Alternative to ipod touch

[Khorus]

Ok, I posted this earlier today, but it seems to have disppeared. Maybe it was the profanity against Apple? Anyway, I hate Apple and their crappy itune software. I was trying to copy a song to the ipod from one of my PCs, and it ended up wiping out every single song from the ipod. It has to do with that crappy automatic sync.

Anyway, my daughter wants an ipod touch, so she can listen to her music and be able to watch some movies on it, on a plane or long car rides. I don't have a problem getting the ipod touch, but I am fed up with Apple and their proprietary nonesense. I just wanted to go into windows explorer and just copy some mp3s to the ipod, but noooooooooo, I had to download itunes, and sync everything from itunes which lead to the problem of multiple computers with different songs and the ipod getting wiped clean.

Is there a good quality product available for movie watching that is not an Apple product? I want it to have a decent size screen, good quality picture and reliable with an intuitive interface. I would appreciate any help provided. Thanks.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

As far as playing songs, videos and simplicity go, every other product is better than an IPod, but the touchscreen and reliability of the hardware are Apple's 2 winning factors.

I haven't been touching too many screens lately, but up until last year, IPod Touch had the most accurate and less annoying touch screen. I still find the damn thing too annoying and prefer buttons.

Itunes is the joke of the century and people who fall for this kind of crap are the problem. Consumer liberty does not exist in the Apple world and as sad as it is, most people don't mind it. Most people are like sheep who want to be told what to do and how to do it by some "big brother".

I bought a Samsung player 2 years ago that was a very good competitor for Apple's IPod, but the damn thing stopped working for absolutely no reason after 6 months. I was too lazy to find the receipt and gone it was with the trash. On the other hand, IPods seem to be well built.

An IPod Touch costs almost twice as much as a comparable product from other manufacturers. If your daughter is not into Brands and the cache part (I know it's ridiculous) I would buy something made by Creative, Sanyo, Panasonic or Samsung.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

LOL. Thru a simple search, I found a pretty high rating IPod knock-off by a manufacturer called "Onda".

Here's a link:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ONDA-VX535HD-4-...temQQptZOther_MP3_Players?hash=item4cebf15f35

 

[Bache Tehroon]

And of course, if you're a "Microsoft" fanboy, you can always join the other side of the war and buy a Zune!

http://reviews.cnet.com/mp3-players/zune-hd-32gb-platinum/4505-6490_7-33665869.html

 

[Bache Tehroon]

Reading further into reviews of Zune vs. IPod, I'm getting convinced that the Zune destroys IPod in almost every department. Now don't shoot me you Apple lovers. I'm just forming an opinion based on the reviews I'm reading. I haven't tried the Zune myself yet.

 

[IEI]

I want to recommend you ARCHOS 3 vision (99 bucks ) or ARCHOS 5 (420 bucks)
(canadian dollar)

Archos 3 vision is 8GB and I purchase it around 3 days ago
http://www.archos.com/products/mp3_players/archos_3/index.html?country=ye&lang=en
review:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJEWjmT1S3Q"]YouTube- Shiny Preview: Archos 3 Vision[/ame]

Pros:
Bright screen and great to watch video
amazing sound
FM transmitter (so you can tune your car FM to certain frequency and listen to your mp3's from device with no wire)
relatively cheap

cons:
touch screen sluggish
charge via computer USB and No USB-power adapter is provided -- however I already had one so no problem for me

Archos 5 tablet is just amazing
supports any video/audio type in the planet
upto 500GB
Android OS
GPS
web-browser
light
e-mail client
multi-agent chatting
but expensive however for 32GB version you could pay 320 bucks
http://www.archos.com/products/imt/archos_5it/index.html?country=ye&lang=en

The company ARCHOS is based in france --

I hope it helps

 

[Khorus]

Thank you guys. I appreciate the recommendations, so keep them coming. I am not an MS lover either. I just can't stand Apple's attitude and idiotic customer interface. I guess in an attempt to make life easier for the average individual out there, they dumbed it down so far that the more sophisticated users can't stand it!! I will check out some of these devices and make a decision. Actualy the touch part is not that big a deal to me, I am perfectly ok with buttons, but it probably does give the product a cleaner look without a bunch of buttons. Thanks.

