Anything really compete w/ Zune or iPod anymore?

[Fender]

I'm looking for quite a bit of storage, probably comparable to the 80G Zune or iPod. I guess the 16G iTouch would be nice, but I'm not going to shell out that kind of cash for a MP3 player. Maybe a Blackberry Pearl and use the micro-SD cards. I'm looking for a new phone, too. And a laptop.

[werldhed]

Any of Creative's Zen or Vision products. Capacity isn't that high though. Their highest may be 30 GB or so.

[charliealpha]

http://www.trustedreviews.com/mp3/revie ... -Player/p1

[Giraffe }{unter]

I'm looking for quite a bit of storage, probably comparable to the 80G Zune or iPod. I guess the 16G iTouch would be nice, but I'm not going to shell out that kind of cash for a MP3 player. Maybe a Blackberry Pearl and use the micro-SD cards. I'm looking for a new phone, too. And a laptop.

I used the Blackberry pearl and Curve with Micro SD cards as a media player for a while. They worked very well however the Curve had a major advantage. It's headset jack was a standard 1/8 inch that allowed standard headphones to plug in with no adapter. The pearl required a 3" dongle to allow standard headphones to work, these dongles can also be purchased with the answer button and microphone for either the Pearl or the Cuve. There are not many features in the media player, but it does support playlists and album art, no sound adjustments though.

Both performed really well with ripped DVDs I preferred the Curve's larger screen the Free Blackberry Video Converter is what I used, but to be honest I never actually watched a movie on it. Only random episodes of The IT Crowd

If you turn on the external storage feature you no longer need to use any software to move files to and from your Device, the Blackberry becomes a USB drive and supports drag and drop very quickly.

[Fender]

The upcoming Archos are pretty sexy

Thanks for the info on the Blackberries, GH. Where are the micro-SD slots? I heard that the curve's slot is behind the battery, so changing cards is a bit of a pain.

[Denz]

Zune is still alive? Amazing.

[Mat Linnett]

If I didn't already have a Zune, I'd be getting one of these:
SanDisk Sansa.

Edit: to clarify, solid state, no proprietry software, no DRM, drag and drop.

[Giraffe }{unter]

The upcoming Archos are pretty sexy

Thanks for the info on the Blackberries, GH. Where are the micro-SD slots? I heard that the curve's slot is behind the battery, so changing cards is a bit of a pain.

Both are behind the battery, but if you get a big enough card you won't need to change it ofter if you enable the external storage mode.

[Fender]

Any of Creative's Zen or Vision products. Capacity isn't that high though. Their highest may be 30 GB or so.

16GB for $138. That's pretty nice.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6855102035

The sansa fuzes look nice too, Mat, but I think I want a bit more built in capacity than 8 GB, even if I can expand w/ SD cards. Their view line is larger than I want.

iPod nano... 8GB for $199? meh...
Zune 30GB is $199. Better, although that's the 1st gen model.

[Mat Linnett]

Sorry Fender, I should have said, I meant the Sansa View. That comes in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB flavours at $149.99, $199.99 and $349.99 respectively.
If you shop around, you can get them even cheaper.

Edit: My Zune's the 30GB model; picked it up for £115 just over a year ago.
I like it fine, but the Zune software's a bit shit to be honest.

[saturn]

I got a 'free' iPod Touch with 8 Gb a few months ago (as a reward for doing some medical research) and at first I was skeptical about the player. In short, it's an iPhone without the phone/cam and GPS. But it's twice as thin, made of metal and glass.

I use it for things like: agenda, calendar, weather forecast, mail, internet, youtube, video, music, photo slideshow, games and apps from the App store. I also use it as a remote for iTunes on my Mac (works on PC too) and if you get an Apple Express, you can stream music to your living room.

It's worth a look IMO, it's a bit pricey, but probably the most underrated iPod in the whole line. The 8 gigabytes are plenty for me. I use playlists and sync my podcasts and movies almost every day to get new ones.

[+JuggerNaut+]

http://dapreview.com/

[bitWISE]

http://dapreview.com/

Archos7 = godly

[Foo]

Creative's products will go wrong and when they do you'll get fucked by their tech support/warranty teams.

Don't buy from creative. They're fucking shit.

[bitWISE]

Creative's products will go wrong and when they do you'll get fucked by their tech support/warranty teams.

Don't buy from creative. They're fucking shit.

[Fender]

Fuck. I was all set to buy that one. Time for more research, I guess.

[werldhed]

no. i've had my zen 4 years and don't have a single complaint.

granted, since it hasn't broken, i haven't had to deal with customer service, so i can't opine on that topic.
but creative's mp3 players are great.

[creep]

this thread is the first bad thing I've ever heard about the Zen (the one you linked). Aside from "the OS is clunky for noobs", mind.

[Deji]

Dunno about MP3 players, but I have a Nokia E50 and it's one of the best phones I've used.

Today though, newer models are out, so maybe check out E51