Pags Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 I just got a new player for Christmas. It's the first high-capacity player I've owned in about 7 years. I used to have a 40GB Creative Labs Zen Xtra but it finally croaked. That's my baby. I loved everything about it. With the new player, and it seems all players nowadays, there's this need for keeping it synced with your computer in order to make updates, edits, create playlists, etc. It's completely different from my experience with the Zen, as back then the players were totally independent from the computer. Using the software, I could edit tag info, create and edit playlists directly on the player. It was one location to store and manage all my music. This need for syncing really pisses me off. I now have to keep ALL my media files on my computer in order to get full functionality with the player. Sure I can change the settings to manage it manually, but then I lose the ability to edit tag information, or ever write playlists. So shutting off syncing is not really an option. Please, someone give me the pros for having to keep a duplicate storage of all these media files, because I can only come up with cons. I have a 120GB player, that now I have to come up with an ADDITIONAL 120GBs of disk space, just so I can manage and sync it. Well that's just stupid! Who the hell has all that extra space just laying around?? Just to get the full use of my player, I now have to spend extra money and invest into an external hard drive, just so I can host these files! I certainly can't fit it all on my computer. And until I get one of these external hard drives, my brand new player just sits and waits. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Other than that... I really love the new player. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Necromancer Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 Yeah, that is a bitch of it. But seeing as I never had a different high capacity storage mp3 player until I got the Ipod, I can't compare. Only from knowing how good yours was, can I base any argument. Also, I have the extra room cuz I have the hard drive. They're not a lot, but I understand it's just a bitch to have to get one now. I also hate the synching parts, and the pirating fighting aspect of it really blows (with the ipod). So many songs I had dl'ed from limewire will not go into the Ipod. Until now. CeeJ found a program, so with time, they will be converted and I'll be able to use them on the ipod... hopefully. What did you get? An Ipod or Zune? Or something totally different? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pags Posted December 31, 2008 Author Share Posted December 31, 2008 QUOTE (Necromancer @ Dec 31 2008, 01:09 PM) Yeah, that is a bitch of it. But seeing as I never had a different high capacity storage mp3 player until I got the Ipod, I can't compare. Only from knowing how good yours was, can I base any argument. Also, I have the extra room cuz I have the hard drive. They're not a lot, but I understand it's just a bitch to have to get one now. I also hate the synching parts, and the pirating fighting aspect of it really blows (with the ipod). So many songs I had dl'ed from limewire will not go into the Ipod. Until now. CeeJ found a program, so with time, they will be converted and I'll be able to use them on the ipod... hopefully. What did you get? An Ipod or Zune? Or something totally different? I got the Zune. And I really think it's great. The software takes some getting used to, but I'm getting better at using it. iTunes has a couple of features on it which I really wish I could have on the Zune software - most notably the ability to export the song list to a text file - that can then be used to either dump into a database or onto a spreadsheet. I would LOVE the ability to catalog on file the thousands of songs I have loaded onto the player. Hopefully soon that will be something I can do. It's all Microsoft related software (Zune / MSOffice) - you'd think this ability would be there without having to wish for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Necromancer Posted December 31, 2008 Share Posted December 31, 2008 QUOTE (Pags @ Dec 31 2008, 02:17 PM) QUOTE (Necromancer @ Dec 31 2008, 01:09 PM) Yeah, that is a bitch of it. But seeing as I never had a different high capacity storage mp3 player until I got the Ipod, I can't compare. Only from knowing how good yours was, can I base any argument. Also, I have the extra room cuz I have the hard drive. They're not a lot, but I understand it's just a bitch to have to get one now. I also hate the synching parts, and the pirating fighting aspect of it really blows (with the ipod). So many songs I had dl'ed from limewire will not go into the Ipod. Until now. CeeJ found a program, so with time, they will be converted and I'll be able to use them on the ipod... hopefully. What did you get? An Ipod or Zune? Or something totally different? I got the Zune. And I really think it's great. The software takes some getting used to, but I'm getting better at using it. iTunes has a couple of features on it which I really wish I could have on the Zune software - most notably the ability to export the song list to a text file - that can then be used to either dump into a database or onto a spreadsheet. I would LOVE the ability to catalog on file the thousands of songs I have loaded onto the player. Hopefully soon that will be something I can do. It's all Microsoft related software (Zune / MSOffice) - you'd think this ability would be there without having to wish for it. I've considered either getting another Ipod or maybe a zune to leave in the house. Not that it's a major problem disconnecting it from whichever dock that it might be currently in, but still... why not? There's probably all kinds of hack stuff out there that makes all kind of MP3 players compatible with one software. Who knows the answer to that? Start pm'ing us. Still... when you think of the old days, when you either carried a boombox or a walkman around, with a box of cassettes, your mind just has to boggle eh? I can remember the first walkmans. They cost hundreds of bucks and they were quite bulky. AND... they KILLED batteries. And yet... we thought they ruled and loved ours or envied others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ru5h F@n Posted January 3, 2009 Share Posted January 3, 2009 Well I have a 160 GB iPod and I sync it with my Mac very smoothly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pags Posted January 3, 2009 Author Share Posted January 3, 2009 QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 2 2009, 11:56 PM) Well I have a 160 GB iPod and I sync it with my Mac very smoothly. Yeah, I'm sure once I have the available 120GB hard drive space, I will have no issue with the player operating smoothly. But I have two questions for you: 1) Does your Mac have 160GB on it so it can handle the full capacity of the iPod, or will that eventually become a problem once your player begins to fill up? 2) Did you really want to dedicate all that hard drive space solely for syncing with your MP3 player? You do realize that you won't be able to use that disk space for anything else, right? That's the issue I have with the entire syncing concept. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Necromancer Posted January 3, 2009 Share Posted January 3, 2009 QUOTE (Pags @ Jan 3 2009, 10:19 AM) QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 2 2009, 11:56 PM) Well I have a 160 GB iPod and I sync it with my Mac very smoothly. Yeah, I'm sure once I have the available 120GB hard drive space, I will have no issue with the player operating smoothly. But I have two questions for you: 1) Does your Mac have 160GB on it so it can handle the full capacity of the iPod, or will that eventually become a problem once your player begins to fill up? 2) Did you really want to dedicate all that hard drive space solely for syncing with your MP3 player? You do realize that you won't be able to use that disk space for anything else, right? That's the issue I have with the entire syncing concept. Here's another problem. We loaded the itunes up without really good organization of our files. Then... after we got all that stuff from you Pags, we loaded that too. THEN CeeJ cleaned up all our files in the auxillery hard drive. Putting things in better folders and getting rid of doubles and the like. So then... the itunes doesn't recognize most of it. Basically, my itunes is worthless now cuz the original files were moved. So I can't sync up again anyway, or I'd lose all the stuff I have in the ipod. So my only option, as I see it, is to make sure my editing and arranging is complete in the external drive and THEN delete my itunes and re-install a new version and then re-upload all the stuff as I want it. It takes forever to put that much into Itunes with the computers we have. Maybe I'll just wait until we get the mac. I dunno yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pags Posted January 3, 2009 Author Share Posted January 3, 2009 QUOTE (Necromancer @ Jan 3 2009, 12:35 PM) QUOTE (Pags @ Jan 3 2009, 10:19 AM) QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 2 2009, 11:56 PM) Well I have a 160 GB iPod and I sync it with my Mac very smoothly. Yeah, I'm sure once I have the available 120GB hard drive space, I will have no issue with the player operating smoothly. But I have two questions for you: 1) Does your Mac have 160GB on it so it can handle the full capacity of the iPod, or will that eventually become a problem once your player begins to fill up? 2) Did you really want to dedicate all that hard drive space solely for syncing with your MP3 player? You do realize that you won't be able to use that disk space for anything else, right? That's the issue I have with the entire syncing concept. Here's another problem. We loaded the itunes up without really good organization of our files. Then... after we got all that stuff from you Pags, we loaded that too. THEN CeeJ cleaned up all our files in the auxillery hard drive. Putting things in better folders and getting rid of doubles and the like. So then... the itunes doesn't recognize most of it. Basically, my itunes is worthless now cuz the original files were moved. So I can't sync up again anyway, or I'd lose all the stuff I have in the ipod. So my only option, as I see it, is to make sure my editing and arranging is complete in the external drive and THEN delete my itunes and re-install a new version and then re-upload all the stuff as I want it. It takes forever to put that much into Itunes with the computers we have. Maybe I'll just wait until we get the mac. I dunno yet. Yep. Just yet another CON to this whole syncing business. I really wish someone out there could give some substantial reasonsing as to why there NEEDS to be a perfectly organized mirror image of everything that's on the player. If I could grasp onto that philosophy then maybe I wouldn't be so friggin' angry that I have to dedicate all of this hard drive space and make sure it's perfectly organized so as to not screw it all up as some later date. What moron came up with this??? It never used to be this way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Riv Posted January 3, 2009 Share Posted January 3, 2009 You don't want a backup of your music? I would hate to drop an MP3 player and lose all of my music. