I’ve been using the built in Windows Media Player capabilities on my iMate SP5 as my primary mobile media player for a while now. The jack plug socket has developed a fault recently which means that the plug needs to be in a specific position to get stereo sound. Often this isn’t a problem, but when I am exercising it is definitely a problem.
I’ve mostly been happy with this way of working, the only thing that has been a real problem is that limitation of 2GB which has meant me developing a rather complex process for getting the current podcasts onto the card. It’s also meant that everything is heavily compressed and quality suffers (the strange thing is that quality seems to suffer more for music that is quieter, when it’s even more noticeable).
So I think it’s time for a change – but to what?
I’m not even sure whether I want to go to a dedicated media player or not. I quite like the convenience of have a combined phone and media player (and that’s a surprise to me). Should I just get a new phone and put a bigger memory card in it?
Most of my media is in WMA format, apart from podcasts which are nearly always in MP3. So it would seem sensible to go with a WMA compatible device, but I’ve not really seen one that makes me actually want it. I quite like the look of the Sony ones, for instance, but I’m not sure that 8GB is actually enough. There is something about the handling of the Creative Zen Vision:M that I don’t like. Am I being to narrow in my thinking?
So what about the iPod’s – ummm. One of the things that my recent leadership assessments told me was how high I valued the "new". this means that I hate being a follower and buying an iPod would feel a bit too much like following the pack. Would it be such a bad thing to follow the pack for once? I also think that I would have to start afresh ripping my music collection because I can’t imagine that the transpose from WMA to AAC (or even MP3) would give a quality of file that I would be happy with. That seems like a lot of work. It would need to be an iPod Classic because I’m still not sure that 8GB would be enough. Is an iPod Classic too big?
Don’t even mention Zune – I’m in the UK and it’s not available to me, but perhaps Microsoft have a story to tell there. Would I want to wait even if they did?
Choices, choices.
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Graham Chastney 
Hmm,
I just got a 4GB mini SD card for my Blackberry, I really like the look of the iPod nano and in my case I find 8GB is plenty of space. However in the end the nano was just too expensive for the gym so I got a really cheap Creative player http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160157355259 which has a belt and arm holder and a voice recorder. Only 1GB but my workflow for filling up my player is pretty efficient 🙂
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I’m interested by your comment about “new” things and not being a follower. I’m similar, but I’d describe it more as I don’t want to have the common thing. So I’m not into Fords (eg Focus, Sierra) and Marin’s (mountain bikes) because they are too common or the obvious choice. Does that make me a snob or just perverse?
As you I have been an Apple user for many many years. So you questions are quite interesting. I don’t use WMA and even if I was a Windows users I wouldn’t as I use a lot of audio software (for music creation,editing etc.) and WMA is too proprietary. MP3 is the lingua franca, but I do use AAC as it has a better reproduction for a similar filesize. Though at times I still need to re-code into MP3 for some uses. Contrary to popular mis-belief AAC is not an Apple proprietary format.
I listen to podcasts, audible books and music on my media player and so the enhanced AAC with bookmarks and little visuals is quite neat. I playback on my photo iPod (20GB) and have a shuffle (courtesy of audible) to use in more exposed situations). But I also use my W810 phone and Sony Clie Palm PDA as media players. Have I conformed with my iPod? Possibly but I’m not worried as I usually plug into my iPod travelling with my Shure E2 in-canal phones so I don’t look like a normal iPod user with the white phones.
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