mem card in my phone which is just perfect,.... I do find mp3 players useable more than the ipod way as its just a case of ripping and copy and past, where as ipod is all itunes, where you have to wait for it to be converted and then writen to the HD....
The bigger iPods have HD's too mate (they've yet to suss out how to get 30gig+ onto a chip!!) but her Nano (4gig) is memory.. which is why I bought it in the first place as the christmas before I'd got her a 20gig MP3 (HD) and it didn't last a year :roll: Kid's.. don't ya just love em!!
I love hard drive players, for me 4 or even 8 gig on flash wouldn't cut it. I've gotten far too used to the convenience of having my entire music collection in one place with me.
And as I pointed out in my pseudo-review of the Iriver not all of them are prone to damage with knocks and bumps. Mine's been thrown around for three years now and comes with me to the gym all the time and I've never had any problems with skips or bad sectors. The inside of the Iriver case is very snug and well padded and forms a tight seal with the battery with no free space inside, I imagine this (along with a nice padded leather case) prevents any hard drive damage.