 

[Asus]

I actually own a Zune HD. To be honest I absolutely love it. Before I got the Zune I played around with my friends Ipod Touch. To be honest it's pretty great but... The ipod touch is big and bulky which i didn't care for. Also the screen on the Zune is bloody amazing. I specially love it because I can use it to show off my photos(and because my photos tend to have rich saturation the OLED screen is amazing for them.) The other thing that's pretty amazing is the battery life. The other day I left it playing my playlist over night and when I woke up in the morning there was still 3/4 of the battery left.

The internet browsing on the ipod does seem to be quicker. The zune improved a lot with the new firmware though. Ipod seems to support more variety of wifi encryptions. zune is basically just good enough for the home wifi. When it comes to apps, zune has some basic apps(some really fun 3D games, which according to engadget looks better than the psp). Audiosurf is a really fun game. But apple definitely has the zune beat in the app department.

Now the real deal, when it comes to playing music, the interface is absolutely brilliant. The quality is very good too. Everyone seems to say the quality destroys the ipod. And also, I hate itunes with a passion. Zune has it's own software, which is actually based on wmp12. But the interface is very pretty and clean. Now here is the deal. If you have a well organized library, the zune software is brilliant. If your library is a mess you will hate it. Another amazing thing is the zune.net profiles. It analyses the music you listen to and it suggests bands that you might like. At first I didn't really care but I have found 3 bands that I reallly like using this thing.

All in all, I absolutely love mine. If there is something more specific you want to know about the zune just ask.

Edit: If you wanna try out the zune software you can just go to zune.net and download it for free

 

[westwienmaskulin]

well, if you turn off the sync, it's actually a good product. iTunes and iPod might suck for whatever reason and not be that great but iTunes works quite fine and iTunesU, Podcasts etc. are all great stuff.

But you may go with Zune..

 

[Asus]

I've own 2 ipod nanos(1st gen and 4th gen). And honestly as music players they were fine. But itunes, even if you do not use it in sync mode. iTunes library system is quite annoying to use if you have a huge volume of files to deal with.

 

[westwienmaskulin]

I've own 2 ipod nanos(1st gen and 4th gen). And honestly as music players they were fine. But itunes, even if you do not use it in sync mode. iTunes library system is quite annoying to use if you have a huge volume of files to deal with.

I don't know how much you got, I got around 60GB or something, but I might be the only problem who doesn't have much problem with the library system of iTunes. If any problem happens, I just delete the library files and create new ones but I really see no huge issue with it and iTunes store for various reasons to me is still the most useful and best thought system.

 

[Asus]

Don't get me wrong. I didn't mean it was unbearable. But personally(and I know that I'm not the only one) I prefer WMP over iTunes for many reasons. Doesn't necessarily mean that iTunes is complete crap. But it does take some getting used to, which was quite annoying for me.

To be honest I didn't use the store much at all. I don't use the zune store either but I do visit it from time to time to see the suggestions(i've heard of great things about the music subscription though). And they have a huge selection of artists. For example they have a page for "masters of persian music".

 

[Kaz]

Sounds like you got your iTunes options mixed up. You can either select it to sync whatever songs you put in a playlist so that it just syncs automatically or to do it manually and take songs one (or a bunch) at a time. I find iTunes to be childishly easy.

 

[Asus]

Like I said before I never synced it automatically. But here are some specific reasons why I hated iTunes. And honestly this is just personal. First problem with me was that, without even asking me it decided to rearrange all my music folders. That was a HUGE pissoff.(and nevermind that for a library that is larger than 120gb it is really slow when searching for something). Also, when you add music to a folder that is part of the library, it wont automatically detect it, you have to specifically tell it to. Second problem is the massive footprint(on my newer computer its not a big deal, but on an older machine its quite annoying). Third, when apple tried to install Safari while updating iTunes... I really got annoyed. And also... You can't put music from the ipod into itunes?(it's not itunes fault but still...)

Obviously many people will not care and will not have these problems with iTunes. And good for them, but these are specific reasons why I disliked itunes.

Also I realize a lot of these problems might be fixed in recent updates.

 

[Khorus]

Thank you all for your suggestions and the information. I think I can tolerate iTunes once I turned off automatic sync, but the interface is still very complicated and cluttered. I would much rather use windows explorer to move the music between the PC and the MP3 player, but anyway, I don't have that option with the Nano. I was able to convert a few DVDs and put them on the Nano for my daughter to watch her movies on the plane and that takes care of us for now. If the ipod touch comes up again, I will seriously look at the Zune HD as an alternative, or the Samsung P3, if I want to go cheaper. Thanks, guys.