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.