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I got the Creative Labs Zen Xtra 60gb for 100 bucks less (it is significantly bigger, but I don’t mind, still fits in pocket fine.) 100 bucks buys a good amount of music.
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You cannot download audiobooks from netlibrary.com and play them on iPod; it doesn’t support protected WMA. Zen does.
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When they start cranking out millipede chips there will be tiny solid-state devices like the iPod nano with 125 gigabytes of storage.
No, s/he (? - sorry) sounds exactly like an American …accountant.
It’s obvious.
You can’t get one because I can’t afford one.
If I can’t get one, nobody gets one.
simple.
deal.
Next question?
Don’t spend money on an iPod until you’ve seriously researched all the alternatives, including keeping whatever system you use now to listen to music, Creative, Zen, iRiver, etc. I personally have an iRiver, and can’t stand iPods. I really like the way Mangetout put it.
People buy iPods because they’re popular, which is a stupid reason to buy anything. My iRiver comes with a remote control that can be easily clipped to your belt-loops or the outside of your pocket, so you can pause, stop, play, move forward a track, adjust volume, with one hand, all without having to pull anything out of your pocket, and in fact without even having to look down. The round touch-wheel just bothers me, too.
Anyway, here’s my main point:
PLEASE CONSIDER ALL THE ALTERNATIVES BEFORE SPENDING ANY MONEY.
The technology in the flash-based nano is not comperable to a standard iPod.
Here is a sample of the kind of complaints I ran in to while looking for a place to buy a replacment battery for my ipod (look at the comments). I was surprised at how frequent screen breakage is and almost bought an enclosure, but the cheapest hard enclosures are around $25.00 (which I can’t help but think of as a quarter of a hundred dollars- too much to spend on something that already cost hundeds of dollars. I’ll make one myself and hope it works.)
Sure, some people are dumbasses and drop their iPods in water and stuff like that. But a signifigant number of people take their iPod out of their purse or whatever and find that their screen is cracked. An iPod is fun, but it’s not an investment. It’s not something you can buy and figure your portable music needs are taken care of for a few years. I wouldn’t buy one unless $300 is an amount you can afford to lose or spend again. I certainly wouldn’t buy one on credit.
I can’t talk you out of buying an iPod because I really like mine. A lot.
When I bought it, there were a lot fewer choices than today, and it was the only one that I really liked. It’s one of the early 20Gb models. The rights management stuff doesn’t bother me a bit. I rip all of my music to MP3 if I do it myself, and if I buy it, I usually buy MP3. The only exception is the Apple Store, where I’ve purchased a couple of dozen songs.
Reliability has been great. My only complaint is that when I’m using it with the car charger, sometimes turning the car engine off and back on (at a gas station, for example) will cause the iPod to lock up and I have to reboot it. It also gets somewhat unhappy when the temperature goes below freezing.
I think iTunes is great, and it handles the music well. The smart playlists with live updating are great, and transfer between iTunes and iPod perfectly.
My 20Gb iPod is a bit over half full. By the time I fill it up, it’ll either be time to replace it anyway, or I’ll just remove anything I’ve rated low.
Yeah, I’d have to agree – iPods themselves aren’t that great as music players. But since it looks shiny and it’s Apple (who is little more than a Big Corporation with ass-kicking marketing-fu), people eat it up. Who else could convince people to drop a hundred bucks on a white plastic gum stick with only 256 megs that has no screen and no way to control what track you get next?
D’oh, it’s 512. My bad.
The iPod can play music? Why didn’t someone tell me???
Seriously, when I got mine I ran a 45-iMac computer lab for a local community college. Each iMac was set up identically, and since I couldn’t convince ITS that having a NetBoot/NetInstall setup would be feasable, I had (and still have) a bootable OS, a disk utility or two, a disk imaging program, and disk images on my iPod. Student manages to break an iMac? Rather than spend a day figuring out what’s wrong, or several hours reinstalling things, I’d boot from my iPod, and BAM, new image in 45 minutes.
Obviously, this is an odd situation, but I love my iPod dearly and use it almost solely as an external FireWire drive. Why, I only have 7.5 days worth of music on it! 
For the OP, though, do some research, find something that does what you need it to, and if it turns out to be an iPod, welcome to the pack.
-PLD
As I mentioned before, I am hot-to-trot for the convenience of sync-ing with iTunes. All of my Music is very anally organized and I really like the integration. I used to have a Creative mp3 player, but the controls were too small (I love the iPod scroll wheel) and it was too small for me to carry comfortably.
I hate Apple with a passion, being a reformed Mac user, but the iPod does what I need in an mp3 player.
Well, to be fair to Apple, most of those complaints run along the lines of “I dropped my iPod and it broke and Apple won’t fix it for free, those bastards!”. It’s certainly possible that the screen on the iPod is more fragile than it should be, but given the millions that have been sold, you’re going to get some people who lose the “drop it just right from 8 inches and it breaks” sweepstakes.
