best alternative mp3 player to ipod - mac and pc compatible

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Hi,
I have both Mac's and PC's at my home that I work with.
I am looking to get a new mp3 player.
My latest Rio Karma 20GB has been great and still works great; but I just bought a brand new powerbook for my travel photography. I will be on the road for up to a year and it is so great to trade songs with other travellers from around the world on my laptop.
But my PC based MP3 player will not load on the mac (nor is there software available for it).
I want to avoid getting the IPOD (I would assume that they are cross platform?) mainly because I want to avoid using their ipod specific file types. I am not quite sure what this means, but I hear that users need itunes, plus they have difficulty using some formats...or can only use apple mp3's or somehting like that. I want to avoid this...and get a simple plug and play device.
Any advice
 
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iPods do need iTunes to manage your library and synch your songs with the iPod, but there are other alternatives. iTunes is both Mac and PC. You can use any MP3 file on an iPod, but iTMS only sells songs in Apples DRM'd ACC format. iPods do not support some formats, most notably WMA, OCC and FLAK (sp?).

For more info I'd suggest trying iLounge (www.ilounge.com), formerly iPodLounge or DAP review (www.dapreview.net).
 
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My daughter had a Creative MuVo that worked just fine with both PC and Mac. It was a nice little player with an FM tuner that doubled as a USB drive.

The only thing I had to do was rip songs that I bought on iTunes or Napster to regular MP3s.
 
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iTunes shouuld reencode songs that are incompatible with iPod. At least ut does with wma...
 
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i'd say look into some creative players either the zen or muvo lines (depending on your size requirements). i have a little muvo txfm and it works great. i always liked that creative included an fm tuner; allowed me to tune into the local npr station when i needed a break from music. :)

creative's site for mp3 players
 
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There are so many different players out there that are pretty nice, it really depends on what you are looking for. sandisk just came out with a 4gb flash mp3 player thats only $200
 
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I'd have to say the M:Robe or the BlueCube both I've thought are awesome. Even though they may not work on the mac.
 
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wrightm said:
Hi,
I have both Mac's and PC's at my home that I work with.
I am looking to get a new mp3 player.
My latest Rio Karma 20GB has been great and still works great; but I just bought a brand new powerbook for my travel photography. I will be on the road for up to a year and it is so great to trade songs with other travellers from around the world on my laptop.
But my PC based MP3 player will not load on the mac (nor is there software available for it).
I want to avoid getting the IPOD (I would assume that they are cross platform?) mainly because I want to avoid using their ipod specific file types. I am not quite sure what this means, but I hear that users need itunes, plus they have difficulty using some formats...or can only use apple mp3's or somehting like that. I want to avoid this...and get a simple plug and play device.
Any advice

There's no such thing as an "Apple MP3." iPod plays normal MP3, AIFF, and WAV files, along with MPEG-4 Advanced Audio Codec (AAC)

iPod also plays songs from the Apple iTunes store, but nobody will force you to use the store if you don't want to.

You can, if you want, use ephpod on Windows instead of iTunes.
 
B

bobbydazzler

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to further someone elses post, iv had a creative zen for a while now and its great, but the software you get with it isn't mac compatible.
 
Y

yorg30

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Hello there!
Does any body knows where to get an iPod 20 GB 3rd generation software? I got this iPod from eBay, but didn't come with the apple iPod CD. Is there anyway that I can get that from Apple web-site?
Help!
 
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Harryc said:
What software did your daughter use on the Mac to run the MuVO?
A little thing I like to call "drag and drop." :) I didn't use any software to manage it-- I just used Finder, and it worked perfectly.

yorg30 said:
Does any body knows where to get an iPod 20 GB 3rd generation software?
Go to http://www.apple.com/support/ipod/ and scroll down, looking at the right column for the box that says "iPod Software Updates." Click the link and download.
 
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I had the same thing going before I got my iPod, but whenever I tried to trash something from the Muvo, it would still show x number of MBs free (even after relaunching Finder). I had to use Disk Util and wipe the Muvo everytime I wanted to put new songs on it.
 
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surfwax95 said:
...whenever I tried to trash something from the Muvo, it would still show x number of MBs free (even after relaunching Finder). I had to use Disk Util and wipe the Muvo everytime I wanted to put new songs on it.

Really? I didn't have that problem.

I'll have to borrow a coworkers MuVo and see what it does (mwahahahah)...
 
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yorg30 said:
Hello there!
Does any body knows where to get an iPod 20 GB 3rd generation software? I got this iPod from eBay, but didn't come with the apple iPod CD. Is there anyway that I can get that from Apple web-site?
Help!


I still have my 15gb 3rd gen's box (turning yellow bleh!) and its cd which since I've never had to use its in really good condition. (I know you can just download the software from apple.)
 
S

suculantoyster

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wrightm said:
Hi,
I have both Mac's and PC's at my home that I work with.
I am looking to get a new mp3 player.
My latest Rio Karma 20GB has been great and still works great; but I just bought a brand new powerbook for my travel photography. I will be on the road for up to a year and it is so great to trade songs with other travellers from around the world on my laptop.
But my PC based MP3 player will not load on the mac (nor is there software available for it).
I want to avoid getting the IPOD (I would assume that they are cross platform?) mainly because I want to avoid using their ipod specific file types. I am not quite sure what this means, but I hear that users need itunes, plus they have difficulty using some formats...or can only use apple mp3's or somehting like that. I want to avoid this...and get a simple plug and play device.
Any advice

I have a creative zen micro and it works fine with mac, it also sounds better than my 4g ipod.
 
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Format it for Windows and Macs can read it too.
 

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