Size of Mobile Digital Music Player?

[Jonathon Watkins]

We previously <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=27295&postdays=0&postorder=asc&">posted</a> about a BBC new story reporting that players holding 1000 songs were the sweet spot for digital music. <a href="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=241453">This poll</a> then asked about how much digital music you had access to. Now as a follow-up, I'd be interested in knowing about the size of device you use to listen to this music while away from your main computer. The really interesting thing would be tying this second poll up with the first one, but in the absence of an automated double poll mechanism, I think the forums will do just nicely as the place to discuss this. :wink: Click-fire away again!

[bjornkeizers]

There's no option between 'up to 4gb' and '20 gb' - I have a 10 gb player.

[Kacey Green]

just because it's what we have dosen't mean we arn't looking foward to more, I'd like a 4gb microdrive, but right now i have a 256 cf a 64 cf and a 128 cf

[arnage2]

i put a 256mb and 64mb sd card in my zodiac1.

[mcsouth]

I have a 512MB SD card in my iPaq, and its just not enough for all of the music I'd like to carry. It'll be interesting to see how the new miniature hard drives from Toshiba influence the PPC's in the near future - I'd love to have 4GB or so internal memory in my PPC!

[c38b2]

The poll is "size of portable music player" ... well, my laptop acts as my primary music player, and it's portable, but the 40GB option (how large my HD is) also specified "dedicated" player, which my laptop isn't. So, I had to vote in accordance with my 128MB SD card that I keep a few songs on rather than what my primary music player is.

Oh, and I should mention that this is PPCT not DMT. I know you're interested to see the results of such a poll, but maybe you could ask Jason to post it on DMT for ya.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Oh, and I should mention that this is PPCT not DMT. I know you're interested to see the results of such a poll, but maybe you could ask Jason to post it on DMT for ya.

Yes, I am well aware of what this site is. :wink:

The PPC link, is how you listen to your music - on a PPC or on a dedicated device. As Mcsouth pointed out, with the new miniature hard drives and the drop in price of 4Gb CF cards, we should all be able to have enough storage on our PPCs for our listening needs. Surprisingly the 4Gb 'sweet spot' previously reported on, does not seem to be too popular in this poll. Most folks seem to be using smaller capacity devices. Interesting...

[Gator5000e]

I have my 3 Lord Of The Rings soundtracks on my 1GB CF card for my Axim.

I also have a dedicated iRiver player with 512MB that I use for working out and the beach and such.

[dean_shan]

I use my PPC as my portible music player because I do not have a seperate MP3 Player.

[Jonathon Watkins]

I use my PPC as my portible music player because I do not have a seperate MP3 Player.

Yup, exactly what I do. I don't *need* a separate MP3 player as I have my Pocket PC. (I just would like more storage capacity on it). :grumble:

[Zack Mahdavi]

I feel that the Pocket PC doesn't handle music as well as I would like. I find it difficult to navigate through my song collection, as I have to deal with a stylus to navigate through the folder structure to find my songs. That's why I also have a 10GB iPod. It works really well for me.

However, I also own Pocket Player. I enjoy listening to internet radio stations, and that's where the Pocket PC shines. There's nothing like listening to any shoutcast channel of your choice anywhere you go.

[Kati Compton]

Oh, and I should mention that this is PPCT not DMT. I know you're interested to see the results of such a poll, but maybe you could ask Jason to post it on DMT for ya.
Well, fortunately this site has moderators to keep track of what is and is not off-topic. This poll is on-topic for both sites (so it may be posted on DMT at some point).

Many people use their PPCs as their main digital music device. And for the people that *don't*, this way we can find out what kind of capacity would need to be added to PPCs to allow them to fully replace separate music devices.

[Kacey Green]

Most folks seem to be using smaller capacity devices. Interesting...

Don't forget that we will use the most capacity we can afford to get
so while we may all want or not want a 40gb+ player but many of us can't afford it (or can but juding from the comments most people who want one but don't have it can't afford it)[/b]

[Anthony Caruana]

I usually carry about 5 CDs worht of musinc on my 1 GB card as well as 2 or 3 movies ripped with DVD2PPC for my iPAQ 2210

My biggest issue is that the battery doesn't last as long as the media I have to watch/listen.

[pepemosca]

In a storage card/dedicated device up to 256Mb – I enjoy having a few albums available & don't mind swapping around often.

I vote for that one, but I don't enjoy having just a few albums and taking a century to swap them. :S

I'm poor :(

[GoldKey]

There's no option between 'up to 4gb' and '20 gb' - I have a 10 gb player.

Same problem here. I have the 15 GB Dell model.

[hulksmash]

It's a big jump from 4GB-20GB, I'm feeling left out... so the 20GB bar is now officially an overstated stat.

[Gremmie]

I have my 3 Lord Of The Rings soundtracks on my 1GB CF card for my Axim.

Why not just have LOTR itself ;)

[ctmagnus]

I use my iPaq with a 256MB SD card a wee bit more often than my 20GB jukebox. I'd :ppclove: to have a 512MB or 1GB card, but unfortunately I can't afford one for many moons yet. :(

[Craig Horlacher]

I'm going to plug the iRiver hard drive players because I love mine and nobody seems to know about them.

They come in 10, 20, and 40 GB capacities and have more features than any other hard drive player out there.