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pags Posted January 3, 2009 Author Share Posted January 3, 2009 QUOTE (Riv @ Jan 3 2009, 01:18 PM) You don't want a backup of your music? I would hate to drop an MP3 player and lose all of my music. Yeah I do. But shouldn't that be my choice? I've had 40GB of music on my player for the past 7 years without a problem. Even now that's it's croaked, I can STILL transfer the files onto my computer. A backup of my music is an excellent thing to have. I just don't see how it needs to be a requirement for me to use it. It's cool for 8GB player owners, but for high capacity players that kind of requirement becomes very difficult. And expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ru5h F@n Posted January 3, 2009 Share Posted January 3, 2009 Yeah I hate it when I get doubles. That's a real pain in the ass. What causes that to happen? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Necromancer Posted January 4, 2009 Share Posted January 4, 2009 QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 3 2009, 04:43 PM) Yeah I hate it when I get doubles. That's a real pain in the ass. What causes that to happen? I would think it's cuz you have doubles in your library. You must have uploaded it twice, or made a duplicate for another folder. Ipods won't make that distinction for you, they'll just upload whatever you put in Itunes and check off. Go through your library and uncheck the duplicate and then resynch. That should work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ashpkt Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 Good topic. I've held off on buying a player for myself for many of the problems being discussed here. * iPod really turns me off because it doesn't play nice with PC * I get tired of my CD's being scratched so I see benefit of having my entire collection on my PC but that will take BUKU amounts of space especially if I go 'lossless' route. * What I really want is a player that I can cut and paste music files to just like I do on my PC with ordinary files. If my 'Library' gets hosed just because I rename or move something, well, thats crap! * I'm fully vested in Microsoft and have zero plans on changing so I was leaning toward Zune so, I'm highly interested in what anyone has to say about Zunes. * I've managed my wife and kids' iPods and they are a real pain in the arse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BK 2112 Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 QUOTE (Necromancer @ Jan 3 2009, 12:35 PM) QUOTE (Pags @ Jan 3 2009, 10:19 AM) QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 2 2009, 11:56 PM) Well I have a 160 GB iPod and I sync it with my Mac very smoothly. Yeah, I'm sure once I have the available 120GB hard drive space, I will have no issue with the player operating smoothly. But I have two questions for you: 1) Does your Mac have 160GB on it so it can handle the full capacity of the iPod, or will that eventually become a problem once your player begins to fill up? 2) Did you really want to dedicate all that hard drive space solely for syncing with your MP3 player? You do realize that you won't be able to use that disk space for anything else, right? That's the issue I have with the entire syncing concept. Here's another problem. We loaded the itunes up without really good organization of our files. Then... after we got all that stuff from you Pags, we loaded that too. THEN CeeJ cleaned up all our files in the auxillery hard drive. Putting things in better folders and getting rid of doubles and the like. So then... the itunes doesn't recognize most of it. Basically, my itunes is worthless now cuz the original files were moved. So I can't sync up again anyway, or I'd lose all the stuff I have in the ipod. So my only option, as I see it, is to make sure my editing and arranging is complete in the external drive and THEN delete my itunes and re-install a new version and then re-upload all the stuff as I want it. It takes forever to put that much into Itunes with the computers we have. Maybe I'll just wait until we get the mac. I dunno yet. Necro- There is a way to get the files off of the iPod and back on to the PC, so you don't have to reload all those CDs. You need a clean, empty copy of iTunes to make it work though. Google "iPod Brute Force Method". ~BK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pags Posted January 5, 2009 Author Share Posted January 5, 2009 QUOTE (ashpkt @ Jan 5 2009, 11:49 AM) Good topic. I've held off on buying a player for myself for many of the problems being discussed here. * iPod really turns me off because it doesn't play nice with PC * I get tired of my CD's being scratched so I see benefit of having my entire collection on my PC but that will take BUKU amounts of space especially if I go 'lossless' route. * What I really want is a player that I can cut and paste music files to just like I do on my PC with ordinary files. If my 'Library' gets hosed just because I rename or move something, well, thats crap! * I'm fully vested in Microsoft and