Alright I got this new job washing windows. (making decent money for a college student) anyway I need a small MP3 player something that can fit in my pocket. Any recommendations?

If I were in the market for a portable, the only ones I would consider right now are the hard-disk based units. The PJB, the iPod, and the Rio Riot.

What kind of battery life is needed for this job? That's going to be a factor in your decision, I would think.

I really like my Archos, but the batteries only last about 3 hours. Luckily it has a second set of them, so you can go up to 6 by swapping. VERY small item too, a lot smaller than the Nomad anyway. I never looked at the ipod, no one locally had one in stock. (Don't have a Mac either).

In fact, I originally bought my Archos to - play MP3's int he car. This was weeks before the RioCar price drop. I plugged the Archos right into the back of the CD player in my car. But since I got the Empeg I don't need the Archos much anymore...

Check out everything out there. If you decide you do like the Archos (especially the 20 Gig player), let me know! I paid upper 3xx for it, would loose it for lower 2xx. Even got the extended Best Buy warranty on it. Doubles as a portable hard drive too BTW.

Riot.

No other choices if you like the empeg car player, IMO.

Bruno

I love my iPod. I have no experience with the Riot, so I won't knock it, but the iPod is tiny, has great sound quality, IMHO, and the batteries last a long time. It's not exactly feature-rich, but what it does, it does well, and that's pretty much play playlists.

How small can it be if it has a hard drive?

Smaller then an iPod if he gets a Compact Flash one that can accept Microdrives.

From http://www.apple.com/ipod/specs.html:

Size and weight:
Height: 4.02 inches (102 mm)
Width: 2.43 inches (61.8 mm)
Depth: 0.78 inches (19.9 mm)
Weight: 6.5 ounces (185 g)

From http://www.riohome.com/audio/rio/rio_riot.asp:

Player Dimensions:
5 3/8" (136.5mm) x 3 5/8" (92.1mm) x 1 /3/8" (34.9mm)
10 oz. (including battery)

(italicized mm calcs mine)

That means that the iPod is 25% shorter, 33% narrower, and 43% shallower. The iPod is 125.44cc in volume. The Riot is 438.75cc in volume. That's 3.5 times bigger. (That can't be right. I've never seen one, but the Riot can't be that big. Someone correct my math.)

Drawbacks to the iPod include that it's got only one quarter the data capacity of the Riot (5GB vs. 20GB) and it's only officially supported on the Mac platform, although Windows software does exist. And you might consider FireWire-only a drawback, or you might not.

Well, the iPod uses a Microdrive, but it cannot be swapped or replaced.

The Riot and all the HDD based units look a little big Im looking for something small and simple. Something that would take compact flash would be fine with me.

The Riot is actually much smaller than it looks... Kelly and I found a picture of a guy holding it in his hand a while back... i have no idea where it went though. It was definitely smaller than it looks by itself though.

Speaking of which... they have been on backorder for weeks. Kelly placed her order a while back and they still haven't shipped.

The iPod is only a little bigger and a little heavier than the average solid-state player, IMO, but you may feel differently.

Bah, make one semi-large pocket for the empeg and then a very large pocket for a sealed battery.

In solid state there are tons of options. None of those players would fit my needs whatsoever, so I can't recommend one over another. I'd say interface and price/MB are good things to evaluate though.

Bruno

It uses a PCMCIA sized 5gb hard drive from Toshiba that is a bit longer then an IBM Microdrive. Microdrives are limited to 1GB right now, while the 1.8 inch disks the iPod uses go to 20 gigs now.

Oops. You're right. Got them all combined in my head. Nevermind.

It might have been the two images I captured off my PVR:

That wasn't the ones i saw... but those are actually better. Thanks!

I really like my Archos, but the batteries only last about 3 hours

I'm not sure what you're doing with your player, but you should get much better life than that. Of course, I have the recorder so it may be a newer model with improvements in that area, but my batteries last quite a long time. I've recorded 2 hour long concerts and listened to 4 hours of music without my batteries running out. I seem to remember reading that the Archos players were supposed to have a battery life of 10 hours of listening.

