farmer1

Slowly seam to be getting there:

http://www.nomadworld.com/products/zentouch/

Unfortunately they seem to have lost the advantage they did have of lvery large hard-drives.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Close but no banana just yet

screwdriver

Also has the disadvantage of not actually being an iPod.

hybwrx2002

I've got a Rio Karma. Not as pretty as an ipod, but much better battery life, 20gig hard drive, LAN output, rca and docking station

Chris L

Which on the plus side means you're not buying into a 'name' and a fashion icon (as good as the iPod is), which means a 60 Gb hard drive and £50 cheaper!

angrynorth

Along with being butt ugly that thing is quite a bit larger, a lot heavier and still doesn't offer iTunes, one of the main reasons for the iPods success. Its also still only USB 2 and not firewire. This is not as good as the early Creative offerings which weren't a badly implemented blatant rip of the iPods style.

Creative 4.12" x 2.7" x 0.866" - Weight 7.05 oz with battery
iPod 4.1" by 2.4" by 0.57" - Weight 5.6 ounces with battery

Amazon reviews aren't too great either, portability is low:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...onics&n=507846

ozzy

I wouldn't count non-iTunes support as a major disaster unless you want to buy AAC format from them. It's nice, but not that much a deal breaker IMHO. My cousin's brought his Creative MP3 over from the Czech Republic and his model is nowhere near as stylish or easy to use as an iPod. Weight is an issue, but you have to compare disk size and battery life to make any judgements.

iPod does look very , but I guess it depends on where you use it. If you want to pose on the tube or gym then iPod's the way to go.

Getting an iPod from Canada (no way am I paying UK prices) as it's still the best looker I've seen. Want to hook it up to my stereo system in the living room, so it has to look half decent.

Stefan

angrynorth

I think the iTunes thing is pretty important, its the integration between the two that make the deal sweeter. You will see what I mean when you get yours, but I am pretty sure that a lot of the people who are buying iPods are sticking with them because of this, or at least partly.

farmer1

I think you are right there angrynorth. Look how many people are using iTunes as there media player without owning an iPod. I do because I find the layout of the programme and its features excellent.

Therefore I have decided that an iPod is the way to go for me after owning a creative mp3 player previously just for the ease of use simplicity of getting everything connected and across.

When I do get my iPod I plan to run it as a second hard drive and keep all the music solely on it and just pray it doesn't go wrong and I loose my music collection.

Ian

ozzy

Yeah, I agree to a certain extent. You can still achieve the same with other products. I too use iTunes as my Media Player, although I use other tools for managing MP3 tags and ripping my original CD's to MP3.

I'll see if it's worth the hype when my iPod arrives

farmer1

Mind you I am a fuzzy bugger. I am getting a G3 instead of a G4 because I'd rather have the better looking one.

Shame the batteries gonna die all the time.