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Underground > Radio & Music >

Anyone have an Ipod or a Napster machine?

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05:25 / 17.11.03

I've heard the i-pod can hold about a thousand songs, and has just recently become windows compatible. I've also heard it's super-kick-ass-2000 when you drive around and have the thing on shuffle. I always figured you needed some special adapter to play it in your car, I'm ot sure. Well I just saw an add for a Napster machine, looks similar to i-pod, holds about a thousand songs, and has a neat feature where the FM station on your car picks up the signal on the thing, so you don't need an adapter at all. So does anyone have one of these? How much did ya pay? Was it worth it?

10:14 / 17.11.03

Depending on capacity, the current iPods hold anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 songs (10-40 Gigs). It won't work with the new Napster service, but is the only one working with the Apple music store. Napster-compatible units range from flashdrive players holding an hour-or-so's worth of music to 8-or-10 thousand for the harddrive players.

Here's a pretty fair rundown-
http://www.techtv.com/freshgear/products/story/0,23008,3559981,00.html

FM transmitters tend to be a bit shoddy, the sound quality is low and you have to find a station without interferance. You can pick up a casette adapter for around $10 at any electronics/music store that will just plug into the headphone jack and give you better quality.

I paid something like $300 for a middle of the road iPod a few months ago (store discount, the only benefit to working retail)- I still shudder at the price, but to be honest, the thing never leaves my side, great for road trips (esp. with a car charger, the battery life on the apple model is only 6-8 hours). Love it.

11:03 / 17.11.03

How do the PC-compatible iPods compare?

11:13 / 17.11.03

I have an iPod but no Mac, and it works just fine with a PC. When I got mine it came with software specifically for use with a PC (MusicMatch), but I have a feeling a PC version of iTunes is now available. Are there advantages to using it in conjunction with a Mac that I'm missing?

11:23 / 17.11.03

Well, when hooked to a Mac, it will also sync your address book, to-do list and stuff with the iPod. Really, though, they're exactly the same devices, and now they support Firewire and USB2, you're not really that badly off using one with a PC... though from what I've heard, Musicmatch is stinking ass and should be replaced with iTunes asap.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

13:46 / 17.11.03

I use a minidisc net MD. Cheaper, great sound quality and I like it.

Murray Hamhandler

17:50 / 17.11.03

I have an RCA Lyra with...2,333 songs currently on it. And it's about a quarter of the way full (a slew of those files are half-hour long Best Show bits, though). It doubles as a hard drive as it will hold any file that you choose to put on it. It rocks.

nedrichards is confused

19:49 / 17.11.03

btw. FM transmitter stuff is illegal in the UK being as you are broadcasting, even in a small area.

On a personal note the iPod is gods own machine and the easiest thing in the world to use. If you can affoard it, get one. If not think about saving because it's 8so* worth it.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

23:27 / 17.11.03

I have one of the older 20gig iPods and it's the best overpriced gadget I've ever purchased. It has 2,000+ mp3 / m4a files on it, although 90 or so are DJ sets of an hour or more. In total it holds about 11 days of music. I use it with a Mac, but I know people who use them with Windows boxes and they run just as well. Not too interested in the iTunes music store though.

02:30 / 18.11.03

net md here too. this calls for hiiiigh five radiator 2. well I just got a job so I'll probably get a ipod sometime later and dump the md on my cousin with at a inflated price. with the md you have to change the cartridges though but yeah its still great. 10 gigs though? thats like overkill, like a music diary or something, well I mean for the people that don't even own a thousand songs you know.

12:05 / 18.11.03

Yeah, once upon a time there was "iPod for Windows" and "iPod for Mac" but now there's just the one machine that goes both ways. As long as you skip the Musicmatch software and go straight to iTunes (which is far superior software anyhow, and still a free download), there's no functional difference at all. And, yes, you might not have enough music to fill it, but like the others mentioned it's also a fully functional hard drive, good for backing up files and the like (i'm told you can actually load an operating system onto the iPod and boot a computer from it, which is useful to someone, somewhere..)

