Yeah, doesn’t disliking things simply because they’re popular tend to lose its appeal around the time you turn 20 or so?
Two thoughts:
I had a 40GB Creative Zen…and you could NOT drag and drop to that any more than you could an iPod without a lot of fuckery. And Creative Media whatever is WORSE than iTunes by a long shot.
Right now, I’m using a LG Chocolate 2 cellphone with a removable 4GB microSD card for music storage. This is the route I’d recommend you go–at least with the card storage rather than onboard, in the size range you’re looking at.
I had thought the Sansas did that, but I guess they don’t anymore, at least so Best Buy is telling me. Bah.
It’s odd, by the by–my local Best Buy has a vast selection of non-iPod MP3 players.
Agreed - I don’t really see the point of spending $80+ on an mp3 player when just about every freebie phone nowadays will take at least a 2 GB MicroSD card and play music.
For me, the point was getting something with enough storage that I could put **all **of my music on it and have room for expansion. A two-gig card isn’t going to cut it for that. I’ve still got stacks of albums to rip and old HDDs full of MP3s to dump onto my iPod, and I’ve already used about 27 GB out of the 160 GB total.
There are iPhone apps that will stream your music library over the internet. imeem Mobile will do 20,000 songs.
Then I need to pay for an iPhone and a data plan and keep my computer online all the time. My way is much cheaper and doesn’t require me to be in an area with WiFi and/or cellphone reception.
Well, yeah, this is why I’m going to pick up a 120GB iPod at some point soon, but for the commute, the phone is a nice cheap solution–besides, the OP is looking at 4-8GB players.
I should have said “if you only want 4 gigs”, since that’s what **Martini Enfield **specified. Obviously if you want to carry around all your music and lots of video and stuff 2-4 gigs is a bit short, although now that I think about it all the music on my computer only takes up 7-8 GB.
Very true. I just know some people who were blown away with this information, because they already had an iPhone and were disappointed with their storage capacity.
If you already have an iPhone, it’s definitely the cheaper solution. (Big emphasis on the “if,” though.) And I wasn’t responding to the OP–I was responding to someone who said they didn’t understand why anyone would buy an MP3 player, with no mention of capacity.
But:
So now it all makes sense.
What happens if you want to use a computer or device without itunes, or similar, for a music file source?
Two things: Firstly, add 20% to the price for the exchange rate difference, then add whatever shipping is, and we’re up to AUD$200, which was well out of my price range. Secondly, there’s no support for Zunes in Australia. If I could even get it to work, then I’d still have no way to get it repaire if the unit stopped working.
I decided not to go with the expanded-phone-memory option because I like to keep my tech separate. My phone is for making and receiving calls and messages; my MP3 player is for listening to music. I don’t want to be in a situation where I need to make or receive a phone call and my phone battery is flat from listening to music on it. (That’s happened to most people I know, FWIW).
Still, I appreciate the tips and suggestions thus far, and will keep them in mind whenever one of my friends is looking for a good MP3 player that isn’t an iPod. 
I can’t help you don’t put your location on your profile… sorry thought you were Italian… or English.
I mentioned that I was in Australia a couple of times earlier up the thread, but it’s OK- most people here default to the “Assume everyone on the boards is from the US” setting. 
That Zune has no equalizer, anyhow, which stopped me from getting it. Bizarre.
That’s what you get for posting on the message board of a column that got its start in a Chicago newspaper. 
When I start posting to the forums for a column from Victoria’s Herald Sun, you have my official permission to assume I’m Australian.
He can’t. Guest don’t get location fields.
Sure we do. They’re just in our profiles instead of also being appended to our posts.
It’s not that. I just assumed MP3 technology hadn’t propagated to the Outback yet.
Ah, but you were assuming it stood for MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3.
Marsupial Playback requiring 3 kangaroos. MP4 is the wallaby codec–they’re smaller, so you need more of them.