I'm not totally endorsing the Archos, however. I like it just fine. I wanted an MP3 player that could record. That only left one option. However, the software for the player is pretty bad. The UI is just fine, but the player needs pros like the empeg team to design some good software.

That means that the iPod is 25% shorter, 33% narrower, and 43% shallower. The iPod is 125.44cc in volume. The Riot is 438.75cc in volume. That's 3.5 times bigger. (That can't be right. I've never seen one, but the Riot can't be that big. Someone correct my math.)

No, I've got a Riot and an Ipod on the desk in front of me, and 3.5x sounds about right. This is not because the Riot is huge (it's much smaller than the Creative Labs thing) but because the Ipod is tiny. I don't actually know what the battery life of a Riot is, but for the Ipod I can say that Apple's estimate of 10 hours is very conservative; I get more like 15.

Peter

The Riot is also quoted as having 10 hours of battery life. I don't know how that pans out in practice, but you could ask Toby or Mike to unplug their Riot's from the mains and find out

Rob

I'm also looking for a portable MP3 player. The Rio Riot is just too big. I'm looking for something that is similar in size to the iPod, but doesn't require me to go out and buy a Mac to get music onto it. Any suggestions? It's got to be small, with a decent capacity (I know - I want the moon on a stick)

iPod doesn't require you to own a Mac. I use EphPod to sync my iPod and it works and it's free. You will also need MacOpener to read the Mac partition on the iPod from Windows. This costs $50. So, for an investment of $50 you get to use best portable MP3 player with the best OS (Bah ha ha ha ha).

There's nothing as small as an iPod with an equivalent feature set.

Rob

iPod doesn't require you to own a Mac. I use EphPod to sync my iPod and it works and it's free. You will also need MacOpener to read the Mac partition on the iPod from Windows.

There's also XPlay but it's still in public alpha at the moment.

Peter

Remeber that some people have already gotten Windows programs working that will feed iPods, so don't let the Mac-only thing stop you.

Your PC will need a FireWire port, though, just so you know.

And why is the Riot too big? I think it looks pretty darn small. If I was in the market for a portable player (and I might be in the market for one soon anyway), I would be seriously considering the Riot.

I have the 20G PJB. It's too big for any normal pocket. Cargo or jacket pockets work well. That's not such a big problem. The PJB comes with a leather cover that has a solid belt clip. Dimensions of 150 x 80 x 26 mm. 10 hrs playtime. Std software is for windows, but a java version is available from their web site. I've run the java on mac, except my mac doesn't have USB.

Unit comes with a pile of accessories. See web site.

Personal Juke Box

Yup, I've got a FireWire port on my Sound Blaster Audigy card, so no problems there.

I've currently got the smallest Sony Minidisc player, so am lothed to go back to carrying a brick about with me.

I'll have a look into the PC software for the iPod though - sounds interesting...

Thanks.

So, for an investment of $50 you get to use best portable MP3 player with the best OS

You get to do that without spending that $50, but you do have to invest in Mac OS X.

or

But you didn't mention anything about Linux/FreeBSD/BeOS. On what did you spend $50 to get that to work?

or

Does it also enhance the iPod, making you need to reboot it once a day or crash?



Feel free to make up your own joke.

I assumed the "(Bah ha ha ha ha)" after best OS would be enough to show it was a joke. If you didn't see it that way, it is.

Now, on to the fun questions...

All three of them can be answered with the following shallow statement. Windows is the most widely used desktop OS. In that respect, it is "the best." It also happens to be fairly simple to get hardware to interface with.

You get to do that without spending that $50, but you do have to invest in Mac OS X.
You seem to forget that Mac hardware (iPod included) is extremely overpriced. Even 68k Macs on eBay are too expensive for what they are.

But you didn't mention anything about Linux/FreeBSD/BeOS. On what did you spend $50 to get that to work?
Linux is only free if your time has no value. If you want to fart around with getting Linux to recognize the iPod, that's your prerogative. Same applies to FreeBSD.

BeOS is outdated and generally not free. I own the full versions of BeOS 4 and 5 and think that they had a LOT of potential. However, with only a handful of hardware (video cards especailly) supported, why bother?

