IPod and MP3s

[DangerPaul]

My wife bought me an Ipod last year for christmas, I used Itunes like once. So, I bought her an Ipod this year for christmas, not even thinking that there are a million other brands of MP3 players, so I went to return it. However, since she already began "opening" it, she took a sticker off, the store will not return it, so now she is stuck with it. So, i want to find her a place to downlaod music. I figure the namelesstavern folks could point me to a place for her. Since, my Ipod collects dust on the shelf. Apparently I am getting old, I no longer like music of any kind

[Drem]

good for you trendboss

i installed itunes once, that shit lasted about 5 minutes:

"oh it's shitware for nooblords" DELETE

wow 5 minutes you must've really explored everything it had to offer

i would have to have at least three separate programs to do what itunes does for me. if all you do is just "listen to music" then winamp should suit you just fine and i think we can leave it at that because we're obviously looking for different things in our media players

[mappatazee]

i assume problems like entire itunes music directories being deleted when trying to re-install or do other maintenence doesn't happen anymore but it was a resource hog last time i checked and was buggy in windows xp when i tried it.
i don't know what exactly itunes does that winamp or foobar won't. i'm guessing being able to download things & automatically re-arranging directories, which, from what i've seen with other people's computers doesn't give you much besides a basic artist>album>song layout and can make mistakes like duplicates for aliases etc..
when i did actually sort i preferred to do that manually since i was pretty specific about capitalization & cat #'s but i stopped sorting anything a while ago so i've got 80-odd gigs of music in a few different places depending on where it came from. but both winamp & foobar have cddb support, i think that's what itunes uses to sort stuff anyway.

[mappatazee]

since someone mentioned slsk i will vouch for it (website is slsknet.org) i still use it and get hard-to-find stuff pretty regularly, but it can take patience. it's not like the old napster or kazaa networks where you downloaded a single file from multiple sources, so you are limited by what the up-down connection is for you and the person you are downloading from directly. so it can range from excruciatingly slow (remember dial-up?) if you've got someone from halfway around the world to reasonably fast (20-70k/s isn't so bad). but it is still nice for being able to download directories or folders and for sharing files if you know other people who use it.

the search function isn't the greatest, but it is tolerable if you know not to use any punctuation and spell correctly the bits that you do want to appear in the filename. it's a basic search of the filenames that people are sharing, so it will search file extensions and folder names too (it is not limited to just sharing music, you can actually share any files) i couldn't tell you if the 'new' server searches any better than the original server (i am still on the old servers). for the less common files, the 'wishlist' is a sort of constant search that will ping you whenever a result comes up if you leave slsk running, wheras if you use 'search', what you see come up after 5 minutes is probably all you're going to get going that route.

the community seems to have stayed about the same size judging by the user-counts of the public rooms (the only way i can judge), so it's not in any danger of blowing up (though again i haven't used the new client server which is not really new-- it's been out for at least a couple years).

also as far as privacy is concerned, people can download directly from the directories you select to share publicly (you can also select some directories to only be available to those in your 'friends' userlist), and they can also see what files you are downloading along with your username. now i don't know off-hand any riaa label music i'm sharing or have downloaded, so i haven't been worried about that sort of thing, but for the extra paranoid there's always peerguardian (an ip-blocker i think--something i've never used). is riaa still suing people? hmm, dunno.

oh yeah, and it's not going to work well (ie not able to browse many users, search works poorly or not at all) if you don't port-forward manually and you're behind a router, so it's not for the total noob. there is a guide for slsk on portforward.com all the same.

but, hey, it's no frills & an 800kb download.

i don't know how much artists get from apple, and i don't like the idea of apple making billions just for the sake of ubiquity either.

[brinstar]

good for you trendboss

i installed itunes once, that shit lasted about 5 minutes:

"oh it's shitware for nooblords" DELETE

wow 5 minutes you must've really explored everything it had to offer

i would have to have at least three separate programs to do what itunes does for me. if all you do is just "listen to music" then winamp should suit you just fine and i think we can leave it at that because we're obviously looking for different things in our media players

nope it just sucked that bad

and i don't know what you look for in a media player but i look for a program that will play any type of file i throw at it. i don't need it to sort or "manage" my music library, that's a nonissue for me because i do that shit myself. buy album -> rip album to FLAC -> save in Music/Albums/Bandname/Albumname. boom, organized. i don't need my media player to sell me songs either, because i still buy my music physically, so that's a nonissue as well. and as for docking other folks' ipods... honestly, the only friends of mine who actually own ipods have pretty terrible taste in music, so odds are pretty good i wouldn't want their shit anyway.

if i wanted an ugly, shitty program to shuffle around my songs for me, utilize shite compression, wage DMCA battles when i'm not looking, sell me shite songs, and dock friends' shite-filled ipods, maybe i would give itunes another look. i'm glad all those things make you sperg out, grats, but my original assessment stands: babby software for babby. so save the condescension for someone else that deserves it pls

[leah]

honestly, the only friends of mine who actually own ipods have pretty terrible taste in music, so odds are pretty good i wouldn't want their shit anyway.

i'll have you know that i have a lot of good stuff on my shuffle along with the crap, thankyouverymuch. some of YOUR OWN MUSIC, in fact.