have zero plans on changing so I was leaning toward Zune so, I'm highly interested in what anyone has to say about Zunes. * I've managed my wife and kids' iPods and they are a real pain in the arse. It's the Zune that I just got as a Christmas present. It's the 120GB model which I think is awesome - but because of the high capacity player it's a big reason for my frustration with syncing, as I don't have 120GBs to host on a hard drive at the moment and things are at a stand still until that happens. However, I've been able to play with the syncing for about 2000 songs, and I can talk pretty comfortably about a few things. Here are some positive / negatives about the player as well as the Zune software. Likes: - The design of the player is excellent. For the high capacity ones, the unit is larger, therefore so is the screen. The screen is larger than iPods and shows brilliantly for pics and videos. - The controls on the player are very easy to use, and the firmware makes it quick to navigate around. The center button is sensor touch, as well. So I can brush my finger lightly across the button to advance tracks. Kinda neat. You can opt to shut that feature off, as well. - The Zune software takes some getting used to, but I like it now that I've become accustomed to it. - Once you have the available space, syncing is rather convenient and I'm getting much more used to it. As long as the player is connected and set to auto sync, it keeps in lock-step with anything written on the software. Any changes to song tags, playlists, etc. are immediately updated on the player, and very quickly. I don't even have to think about it. - I have the software set to have /My Music/Zune/ as the sync folder. This allows me to mess around with files just within the /My Music folders without affecting the software. Once I'm ready, I dump it within the /Zune folders and instantaneously the software shows the music and syncs it to the player. - Copying files from the player back to the computer is not a problem. I know that is a huge issue for iPod owners. - You can click and drag songs into the thumbnail pic of an album, thereby merging the album's tag information to the track(s) you've dragged in. This is very cool when you have several songs to the same album all showing differently. - This is huge. So far, any time I've either renamed the source file's name or even moved it to a different folder (all somewhere within the /Zune folders), it has not affected the linkage of the song to the software's Collection (Library), and subsequently the sync to the player is not impacted. Again, this is huge. HOWEVER, this is still in the testing phase. Once I get an external hard drive and move all this music over to another drive, I have no idea what the outcome will be to the software and/or player. I am guessing that once I re-point the sync folders to the new drive everything should be alright. - The headphones that come with it sound very good. - You can download funky games for it. They are pretty good. I like the Soduko and this space game that's very much like Galaga. Dislikes: - Keeping the player fully synced is key. If you choose to manually manage the player, it's functionality takes a nosedive. - It is IMPOSSIBLE to edit anything directly on the player. Everything has to happen on the computer, then be synced. Once it's on the player, it's untouchable. - In the software, you can't click directly on a segment of the song's information to make changes to it. You must right click and select Edit to make updates. That's frustrating. However, you still can edit multiple files at the same time. - Tag information seems to be more dynamic than static. There are times when music genres and some other things seem to re-update themselves. So you have to always keep an eye on the organization of all the music. Once the library grows, that will become more and more difficult. - I really wish I could extract the information from the Zune software to a text file, like you can with iTunes. I like to keep a catalog of what I own, and doing that with the Zune would be perfect. As of right now, it is not possible. You'd think it would be (Microsoft, and all). - The Zune player can only be recognized by the Zune software - it is not recognized by Windows Media Player nor anything else, to my knowledge. That's about all I can think of at the moment. These may be novice things I'm writing - I'm still very new to using newer players. If you have any specific questions about the Zune, ask away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PassTheAmmunition Posted January 5, 2009 Share Posted January 5, 2009 I feel your pain, Pags. Once upon a time I bought Creative Labs 20GB MP3 player, it was in the era before the iPod. I bought it at CompUSA in the city and while I don't usually purchase the extended wearranty plans on products I buy, this time I did. It was like $39 for 4 years or something. The Creative Labs Jukebox player eventually bit the dust and I brought it back to CompUSA. They had discontinued the line - I think maybe by then the Zen was out. Anyway, the extended warranty covered replacement if it could not be fixed. I wanted it replaced not fixed, lol. After some heated discussions with the fine folks with the nametags at CompUSA, they agreed replace the Jukebox with a 20GB iPod ($299, same price as I originally paid for Jukebox) The iPod (1st gen) was just out and it was Christmas time and they didnt have a single 20GB player in the store. I