I just want to listen to podcasts when I travel to meetings, etc.
Will a shuffle do the trick, or should I spring for a Nano?
ie will the lack of a display drive me crazy?
Thanks!
M
If you want to experience podcasts as well as listen to music and can spring for a Nano, do that.
The Shuffle is a *great *player for keeping in your pocket or clipped to your person while you do other things and for listening to music randomly (hence the name) or straight through track #1 - #212. The lack of a screen is no problem if you don’t plan to navigate much.
If you want to navigate around and switch from Podcasts to music or even audiobooks and back and forth depending on what you’re doing at a given moment, the Nano is more suited to that.
I use my Shuffle almost exclusively for podcasts. I love listening to it while walking dogs and driving, and the lack of a display isn’t a big deal to me. Usually a minute or two of listening will clue me into what I’m listening to, and most of the time I don’t care what order I hear it in. I just load it and leave on the straight 1- whatever track mode, and when it cycles back to the beginning I wipe and reload. The only time it’s ever a problem is when I listen to podcasts that are in parts and I don’t always hear them in order. That isn’t worth twice the cost to fix for me.
There’s a few tricks you can use to make your podcasts (and other spoken tracks) work nicely on a Shuffle.
[ul][li]Put all of your podcasts in order at beginning of your playlist.[/li][li]Use a “triple click” when you are in sequential mode to tell the Shuffle to jump to the first song (your podcast).[/li][li]When you switch to shuffle mode, you will be hearing only your tunes (as long as the podcasts are tagged up properly).[/li][li]The device will remember where you were in the podcast when you go back to it.[/li]For other spoken content, you will have to edit the info for the files and indicate that they should not be include in shuffle and that you want to remember the position. I did this for a buttload of MP3s I have of The Bourne Identity, which I am listening to now as I run (surprisingly, a ten mile run doesn’t get you that far in an audiobook).[/ul]
Really good advice.
Thanks all.
M