Alternatives to Ipods?

deaner33

deaner33

Drew loves Thin Lizzy
My beloved Rio Cali finally died on me & I'm looking to get another MP3 player. My wife has an Ipod & I HATE it! It has the most user-unfriendly song management. I'm not concerned with huge storage capacity & actually liked the Cali's SD based storage. I loved the simplicity of the Cali, anyone have any recommendations?
 
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Sorry no recommendation, but I've gotten tired of the iPod as well. The song management doesn't bother me, but inability to play FLAC files does. I saw somewhere here that you can get new firmware that allows you to play FLAC files, and there are other differences as well. I'll be watching this thread with interest.
 
I like the Sandisk Sansa. They have a slot for microSD expansion. Nice and compact, and the one that I used had an FM tuner feature that worked pretty good. Doesn't have a shiny finish that gets all scratched up either.
 
I just bought a little 2G Sansa Clip with the card slot & FM feature- the idea is to load it with " gentle music" & give it to my housebound dad. If I like it, I'm getting one! ( Wife & kid are Ipod-aholics! :sigh:)
 
I reccomend the zune ,for a small monthly fee you can access zune site and download all the songs you want as long as you pay monthy fee,its great for testing cd's you may want to buy ,theres a lot of playlist that are fun,and its easy to move files back and forth,its sounds good too.it has a fm radio also.
 
Sansa E series are nice, particularly for the price. We have 3 in the household and all owners are pleased. We bought refurbished at a great price. You'll probably need or want to update firmware or even put on rockbox. Do a Google search on "Sandisk Sansa e280" and you'll find refurbished 8 MB models (with mini-SD card slot) for ~$50 at several online vendors.
 
Thanks for the advice. After doing some research, I'm going to go with the Sansa Clip +. An editor's choice at Cnet & universally good reviews on Amazon. Just plays music & does it well, which is all I want. An 8 Gig model is right at $60 & the memory can be expanded.

Deaner
 
recommend you check out the Cowon D2

plays FLAC, OGG Vorbis in addition to MP3, SD Cards - I am using 32GB and long battery life. internal memory up to 16GB. very high sound quality.
 
The wife loves her 4 gig Sansa I got her for christmas last year. She also has a 8 gig card in it so she has 12 gigs of music ripped from CD's on it. Sound pretty dang good in her car with the Alpine deck.
 
deaner33 said:
My beloved Rio Cali finally died on me & I'm looking to get another MP3 player. My wife has an Ipod & I HATE it! It has the most user-unfriendly song management. I'm not concerned with huge storage capacity & actually liked the Cali's SD based storage. I loved the simplicity of the Cali, anyone have any recommendations?
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My son is only 7, like his father he likes music. He was 6 last Christmas, and because of price I bought him a Sony Walkman MP3, don't remember the exact model, but it is 8GB, has a 2.5" or 3" display, and it was approx. $80.00 at Wmart.

It is very easy to use, has all the principal features of the IPod Nano I own, leaves out the bells & whistles I rarely use in my Ipod, has better sound (DAC), it has great video display, and it even has FM radio.

I highly recommend it, with a good set of headphones, like IGrado, it sounds great. I use it all the time.
 
I got a Philips GoGear SA52xx and though it seemed to have some issues early on in production and hence some neg. press, they got it irooned out with the firm update. I could care about iTunes as I listen to old radio programs mostly but have extended my download experiance a might to include some tunes and training for guitar.

I wanted something that I could watch videos on such as movies and older television series. With the PPC6700 powered by MS 5.0 it was a chore to convert the formats but with the Philips' supplied software it is easy. In Canada the Rhapsody service is not available so I can not comment on it but, so far it has not ben an issue.

The player is rugged, feels like a solid piece of metal and no panel flex. Sound is very good and picture quality as good as I've seem. Mine has a very decent FM tuner. Mine is not the model with Bluetooth so I can not comment on it. Mine is the 8 gig model and at best I may have 3-4 gigs if I load videos. It does not have a card slot which at first seemed like a limitation but has not proved to be so.

Philips is not well recognized in this field and as a result, you get a lot of player at an excellent price.
 
59volvo said:
recommend you check out the Cowon D2

plays FLAC, OGG Vorbis in addition to MP3, SD Cards - I am using 32GB and long battery life. internal memory up to 16GB. very high sound quality.
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I seriously considered a Cowon, but some of them seem to have problems with dying suddenly (according to some reviews on Amazon). Sounds like you have a good one. :thmbsp:
 
I have a Cowan S9 & it sounds really great - a small step above the D2. It's interface can seem a little clunky at times but it's given me no trouble. Its major weakness would be lack of memory expansion but it's now available in a 32G version. Considered the best sounding player by many people with far better ears than me but of course you can probably find an "it's the best player" review for pretty much any of them if you dig deep enough.

Ben
 
Any of the Sansa e or c series players are very nice, especially if you get a 'refurb' unit for <$20. :banana: There is a lot of support at the Sansa forum and most will work with rockbox if you need more elaborate software, although I find it way more than I need or can comprehend. Buy.com and Newegg has specials on refurbs regularly, but they go fast.
 
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