This article is based on a question asked (and answers provided) in the Ask a Techo forum.
...To iPOD or not to iPOD - that was the question...
One of the difficulties with new technology is that it’s hard to tell if you’re talking about a ‘thing’ or the brand name of a thing. For a long while we weren’t sure if iPOD was a brand name or a device – let alone whether we needed one or not.
A little web research taught us that iPOD is a brand name registered by Apple. In fact, it’s a family of music storage devices. There’s the original iPOD, iPoD mini, iPOD photo, iPOD shuffle and iPOD special edition. Although Apple would hate to see them described so succinctly, they’re basically just a very small, hand held device for storing music and, in the case of iPOD photo, images as well. Or, in other words, an MP3 player.
Clever, aggressive marketing has resulted in most people using the name iPOD to mean music storage devices in the same way the British use the name Hoover to mean a vacuum cleaner. The price of iPODs puts them in the range where they return maximum profit but are still seen by many consumers as an item to upgrade whenever the newer version comes out – and that’s quite frequently.
If you’re thinking of buying one, consider the following comments from our resident Techo and a couple of Community members.
- There’s a new iPOD model every year so if you choose to go with that brand take care not to be caught in the upgrade cycle.
- The hard-drive that runs the iPOD is possibly it’s weak point. These things aren't your average CD player – they spin at a much higher speed with the data packed in a much smaller space. Sounds like something that wouldn’t sustain the hard knocks people dish out to portable equipment.
- Something that runs from (for example) a USB flash drive or SD memory card would be more robust and likely tolerate more physical action. Not only that, they’re easier to expand and recover from disaster.
- Another possibility is a PDA instead. The high end of the range have the ability to voice record, play music and many other functions as well.
Having said that, we've noticed that people with iPODs swear by them and will buy all the matching accessories. Ultimately, the choice is yours. iPODs look great and work well but there are lots of other music storage products to consider. Questions you can ask yourself when shopping include:
How much space do I need?
Nowadays you can get anything from 128 MB (which would hold an average of 25 songs) to 60G (which holds thousands of songs). If you were planning to save your whole musical collection to the one device, and were intending to mainly use it indoors or under sedate circumstances, your best bet could be the hard drive based mp3 players which start at 5G of storage or so.
If on the other hand you were intending to primarily use the device as a portable music device (rather than primarily storage), you'd probably find the flash based ones suited your purposes, especially if you were going to be dragging the device all over the place and subjecting it to lots of wear and tear. That way you could store your entire audio collection on your laptop/desktop computer and just download various playlists as required.
What features to I need?
Features that are available on many devices and can be very useful include voice recording capability, FM radio, FM radio recording, being able to play the device through your car radio, direct line input, USB port recharging, 'drag and drop' uploading and being able to store other files on the device. You'll need to check each brand and model for the various cluster of features.
How much should I spend?
You can buy a fairly good quality MP3 player for peanuts nowadays - prices are dropping daily, so it pays to shop around. Given the huge success of podcasting, elearning applications and the likelihood that this medium will become more ubiquitous with time, you can't really go wrong. The Community manager (who originally asked the question) ended up buying one of each (ie hard drive and flash based) and is now stalking corridors with the conviction of a true believer...
What brands should I try?
This is a difficult question to answer because there are so many and things change all the time. But at the time of writing, and after many hours spent in shopping malls in recent weeks, it seems that the top three brands are:
- Apple iPOD
- Creative
- iRiver
Anything else?
Yes. One more thing - if you're wanting to listen to some great podcasts, be sure to visit http://itconversations.com/