I have the 40GB one and love it. Listen to this feature set:
- plays mp3 (40-320kbps), wma, asf, wav, ogg (up to 500kbps)
- records directly to wav or mp3 at up to 320kbps up to 5 hours per file
- record via 8th" stereo line in, optical line in, internal mic, external mic.
- may use earphones as monitor when recording
- output to earphones, line out, or optical out
- read text files off hard drive while music is playing
- use winamp playlists
- seen as external USB hard drive without any special drivers
- FM radio tuner built in
- Queue next song during playback
- control scan speed
- change skip behaviour
- read tag's or ignore them
- can use a database of your music for more searching options
- includes a corded remote which works well for me in my car

My point is, before you buy an iPod make sure you check out the other options:)

www.iriver.com

[Kati Compton]

There's a couple that have FM *transmitters* built in. To me, that's infinitely more useful than an FM tuner.

[jkendrick]

I use a 40gb iPod to not only carry my music library with me but also to mirror my laptop documents for backup purposes. It's saved my bacon more than once.

[dmy]

In a storage card/ dedicated device up to 1Gb – I enjoy having over a dozen albums available & don't mind swapping occasionally.

Well over a dozen.... Use Ogg Vorbis for compression. With Audio quality better than 128Kbps MP3, I've got over 30 CDs of music (over 400 songs)
on my postage-stamp sized 1Gb SD card.

D.

[bjornkeizers]

I'm going to plug the iRiver hard drive players because I love mine and nobody seems to know about them.


I have one. A 180. It only has 128 mb of memory, but I don't use ti to play MP3's anyway - It's got an FM tuner and it can record directly off the radio, and it doubles as a voice recorder! Plus, it weighs a tenth of my Archos Jukebox Recorder, which is basically a hard drive with a LCD and some buttons.

[Arne Hess]

I use a 40gb iPod to not only carry my music library with me but also to mirror my laptop documents for backup purposes. It's saved my bacon more than once.
I second that! A 40 GB iPod here as well for two reasons:

* I don't want to select which music I want to take with me but I simply want to get it synchronized which iTunes does well. So I have my whole music collection with me!
* Since 40 GB is a lot I'm also carrying some ripped DVDs with me (call my iPod my multimedia HDD ;-) ) as well as having a backup copy of "my Documents" folder there.

Thanks to its FireWire connection synchronization is super fast and watching "DVDs" right from the iPod works perfect! :-)

[Perry Reed]

Unfortunately, my 6GB Archos Jukebox doesn't fit into any of the predefined poll answers.

[jkendrick]

I use a 40gb iPod to not only carry my music library with me but also to mirror my laptop documents for backup purposes. It's saved my bacon more than once.
I second that! A 40 GB iPod here as well for two reasons:

* I don't want to select which music I want to take with me but I simply want to get it synchronized which iTunes does well. So I have my whole music collection with me!
* Since 40 GB is a lot I'm also carrying some ripped DVDs with me (call my iPod my multimedia HDD ;-) ) as well as having a backup copy of "my Documents" folder there.

Thanks to its FireWire connection synchronization is super fast and watching "DVDs" right from the iPod works perfect! :-)

For super fast synchronization to the iPod I use Karen's Replicator. Free and so FAST! Sometimes I think it didn't copy everything but it did.

http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp

[Jonathon Watkins]

Unfortunately, my 6GB Archos Jukebox doesn't fit into any of the predefined poll answers.

For each of the categories - I should have added 'up to'. I.e. your device would fit into the "In a dedicated player up to 20Gb– I want access to my entire medium sized music collection everywhere".

I'll come up with perfect poll questions one of these days. :wink:

[Perry Reed]

For each of the categories - I should have added 'up to'. I.e. your device would fit into the "In a dedicated player up to 20Gb– I want access to my entire medium sized music collection everywhere".

In that case, I have filled out the poll appopriately. :)

[Lynn]

I still can't find the door to slip an audio cassette into my hp2215!

[guinness]

The poll could've used and 'other' option, I don't use an MP3 player per se. I use a Minidisc player, which uses software to convert MP3?WMA/WAV audio to Sony's ATRAC format, and the discs hold less than 200 MB. But it beats all other players in battery life and it's essentially shock proof.

[Kati Compton]

The poll could've used and 'other' option, I don't use an MP3 player per se. I use a Minidisc player, which uses software to convert MP3?WMA/WAV audio to Sony's ATRAC format, and the discs hold less than 200 MB. But it beats all other players in battery life and it's essentially shock proof.
Then sounds like you should vote for the "up to 256 MB and I don't mind swapping" option.

[RobertCF]

I view such toys as iPods, etc. the same way I view such quaint things as the XBox, GameCube, etc. Why spend that kind of money for a one-trick pony? I can put as much music on storage cards as I want and/or can afford for my PPC. And I can put just about any format I want or can find on it. There's no end of players available, with all sorts of features. And the PPC can play that while I'm doing other things on it, like surfing the web or doing word processing. Just like I can play better games on my desktop and yet also be able to listen to music, surf the web, work with my digital recording studio tools, digital photography tools, or word processing. I have virtually no limits. So, I have yet to be impressed one bit by those overpriced flash in the pan toys. They're as quaint as that cute little pocket AM/FM radio I had when I was 10.

[Janak Parekh]

So, I have yet to be impressed one bit by those overpriced flash in the pan toys. They're as quaint as that cute little pocket AM/FM radio I had when I was 10.
There's nothing wrong with using a Pocket PC for this, but to say they're merely "pocket toys" suggests that you really haven't tried using one. Having a pocketable USB hard drive + music player is extremely useful, and it does offer functionality that a Pocket PC does not. Whether or not that functionality is necessary to you is another matter entirely.

--janak