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General discussion

MP3 Flash vs Hard Drive

Aug 29, 2005 7:36PM PDT

Hi guys,

I wanna buy a MP3 player, but can't decide whether to get a flash or HDD?

Does one need 4GB or even 20 Gigs of music, when I can download new music everyday from my PC?

My concerns are that for a little bit more you get much better price/volume ratio. But HDDs are bigger. Could you please from personal experience tell whether it is comfortable to have Hard Drive player 4 by 3 inches in your front jeans pocket or on the belt? I am not that much in workout, but I take subway to my work or college (I live in Europe and we are not that much into cars, especially in megapolises), and I listen to music during trips on my oldie iRiver IMP150 MP3 CD but it rather big, and that's why I want to get a new smaller player.

Discussion is locked

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MP3 Flash...
Aug 31, 2005 5:17AM PDT

Hey Tartak,

I currently have a Creative MuVo Micro 1GB flash player and it's great - it holds a lot of music, has an FM tuner , is plenty loud, and can do voice recording as well. That said, I'm still looking at buying an iPod as well and here's why:

I have a lot of music ripped at high bitrates. It's actually kind of disturbing how much music I have, and it's not getting better. While putting music on my flash player every day or two is easy, often times I'm struck by the desire to listen to something that isn't on the player. In addition, I like to listen to music both at home and at work (which is permitted where I work - as a doctoral student on fellowship). Obviously, I can't keep my digital music collection on my (personal) work computer and my home computer (which happens to be a laptop with a 40GB hardrive - far too small for my collection). I can either get an external or network attached hardisk, or buy a hard drive based player (I'm looking at a 60GB iPod).

I have used my cousin's iPod and it's about as bad as having a cellphone in your front jean pocket (I don't have the smallest cellphone in the world) because the iPod doesn't have an antenna sticking out of it and is a rectangle as opposed to some variation of oval or rounded bar.

My call for you would be to get a flash player - you can load it up whith what you want every day or two and also use it if you are more active (like running). I love my Creative MuVo Micro for most things!

-Sablazo

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I think I am set for flash
Sep 17, 2005 8:59PM PDT

Sablazo,

Thanx very much for your post! I also have talked to some of my colleagues at work, and peers at college who already own a flash based player. Well, seems flash player is really what I need. I don't think that I need all my music collection - it is now about 20 GB and growing (even though bitrate is about 320Kbit VBR, or 192 Kbit CBR). I think even of wiping out some of the music I don't listen to, as I have about 2 GB of free space on my oldie 80 GB hdd.

I also listen to music @ my work (I work as a helpdesk technician in subscription based service), and have about 4 GB of music there. I hardly change CD in my iRiver CD-MP3 during couple of days, so 1GB is perfectly enough.

Going to your idea to buy iPod. I've heared a lot of **** about iPod not playing some MP3's ripped, plus once you get a song from iTunes, you can nopy it to iPOD, but not back on PC. If this is true - I wouldn't get iPOD. Try to look for iAudio X5 hdd model - looks like it is cool.

Also you may get external harddrive, or netword drive - it'll be much cheaper.

As for me I wanna get iAudio 5 1GB model. The said thing is that it is not sold in Ukraine yetSad

Well, all bests,

Tartak