Anyway, as for mp3 players. . . I have, what I call, my ancient pda. It’s a Ipaq, a Compaq Ipaq, from back in the day when HP and Compaq were separate companies. And this was before anyone ever heard of ipods. And I’ve been listening to my music, many types of formats and watching videos, many types of formats and playing games and typing up my school lab reports on it long before it was cool. And sure, I look at new pdas, but just can’t do it right now so I’m still moving along with my ancient one.

The thing that I really didn’t like with the idea of itunes is that you could only use an Ipod. THat might be changing, and you can use it with any service or the other way around.

Lois

Thanks for the converter information, and all the other thoughts as well! This is helpful.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=2935509&CatId=87

The two required cables are already present inside and will only plug in the right way. If you have an empty bay you should be able to leave the existing one in and add a new one. If there is no empty bay the old one can be removed (involves a couple of screws, you just need to find them). Have a geek for a neighbor?
* I think you can burn the itunes tracks you purchased onto up to 7 different CDs before the digital rights management kicks in. A quick web search brought up http://askbobrankin.com/convert_itunes_to_mp3_format.html which gives a process for getting those files into mp3 format.
* Regarding the internal battery, this was a problem with the early Ipods, but Apple has dealt with it. Battery life is an important feature, it is a pain to carry a charging cable around.
* Get as much storage as you can. 4 Gbytes is quite a bit, but Apple’s format is somewhat bigger than a mp3 (this is probably adjustable). It is much nicer if you can get your entire active library on the player. I would assume no more than 200 songs per Gbyte.
* I think a Nano is much better than a Shuffle, having control of what gets played (e.g. depending on your mood) seems essential to me.
* I haven’t looked recently, but you might be able to get considerably more storage for the price from other vendors. They don’t have the coolness factor, but in my experience they work well. I ended up with a Sony player and I have been very happy with it (especially the 24 hour battery life!)
– Vance

I had the iTunes/iPod revelation a few months back. It started with a simple album buy and burn, and turned into days of loading my whole music collection onto my computer and then playing with playlists, etc..

I have been suprised at how much it has changed my music listening habits. Rather than constantly replaying the same relative handful of CDs, I’ve really been rediscovering my older music. Also, creating playlists that mingle different artists in new and interesting ways has been a revelation.

On the advice of a friend of mine, I am trying a subscription to emusic. They sell songs individually, but you can also sign up for a monthly plan. For 9.99 I can download 30 tracks each month. They do not have the selection that iTunes does (I believe they are #2 in total catalog) but they feature more independent music. Having those monthly downloads gives me an incentive to go ahead and experiment with artists I haven’t heard before. I’m just starting out with this, but so far it has been a good experience. The emusic downloads are in mp3 format, and they are yours. Burn them onto CDs or put them on as many computers or mp3 players as you want. You can also load them right into iTunes if you want to use that as your primary player.

With all of this, I’m probably spending more time listening to music than I have since college. It has been really cool.

Gerald