[Tikker]

i would have to have at least three separate programs to do what itunes does for me.

at least you can admit your failure

[Reynaldo]

I've been having a year long fight with iTunes. Any version newer than 6.5 freezes up my computer while importing songs (although 6.5 works brilliantly). But like a previous poster, I got a newer higher capacity iPod from a training seminar I went to, so when I hooked it up, it won't work with any version OLDER than 7.0.

So now I'm hosed both ways.

I think it's my songs though, so going to Tunebite everything to mp3 and see if that helps the problem instead of having 2-3 different song formats all bunched up.

[leah]

also, for the record, i find itunes' interface very cluttered and somewhat confusing. i only ever use it to load the shuffle, which isn't very often. in fact, if the shuffle wasn't so darn cute and convenient and clippy and simple, i probably would have no use for ipods whatsoever. /shrug

[Tossica]

Fuck an ipod.

[Drem]

you guys are just newbs, that's all. one day you'll realize what you're missing

[leah]

i do hope you're not referring to me!

what bugs me about ipods is this: even though they're incredibly stylish and really easy to use, the whole proprietary thing really drags me down. it bugs me that i can't just plug in my shuffle and then drag and drop files onto it. i don't like having to go through another step, especially when that other step is something that's kind of confusing to maneuver.

[Harrison]

I'm a nerd. Ipod doesn't live up to my nerdery standards. Itunes is, as far as software goes, a power mongering bloated piece of shit munching on resources and trying to do too much without permission.

Winamp plays my music, which I have organized myself over the years, and plays internet radio if I'm feeling up to it.

I just despise itunes and ipods for technical reasons.

[Foutty]

I resisted Ipods forever, then my organization finally let us bring in MP3 players, but they can't have wifi, a mic or any recording capabilities...that really only leaves Ipod's, and now I'm a convert. Plus, I really love using the Nike + running tool.

[brinstar]

you guys are just newbs, that's all. one day you'll realize what you're missing

haha what, are you fucking serious

did you actually type that or did a butthurt 8th grader hack into your computer

[Drem]

i'll let you decide

lol

[brinstar]

k

you should really invest in a firewall

[Nusk]

still dont know why anyone would want an ipod when you can have one of these and it does oooooh so much more

a portable DVR with interwebs? ill take two
[url]www,archos.com[/url]

[Drem]

k

you should really invest in a firewall

wow i didn't know promoting itunes could become such a powerful weapon against computer elitists

lol @ you three or four times now in this thread. keep it coming man. maybe someday i'll actually care about what you think about what media player i use

[Drem]

I resisted Ipods forever, then my organization finally let us bring in MP3 players, but they can't have wifi, a mic or any recording capabilities...that really only leaves Ipod's, and now I'm a convert. Plus, I really love using the Nike + running tool.

the nike+ipod is almost worth having an ipod for by itself. such a neat device. i'm also a big fan of the waterproof speaker setup you can buy so you can take it out on a boat or float down a river with it. so many awesome peripherals for ipods

[Drem]

still dont know why anyone would want an ipod when you can have one of these and it does oooooh so much more

a portable DVR with interwebs? ill take two
[url]www,archos.com[/url]

i think i'd just want both. what more does it do? besides the TV part, which looks awesome, it looks like it does less

[brinstar]

wow i didn't know promoting itunes could become such a powerful weapon against computer elitists

lol @ you three or four times now in this thread. keep it coming man. maybe someday i'll actually care about what you think about what media player i use

wait, now you're calling US elitists? is this TOPSY TURVY LAND or do you not read your own posts?

b/c it seems to me that this thread keeps with the recent pattern of you swooping in to insult a number of people for somehow failing to have shit figured out as well as you think you do, and those you've insulted thinking you're a pretentious snot-nosed twat

keep LOLing though, i'm glad you can amuse yourself by being a douche

[Tikker]

Archos does everything the iPod does, and does it better

[10sun]

Wouldn't use an Archos to play mp3s with. Looks to be too large to fit in your pocket and if it isn't, then the screen is too small, what do you do? Wear the expensive player on your belt as an easy to jack accessory? /pass.
Wouldn't use an iPod to play mp3s with. The wheel concept is a piece of shit when the Sony Walkman had it figured out w/ needing several simple functions, Stop, Play, Rewind, Fastforward, & Volume Control.

[Drem]

wow i didn't know promoting itunes could become such a powerful weapon against computer elitists

lol @ you three or four times now in this thread. keep it coming man. maybe someday i'll actually care about what you think about what media player i use

wait, now you're calling US elitists? is this TOPSY TURVY LAND or do you not read your own posts?

b/c it seems to me that this thread keeps with the recent pattern of you swooping in to insult a number of people for somehow failing to have shit figured out as well as you think you do, and those you've insulted thinking you're a pretentious snot-nosed twat

keep LOLing though, i'm glad you can amuse yourself by being a douche

yep, you've been an elitist in this thread since your first post. this one is even more proof. just stop replying and taking my bait. it's better that way