Does it also enhance the iPod, making you need to reboot it once a day or crash?
As far as desktop stability is concerned (not server) Windows has been quite stable since NT 4. Windows2000 is even better than NT, and XP has yet to fail me.

Flame away...

You seem to forget that Mac hardware (iPod included) is extremely overpriced

Why is the iPod overpriced? Until recently, the retail price of the hard drive it uses alone was $400. Add to that a battery that actually lasts 10 hours or more in practical use, and an MP3 player that has firewire hardware and a decent LCD+interface, and you have a great value for $400. People seem to forget that the smaller it is, the more it's going to cost. Please refer to Slashdot comments on how the empeg is overpriced because they can build a PC and put it in the trunk for much less...

Other Mac hardware? I'll agree to some extent. You often get very good features for what you pay for though. The TiBook I am looking at has features no other high end laptop has, like Gigabit ethernet, and a 6 pin firewire port among other things. I spend $2500 on a laptop, and expect some awesome features. And the low end iBooks are very competitive to PCs in that price range ($1200ish)

Apple's desktops also have been priced alongside workstations of similar caliber, and most are now below what you can find an equivelent Xeon based system for.

The iMac, lets see what $1800 gets you. A 15 inch LCD, a DVD burner, a fast processor for the OS and applications that use it, the best consumer software for editing video and burning DVDs, and a computer that is nice and compact. Find me a PC that has all that, keeping in mind that the movie editor in XP is nowhere near iMovie, and add in the price of a DVD authoring package.

True, there isn't a Mac that you can buy for $500, but all that gets you on the PC side is a system with a horrid warranty, ads all over the desktop when it is booted, shoddy hardware, quick obsolescence, and no decent software bundle beyond the ads. Apple refuses to lower themselves to this level, and would rather let eMachines fill this supposed need of a cheap dumb terminal.

I think the definition of overpriced is subjective, and not a simple sum of the parts evaluation.

Calvin

The iPod, to the casual consumer, is overpriced. If someone is at CompUSA looking at a Nomad for over $100 less with Windows connectivity, the iPod becomes a hard sell. However, you are right, compared to other Mac hardware the price premium is not as much on the iPod vs. other MP3 players.

I own an iPod because it is the best and I only deserve the best.

I don't think the size is lost on the casual consumer; the casual consumer is well aware that the smaller something is, the more it costs - eg, camcorders. The differential in prices between a big & small camcorder are much more than the premium the iPod commands over a Nomad.

Hugo

Yes, but you're still missing the word Windows on the box. The casual consumer is not going to research the ability to connect this thing to Windows. Someone (maybe even Apple) needs to package a real iPod/Windows solution and sell it in stores for a nominal fee.

Until then, I think iPod can only be sold to Windows users "in the know." Of course this is all my opinion and I could be terribly wrong.

It is rumored (from the same site that said Apple was making a PDA, so take a deer lick sized grain of salt) that Apple is prepairing to release a 10gb iPod with Windows compatibility.

Yeah, I heard that also. Too bad I already bought the original...

I've heard that somewhere too...
I've also heard that they would take away the firewire, but that would be dumb, that's the whole point...
I wish s|b had realized that when they made the riot, I think it would be one of the best out there if it supported firewire

I would by the ipod because of the size and not the transfer method. I would rather have ethernet than the firewire.

I was joking, too. Sorry. (I did say ``make up your own joke'' at the bottom.)

http://www.apple.com/ipod

10gb, no mention of windows.

Like I said, that rumor came from the worst rumor site out there.

And my god, that 23 inch Cinema Display HD has got to look awesome. I saw the older model in person and had a hard time not thinking of what I would need to get it to work on my PC.

size? but it's not even the smallest out then...
I agree ethernet would be better...
but I'd prefer firewire over usb

I have to believe that there are a lot of portable mp3 manufacturers out there just dying to see USB 2.0 take off in the PC marketplace. My $0.02.

-Zeke

I don't know if anyone was considering it, but my Archos got sold and shipped. Someone else here saw the post and nabbed it. (So if you were thinking about it, it's gone.)