The only real issue I've seen with the thing is that the battery will not last forever (after a few years, it won't hold a charge for so long), and its not really designed to be replaceable. You can buy third-party replacement batteries, if you're feeling adventurous and want to pry the thing apart, or you can go with the new program Apple's rolling out (US only so far) which involves you sending them your iPod and $100 and them sending you a refurb unit with a new battery.

It's not the cheapest and it might not be the best, but its probably the only one that will make you care about it. If that's a good thing or not...

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

07:46 / 19.11.03

^5, Meth. I think Minidisc's a lot nicer than a datastick- a lot more people have it, so you can trade with mates and shit.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

07:49 / 19.11.03

Also what the shit? You have to keep paying them cish cash just to keep charging your battery? you're fucked if they fold, too.

nedrichards is confused

09:30 / 19.11.03

It's a sealed unit similar to a mobile phone, not 4 AA's. And I don't really think them folding will be a problem sicne they're one of the 2 US computer companies that consistently makes money (the other is Dell). Currently I'd have far more worries about Sony being spilt up than Apple.

23:41 / 23.11.03

yeah but you still have to pay them 100 after every two years or so, that sucks.

and what about this sj-mj18? why would you get this? if you live in the u.s. you need a voltage converting transformer and it doesn't have a pause button, and you need to already own a recorder. it looks cool I admit but still.

http://www.audiocubes.com/product_info.php?cPath=71_76&products_id=502

00:57 / 24.11.03

I have a 5GB iPod, a Windows PC, and the new Windows iTunes software.

I am extremely happy with all.

11:51 / 01.12.03

Hooray! My shiny new 20GB iPod just arrived through the post this morning. I've manfully resisted being distracted by the extreeemely sexy packaging, and am charging the thing up.

What should I do now? The User's Guide specifies installation of MusicMatch, but you guys reckon there's a much better PC version of iTunes? Where do I get it?

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

13:12 / 01.12.03

Download it from apple.com a la pronto and scour that MusicMatch from your PC like nobody's business.

Good times await, my friend.

14:25 / 01.12.03

yeah, I'm amazed at how much better iTunes for Windows is over MusicMatch. Night and day, really.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

16:14 / 01.12.03

According to Smoothly Weaving (above) iTunes is lovely for the PC. You can do x-fades between songs. As For "is an iPod better with a Mac" - I don't know. I have a Mac, and one good feature is encoding your tunes as AAC instead of MP3s or *gulp* AIFF files. AACs are much smaller. I don't know if that feature is availabe on the PC iTunes.

16:29 / 01.12.03

you can buy an FM transmitter for iPod for about £40, but they are illegal to operate! All the more reason...

17:58 / 03.12.03

Okay-dokay, I've eschewed the MusicMatch disc in favour of iTunes, and bought the requisite lead to enable transfer to the iPod itself. I'm slightly dismayed to find there're no fast USB ports on our machine, so transfer's likely to be slow - but I've no idea how slow. Am I gonna have to leave the iPod connected overnight to transfer an album?

20:37 / 03.12.03

Mmmm, this is frustrating. I'm hoping someone here can advise...

I've charged up the iPod. I've ignored the little pop-up window telling me I have to download the stuff on the accompaning disc, and gone with iTunes instead. 'Importing' songs from CD seems to take a while, but I've succeeded in transferring three or four albums' worth to iTunes.

This morning I tried to transfer music from iTunes to iPod. Discovered I lacked the appopriate connector, so duly went out and bought it. Plugged it in and, rather plaintively, my PC informs me it doesn't do hi-speed, and any transfer to the iPod is likely to be slow. Fair enough, thinks me.

Plugging in the iPod results in a 'Do Not Disconnect' message... for around fifteen minutes, then the display goes blank. Pressing buttons gets me the 'battery low' symbol and I need to disconnect it for recharging - still with no music transferred.

So... connecting iPod to PC seems to drain the former of battery-power without transferring any music. Bah.

The 'troubleshooting' section of the User Guide is singularly unhelpful. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Should I try it with MusicMatch from the accompanying disc? Is my PC gonna need some sort of hi-speed doodah added in order to be able to transfer anything to the iPod at all?