opted to wait and came back after Christmas. They handed me an Apple iPod 20GB box and told me this was my replacement. I got it home and opened it up and there were fingerprints and scratches on it! Back to the store - pretty pissed off - they tell me the fine print of the extended warranty states REPLACE WITH LIKE OR SIMILAR KIND but does not stipulate that it needs to be NEW. So this was refurbed!!! I lost it. After enough yelling, the agreed to give me a store credit for what it originally cost ($299). And I got a new ipod 20GB a few weeks later when they were in stock. The iPod lasted about 2 years - battery would eventually only last 45 minutes on a full charge. By accident I found out about a Class Action Lawsuit filed against Apple by scores of angry first and second generation iPod owners. After 2 long years of waiting for what they said would be a replacement unit, they ended up asking all of us to ship them our iPods and they basically opened them up and replaced the battery and sent it back. Ugh. So, still have the old iPod. But honestly, 20GB of songs is something I truly don't need if I'm being honest with myself. Thousands of songs? I probably can deal with 200 songs and I'm a happy commuter. The battery (new battery) still sucks. However, nowadays I only use my Blackberry and an 8GB SD card for my songs. Holds plenty and doesnt limit me on proprietary file formats like Apple does. I can take it anywhere. I just pop the little SD card out and go. My new car actually has an iPod interface AND a media card slot! So, the ipod is in the armrest ready to go but I find I listen to the media card more than anything else. My wife has the iPhone and each and every time she has to synch that iTunes crap I cringe. Theres a new version of iTunes every Tuesday, and theres so much crap running on the computers at home as it is that we just sit there and watch the hourglass flip flop while she synchs her songs. I havent synched my iPod in a year or more, lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ru5h F@n Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 What are all your kinds of mp3 players? Mine is the Ipod Classic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1-0-0-1-0-0-1 Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 5 2009, 07:43 PM) What are all your kinds of mp3 players? Mine is the Ipod Classic. Why have you started using that stupid smiley again in all your posts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WCFIELDS Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 QUOTE (1-0-0-1-0-0-1 @ Jan 5 2009, 09:47 PM) QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 5 2009, 07:43 PM) What are all your kinds of mp3 players? Mine is the Ipod Classic. Why have you started using that stupid smiley again in all your posts? you mean he stopped for a period of time?????? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1-0-0-1-0-0-1 Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 QUOTE (WCFIELDS @ Jan 5 2009, 10:49 PM) QUOTE (1-0-0-1-0-0-1 @ Jan 5 2009, 09:47 PM) QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 5 2009, 07:43 PM) What are all your kinds of mp3 players? Mine is the Ipod Classic. Why have you started using that stupid smiley again in all your posts? you mean he stopped for a period of time?????? Yep, during his previous tour, he actually resisted using it in every post. It was an impressive display! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WCFIELDS Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 QUOTE (1-0-0-1-0-0-1 @ Jan 5 2009, 09:53 PM) QUOTE (WCFIELDS @ Jan 5 2009, 10:49 PM) QUOTE (1-0-0-1-0-0-1 @ Jan 5 2009, 09:47 PM) QUOTE (Ru5h F@n @ Jan 5 2009, 07:43 PM) What are all your kinds of mp3 players? Mine is the Ipod Classic. Why have you started using that stupid smiley again in all your posts? you mean he stopped for a period of time?????? Yep, during his previous tour, he actually resisted using it in every post. It was an impressive display! http://tastyspleen.net/quake/forums/Smileys/default/i_new_shocked.gif Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ru5h F@n Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
English Muffin Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 it took me about 20 hrs to put ~450 songs on my NEW iPod shuffle. And it was Christmas Day. I was not happy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhilsFriendMatt Posted January 6, 2009 Share Posted January 6, 2009 I got a 120 gb ipod classic and I dont have any problems with it at all. I run it off of pc (a hp notebook) and it works fine for me. Yes I agree burning 5+gb of cds into itunes takes a while but I did it back on my old computer and then when i got this one I transferred the files via flash drive. I'm not bashing pirating music here but when it is purchased legally itunes is extremely easy to run even on pc. Also I love to be able to go into the itunes store and buy any song I think of at that moment. As someone who both loves and plays music I really dont have a problem spending the money to get the stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WCFIELDS Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 QUOTE (English Muffin @ Jan 6 2009, 03:19 PM) it took me about 20 hrs to put ~450 songs on my NEW iPod shuffle. And it was Christmas Day. I was not happy How did you manage to fit 450 songs on an iPod shuffle?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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