iTunes questions and iPod or other hardware

[hoomza444]

wow, great review thebubsy...

right now i am stuck using my pda and have been looking into this for quite some time, and your insight helped a lot...

for the most part, my ears are so desensitized anyway, that i don't think the difference in sound quality will be a huge issue - but was just stating the facts as i had heard them...As for the headphones, i haven't heard them...for my regular cans i used a set of sennheiser hd535s which are pretty good by my standards, especially since i don't really have great hearing anymore....and for portable devices i usually use Koss Porta Pros...these are actually great headphones at a decent price...any audiophile forum or shop will probably carry these as they are considered a great buy for portable cans...


some of the features you were describing on the ipod seem pretty interesting, and just to reiterate, the drive can also be used as a portable hard drive?

and one last question...how rapidly does the battery drain if the unit is off? i mean if i were to use it for a half hour and hten leave it off for a week, would i come back to find it dead? And if it is dead, does everything need to be resynch'd? i.e., any settings, etc...This may sound like a weird/stupid question but my pda dies within a a week or so even if it's not used.....and when it dies everything in memory is erased, so i have to reinstall any software and reconfigure any settings....so i am constantly checking to make sure the battery doesn't fully die because it becomes a huge hassle...i'd rather not have to worry about hassles like that with the mp3 player as well....thanks in advance
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[thebusby]

some of the features you were describing on the ipod seem pretty interesting, and just to reiterate, the drive can also be used as a portable hard drive?

and one last question...how rapidly does the battery drain if the unit is off? i mean if i were to use it for a half hour and hten leave it off for a week, would i come back to find it dead? And if it is dead, does everything need to be resynch'd? i.e., any settings, etc...This may sound like a weird/stupid question but my pda dies within a a week or so even if it's not used.....and when it dies everything in memory is erased, so i have to reinstall any software and reconfigure any settings....so i am constantly checking to make sure the battery doesn't fully die because it becomes a huge hassle...i'd rather not have to worry about hassles like that with the mp3 player as well....thanks in advance
!

First Question:
Oh I forgot to mention the one feature that actually had me purchase my iPod in the first place! For both USB and Firewire the iPod uses the generic Mass Storage Device driver meaning you can use it as a portable harddrive much like one of those (thumb/cigar/key) usb flash drives. In other words no drivers needed just plug it in and the computer will automatically recognize it as a portable storage device. To get it to play music though you'llhave to use iTunes, GnuPod, ePhPod, or another utility though since the music needs to be added to a database on the iPod for you to be able to listen to it. So if you just copy mp3 files onto the ipod it WILL NOT play them since you must use some software to enter the mp3's into the database first. I think it uses XML for everything too so Apple was very kind in making everything an open standard.

Second Question:
Unlike your PDA the iPod actually turns itself off(though it does have a suspend state), meaning that it is in a state that draws no power. Since it is hard drive based you can completely discharge the battery without loosing any settings or music. In terms of shelf longevity I can't really answer that since I never tested it. So it hasn't been noticeable enough for me to really pay attention to it, it probably does loose a little power but not enough for me to tell. Though I know what your talking about since my Sharp Zaurus had the same battery problem which I can assure you the iPod does not since it actually powers down.

Ohh and I forgot to add the iPod is the only player I know about with full unicode support . Which is nice for me since I have a large collection of Japanese music. Its pretty neat to see that little screen with all the kana and kanji

 

[BlackFonz]

god I want one of these so fucking bad! I hate being poor!