I don't know...
I think firewire has already populated enough of the market or is easily obtainable enough if you get a device that needs it, but they still haven't started using that form. What do they need to convince them that it's "taken off"?
I think just about all the new computers come with some form of firewire, how many come with usb2.0?

Although I support the already established interface (FireWire), I think USB 2.0 will become the standard.

If a Taiwanese motherboard manufacturer wants to make a board a cheap as possible, USB 2.0 is the way to go. Firewire requires extra hardware, requires the addition of more connectors, and usually a custom ATX I/O backplate for the case. On the other hand USB 2.0 is backward compatible with USB 1.1 devices, is faster than Firewire (probably slower in real life), uses the same connectors as USB 1.x, and will likely be integrated into the motherboard chipset.

hmmm...good point...
but how much market share do you think it will need before mp3 device manufacturers decide to start using it in players?
have any announced any plans to use it yet?
I also think it would make more sense for them to firewire due to the fact there are a large number (ext drives, camcorders, etc.) that already are using it. It's seems that they should be smart and do so, as well.

I find The Software for this device close to Emplode ...

In case it hasn't been pointed out yet later on... New iMacs have gone up in price by $100. Coupled with a large percentage of users experiencing problems with their systems....

Desktops... Apple is currently charging $400 for an industry-standard 512MB 168-pin 133MHz DIMM (2-2-2 I believe, but I can't recall right now).

And to compare an Apple desktop to a Xeon of all things. They have a great amount of pluses if you can find the rest of the hardware to take advantage: 1gigabit ethernet (useful as soon as you add a switch or hub). 64-bit PCI (useful once you find the appropriate card to make use of it - a nice SCSI card for instance). Now if you want to look at processing horsepower, forget about the single Photoshop test Apple bases their ads on.

I work on Macs evey day (as you know ) and I promote them when appropriate. But they are indeed over-priced when you compare them to many current-generation Athlon/Pentium-based machines (we don't have to bring up OS, though the choice (on all types of hardware, including Apple's) does affect performance).

Generally speaking, I find the Apple laptops to be a better buy than the desktops. And they're a lot cooler when comparing to any PC-laptop than when making a similar comparison using desktops.

Bruno

The cinema display is nice. Been using them for a few months. Even nicer when you're running two of them on one machine.

But, not as nice as the larger Samsung in the office. Nor the nice 3840x2400 IBM panel. Ok, it's a steal at $3500 when compared to the other two panels. Now someday maybe Apple will put some font support into Mac OS X so we can make proper use of such large displays with such a fine pixel pitch.

Bruno

Firewire is the de-facto standard for video. It's now twice the speed it was before (1394b) as well. I see Firewire being used everywhere and mentioned all the time. I don't see USB 2 mentioned anywhere or used by anyone for anything. How much power can be provided over the USB 2.0 connection by the way? I like having both USB and Firewire anyway. If USB 2 takes as much time to hit the scene in a big way as did 1.0, then we may see a third and fourth Firewire variant hit the scene first.

And to whomever said they'd prefer ETHERNET (of all things!) to Firewire on a portable device... Insanity. Sounds like a person that's never used Firewire. Or only needs to transfer 2KB text files. Or both. Ethernet on the empeg is great because of its non-file-transfer related uses. For mass transfer of music it would have been very nice to have Firewire (of course hard drives were also a lot smaller back in the day...)

The iPod is very reasonably priced when compared to other top-quality players. Comparing it to something like a Neo or Archos or Nomad is a little unfair. Look at the build quality and interface for starters. Next compare it to solid state players of the same size. That's the immediate competition. The iPod hold a lot more than any solid state player and it's cheaper than some of them too (5GB model anyway). If you want something small, there's no other game in town.

If you want (or don't mind) something larger, then the Riot looks like the best engineered piece of kit. I don't mind something even larger than the Riot, so the empeg is my perfect choice. It's also nice because it fits right into my car. Like this I can stay warm while driving around, instead of walking in the cold, 60km to work.

Bruno

And to whomever said they'd prefer ETHERNET

What? Not even Gigabit ethernet?