As for the nano not being comparable to the standard iPod, well, that’s rather the point isn’t it? Apple is switching to a less fragile technology without a hard drive. That would be a * good * thing based on your complaints, wouldn’t it?
As far as the OP goes, my primary beef is that Apple hasn't done much with the basic functionality. No radio tuner and no voice recorder. But that's kind of a quibble because I wouldn't use them anyway.
And the batteries do suck and are a bitch to replace.Where do you buy music in MP3 format?
Hey man, the less I think about your anal organization, the finer I’ll be.
I live in an odd household. The Fem-Bot, aged 13.9 was jonesing an iPod. The Man-Cub, aged 15.5 was determined NOT to buy an iPod because everyone on the planet wanted one.
Fem-Bot got her iPod about 6 months ago. It died last night, believe it or not. I drove to the Apple Store, where a nice Mac Genius swapped it for a brand new one in about 90 seconds. ( Seriously. He hit a button, listened to the crappy grindy HD in the iPod, and walked to the shelf and grabbed a new one.) I’ve just formatted it to read off the XP machine downstairs and loaded up a few songs for her. The rest is up to her. The problem is that she drops it. A lot. I’ve lost my temper, begged, cajoled, it doesn’t matter. The hard clear shell case we bought of course keeps it from being scratched, but does zero to protect it from the kind of jarring hits that no spinning drive is meant to endure. I wish to god that the Nano had existed 6 months ago.
The Man-Cub went with a Sony MP-3 player. It’s also 20 gigs and is smaller than an iPod. Considerably smaller, in fact. It works perfectly, hasn’t failed, is used incessantly of course.
I do indeed resent the heavy expenditure that the iPod represented only to see it die an early death. By next spring when the warranty rolls I have no doubt but that she will have dropped it more times, and it will die. Again. I am encouraging her to find a color she likes and buy the thickest Skin for it that she can find, to try to protect it from sudden jarring hits.
Why do I not have these problems with my portable 8-track ???
Cartooniverse
Well, I bought a 15-gig 3rd-gen because there was no way I would need 20gb. I’ve regretted that ever since. It is EASY to accumulate an enormous amount of music, even without using it as a hard drive.
Some people massively prefer iPods to anything else, others don’t see what all the hype is about. My friend had his 30gb fall out of his pocket and get run over. He bought an iRiver as a replacement, and sent it back within a week to get a 40gb iPod. Other friends are happy as larry with their Nomads or whatever.
Borrow all your friends mp3 players for a while to try them out, and then buy the one you like most with as much storage space as you can afford…
Is this true? When the battery dies and you need to replace it, you have to reload every single song and recreate playlists, etc? How much life do you get out of the average battery?
I was seriously considering getting an iPod, but if this is true, there’s no way.
I think the Fem-Bot is in for an object lesson in treating one’s possessions with the care due them, and that you have the perfect opportunity to give her this lesson. Because she’s not old enough to work for a living, I assume she did not buy the iPod with her own earned money – which may bear directly on how much she values it. I’m not a parent, and I don’t know the specifics of your situation, so I’ll remain mute on that point.
In her defense: at age 14, girls are clumsy. Wait until she’s 16, and for the first time in four years she has grace. You’ll notice the very day it happens – or you’ll notice that every adolescent male within a mile of your home has noticed.
One last note for the OP. Don’t buy depreciating assets on credit. EVER. If it’s a toy like the iPod, make sure you can pay cash for it free and clear. Look at what percentage of your average daily checking balance it represents. I have plenty of cash sitting around – because I don’t lightly buy toys! – and I have been agonizing for almost a month about a graphics card upgrade for my PC. Just this week I picked a price point that will satisfy me that I’ve gotten a good deal, and I’m not budging until the price drops below it… at which point I can buy it online for the low low price of $140.00 or less.
Well, it does say on the page I linked to,
So yes. 
But again, you can try to replace the battery on your own, although I believe (no cite) that this invalidates the warranty.
Also, there are methods (hacks, to be precise) to get music from the iPod to your hard drive, but Apple thinks that is Not Cool and I’m betting the SDMB wouldn’t like detailed discussion of it, either, so suffice it to say that there do exist methods of doing so–but illicit ones.
In the one year I’ve had an ipod, it has malfunctioned and needed to be replaced three times.
I did a lot of research, with some first hand experience with the iPod, and decided to go with the IAudio X5. About the same price as a normal 20GB iPod, but with a color screen and video playing capability. It also has a good equalizer and can function as a portable harddrive out of the box, which I believe you have to hack the iPod to do. I also have all of my music anally organized, which is why I felt the X5’s arrangement was perfect for me. No software for the file arrangements, it just has everything set up in folders exactly as it is on your PC.
http://forms.theregister.co.uk/search/?q=ipod+nano
The Nano has its own fragility issues.
*Cartooniverse: You just *wish *you were as anally organized as me!