Help please

[onyxhawke]

I'm looking for a music/mp3 player. It needs to be small, durable and not an Ipod or Zune as I'm not a fan of either brand of koolaid. It should be able to hold a couple gigs of music (4+, 8 great more ...) and be able to do playlists.Price isn't a huge concern but since i'll mostly be using it at the gym, i'd prefer something that if i step on it i won't be having to fork over $350 to replace it.

Links greatly appreciated, but names will work.

Comments

[kaigou.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why iPod or whatever that other one is counts as koolaid; these aren't like that ridiculous Amazon-kindle nonsense where you can only play their stuff on their format on their whatever-whatever. I've got plenty loaded on my iPod that's come from media of all kinds, from old mp3s off the 'net that are six or seven years old, to mp4 to aac to even a few oog files. As for durable: my iPod's also five years old, and a four-hour airplane ride + the hour to three of listening while in security or waiting for baggage... and the battery's barely at half. I'd call that durable, and well worth the original $200-or-so investment.

Because frankly, I wasn't even aware there are any other mp3-players out there. Well, I'm aware that there are, but there's a difference between "aware of existence" versus "aware of existence of brands that are long-time-on-market, have existing reliability trends, and great support from manufacturers". I can't speak for the Zune-thingie, but I do know that iPod does come with warranty, and if you do decide to get a longer one then there's a fair chance you wouldn't be purchasing a new one, but having Apple repair the existing one.

Btw, I have stepped on my iPod. I've also dropped it from four feet onto the kitchen floor, accidentally set it down in a half-inch of water, let it drain down to absolutely no battery and pumped it up again, even rammed the little dial-surface hard enough to wedge it sideways in one particularly amazing move I won't explain here. (The last one, I just repeated the move until I managed to unwedge it, and it went back to working great.) Oh, and I've also heated it up to about 140F daily -- thank you for leaving it in the car all day in 100F weather -- as well as frozen it more times than I have digits.

If I didn't have an Apple, then I probably would've given the Windows-version a solid look, since I can say that the interface between PC & iPod can be iffy if you don't use a firewire, but my OH has PC+iPod+iTunes and no issues.

I suppose the real question is: do you want to invest in something that has an existing track record of durability, or do you just want something cheap that will last you a year or so before you have to get something new?