22:44 / 03.12.03

Ganesh - I can't promise that this will be your problem, but when I got my iPod it seemed to be fully powered when I turned it on - straight out of the box. I asssumed it came with the battery fully charged. But within a minute or so of fiddling with the controls, the battery died, so I left it plugged into the power adapter for a few hours before I started playing proper. So, in short, it might not be that your PC is draining the battery. Maybe leave it a while just to charge.
As for the 'Do Not Disconnect' message, this seems to be displayed by default whenever you connect it and have iTunes running. You need to hit the 'Eject iPod' button in the bottom right corner before it will permit you to physically disconect it.

Hmmm, perhaps this is all really obvious stuff which you've already ruled out. Apologies if this is of insultingly limited help.

22:47 / 03.12.03

Oh, and one other thing: Don't try installing MusicMatch as well as iTunes. It causes some kind of sticky conflict apparently. If you want to try MM, I'd uninstall iTunes first.

23:00 / 03.12.03

Well, I charged it up for 4 hours on Monday, the day it arrived. Other than setting date and time and so on, I've been unable to do very much with it until I got the connector lead, so it's mainly been blank and switched to 'hold'. Given that I've barely been using the iPod at all, could the battery-power have drained away over the last couple of days, to the point where I can't transfer any music?

It's been charging up again for two, three hours, so we should be able to tell soon enough.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

23:03 / 03.12.03

A friend of mine had similar troubles when he first purchased his iPod...in the end he charged it for about 8 hours to ensure as full a battery as possible, then left it connected to transfer his mp3s over for a couple of hours more (due to only having slow USB). While this worked for getting music on there, the problem is that USB does not supply enough power to keep the iPod charged while transferring. He eventually tired of the slow transfer speeds and added Firewire to his PC.

23:12 / 03.12.03

Plugged fully-charged iPod into PC again (via USB2.0 connector lead) and got the same pop-up recommending that I install a hi-speed blah blah technofishcakes for maximum performance. Also got the 'iPod hardware detected but you have not downloaded iPod software from disc or www.apple.com' message (despite my having downloaded iTunes for PCs).

A question: when the iPod's connected to iTunes, is there any way of knowing whether music's being transferred other than simply waiting? Should there be some indication onscreen?

23:17 / 03.12.03

The USB2.0 connector lead has two leads coming from the bit which plugs into the iPod. One fits my PC's USB port, and the other one would fit the battery recharger plug - so theoretically I could recharge the iPod while music's being transferred...

Anyone got any idea whether this is possible, or would I blow up my PC or what?

Red Cross Iodized Salt

00:16 / 04.12.03

You should be able to charge and connect at the same time...

When you connect, does an iPod 'folder' appear in the left-hand side list on iTunes? It may be that you need to download additional software before the connection is established. You should definitely be able to see the transfer as it happens from iTunes.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

00:17 / 04.12.03

Oh wait...the bit that goes into the charger may be the Firewire end...I'm not sure how good that would be to have plugged in at the same time.

Hold on a second and I'll see if I can find you some links.

Red Cross Iodized Salt

00:21 / 04.12.03

The Windows + iPod forum at iPod Lounge should be able to provide you with better advice.

Also worth checking is Apples knowlege base.

00:56 / 04.12.03

Thanks for those links, RCIS, it looks like my main problem is bonsai-esque slowness caused by trying to use USB1.1 hardware. It looks like I can get a FireWire or USB2.0 card/socket installed easily enough. I'm assuming I'd just take the laptop to my nearest Toshiba dealer and get him to adapt it, eh?

Red Cross Iodized Salt

01:32 / 04.12.03

You should be able to pick up a PCMCIA cardbus adaptor for either Firewire or USB 2.0 (for about £30 or so) and set it up yourself without much difficulty (it will slot into the space on the side of the laptop that is most commonly used for ethernet adaptors). Most PCMCIA cards of this kind are Type II PC cards, so make sure that your laptop can use these first.

Sorry about the headaches getting set up. It'll be worth it when everything is running though...the speed of Firewire transfer is a biiiiig improvement.

10:19 / 04.12.03

Thanks. I'll check out the Type II thing this evening and, all going well, buy and install it tomorrow.

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