I prefer ethernet because it is more avaliable and flexible. I guess I am not as concerned with the transfer speed. If I got a portable with a large hard drive it would be just like my empeg I would do a large transfer upon getting the player and then just add new albums and I get them and on the empeg adding one new album takes only a couple minutes.

The other advantage that Ethernet has is that it's not tied to one computer. That is, I can hook up my empeg and access it from all of the computers on my network, which is often handy. Certainly not as good an idea for someone who only wants to access it from one computer or only has one computer.

That's something you can do with firewire as well. Just share the volume.

Ethernet's advantage comes when using a computer (like the empeg). When using a portable hard drive (like most of the portable players), the best solution is the fastest and most direct. In this case, Firewire. You plug it in and that's it. No special software to assign/locate addresses needed. If you did use special software, then you could also do communications and control in addition to the normal mass-storage functions. 1394 is designed for this type of thing.

I think I know why backwards PC manufacturers haven't been so quick to adopt 1394 now. Or USB2 (and why they took so long with 1.0). Of course it's the same reason so many don't have 100baseTX or 1000baseTX standard either.

Bruno

That's something you can do with firewire as well. Just share the volume.

That's funny.

Doing that amongst my collection of Windows, MacOS, MacOS X, Solaris, Linux, and OpenBSD machines would require immense amounts of work, as I would have to deal with SMB, AppleTalk, and NFS, at least. Or pay, likely, large amounts of money to buy products for the Windows and MacOS machines to make them understand protocols that have existed as standard in other OSes for fifteen years.

Not to mention that it would require that the computer remain up while I work with that device. In the case of the Unix OSes, that's not a problem, but Windows wants to reboot every fifteen minutes and MacOS likes to crash. In many cases, I'd prefer a solution that did not depend on other computers.

Which is not to say that that's always the case. Firewire is great for many, even most, such applications, but that doesn't mean that it will ever be computer-independent, like an Ethernet connection would be.

In my example I mentioned sharing the Firewire device. Of course this has the same limitations as sharing any other storage volume on any machine.

And I neglected to mention another important thing. The ability to automatically access a Firewire drive depends on the OS support for the disk format. Connecting an iPod to a Windows machine isn't going to allow you to read the disk unless you've got 3rd party support for HFS.

Firewire has more uses beyond mass storage of course - and they don't all need a computer connection.

When I think of a small portable device like the iPod, I'm more interested in it as a portable disk, rather than a network component. Putting ethernet on a device like that won't automatically allow you to do anything beyond what you can or have to do with Firewire for sharing anyway. You'd still need appropriate software support on the unit itself to give you the various communicaitons protocols you'd be looking for. For some manufacturers, I suppose that's a whole level of support they don't want to implement. More than likely because "sharing" isn't their target. For many reasons, some more obvious that others.

And if you're going to implement some platform-specific driver-enabled connection, maximum bang for the buck comes from developing a product for Windows. Least amount of effort with the largest pool of consumers to sell to. Then you can let some Linux people hack support for themselves (they wouldn't buy the toy if it just worked out of the box) and most Mac users won't buy it anyway because it has Windows support and/or isn't made by Apple. That's why we're normally left with USB.

Bruno

After a weekend testing the Riot on the road I can say that in normal operation (listening to albums all the way through, minimal backlight use) a full battery charge lasted about 6 hours.

Hey, that's not bad at all. So it has a rechargeable battery? I think I want one even more now. Can you have two batteries and swap a charged one into place when the first one runs out? Does it come with a charger?

Odd that TechTV didn't get their hands on a Riot to include in their recent review of the best hard drive players. It can be seen at http://www.techtv.com/products/consumerelectronics/jump/0,23009,3376471,00.html

Tony, Kelly's should be arriving this week, so if you wanna check it out sometime before buying, lemme know. She's out of town for the week, so when it gets here i'll be able to play with it before she takes it away from me. Heheh.

Okay, the Riot is here, and it's pretty damn cool. The radio reception is amazingly good for some reason. I didn't have time to load any songs on it last night... but Kelly says she's already got a few loaded up. I'll play with it some tonight though. I had a few minor quips with the button layout. I'll post a full review soon... but overall, kick ass little portable. 20gigs in your hand... with the empeg feel! Sweeet.