<p>My son would like an mp3 player for Christmas. I was thinking I-pod but he was also looking at the new Zunes player by Microsoft and the Zen Vision player by Creative Labs. The reviews for the Zen make it sound really good. Until today I didn’t realize that I-pod had any competition. Anyone have experience with these alternatives?</p>
<p>Go withthe IPOD Nano. I read all the reviews in the Wall Street of the competitors and the Nano is still the best. I like the ITunes music store, too.</p>
<p>I had a zen micro. The headphone jack broke twice, and i exchanged it for an ipod. My friend has a zen touch, the scroll thing stopped working after a year. Stick with iPod. It has it’s own problems, but more accessories are made for it.</p>
<p>The nano is not one of the choices - we’re looking at 30GB because it seems a better value. The new Zen Vision looks very similar to the ipod with same GB. Lack of accessories and no ITunes sounded like a negative to me but son said he knew of a few (legal) places to download music and we did find the basic things like car charger and case.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine needing 30GB. The small size of the Nano makes it a great choice, and 8GB is plenty of space unless you want to watch movies.</p>
<p>Did you know that you can download * an American life * podcasts for free?
:)</p>
<p>I love my
[Blue Nano](<a href=“http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?family=iPodnano&esvt=GOUSB4778246&esvadt=999999-0-52015-1&esvid=1837”>http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore?family=iPodnano&esvt=GOUSB4778246&esvadt=999999-0-52015-1&esvid=1837</a>)</p>
<p>If I had bought it through the Apple site, I could have gotten it engraved for free ( which I would recommend), but I couldn’t wait that long- since I bought it through the Apple store for the trade in deal ( 10% off)</p>
<p><a href=“http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-7964_7-5134106-1.html[/url]”>http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-7964_7-5134106-1.html</a></p>
<p>I say go with the iPod.</p>
<p>I might have to upgrade my 20gig iPod soon, because I will have too much music. I don’t even buy popular stuff that’s on the radio. But yea, you can definitely have enough music to fill those bigger iPods. Sure you can switch out the music, but then you will of course want to listen to something that you don’t havce on it right now.</p>
<p>We got my daughter her 30GB ipod early this year for her 21st birthday present and after she put all of her cd’s on it, she had used over a third of it. After not quite a year she has it half full. The difference in price is amazing too. The nano’s sell for $200 for 4GB, $249 for 8GB, but you can get a 30GB for also $249! I really like the red nano’s that support the aids project, but after my daughters experience, I think it makes more sense to get a higher GB item.</p>
<p>I did have hers engraved, I think that’s a great idea. I see that there is an Apple store a little over an hour from me but it’s in the most popular shopping center in the Philadelphia area so might have to forego the engraving. Or just order on-line and know that it might be an i.o.u. present! Thanks for all the ipod referrals. Today I must buy!</p>
<p>I also favor the Ipod. Itunes is a great interface for managing your music (even if you don’t purchase from them) and there are certainly more Ipod accessories. The Nano stores the music in internal memory, rather than a hard drive like the 30g and larger Ipods, so you can’t just make a $/g comparison. This makes it more compact and supposedly makes it less prone to failure (hard drive crashes, etc.) and skipping. My old 20g just died (I had already replaced the battery) and I recently upgraded to the 80g. The larger ones can now also play videos and store photos.</p>
<p>I bought my sons each an iPod nano last Christmas online and had them engraved. S1 got his with name and ED school, S2 with his name and a little Latin phrase “omnia mea mecum porto” which translates to “I carry it all with me.” One had to be replaced under warranty and Apple was great with the exchange – and the replacement came engraved as well.</p>
<p>Another vote for Ipod. Also, regarding which to choose, go for the one that holds the most music IF your kid is really into music. My son started off with one of the early ipods and has since upgraded twice to get the additional capacity. My D, on the other hand, still has her first Ipod and doesn’t have those issues. Totally depends on the user as to which is the best choice.</p>
<p>I will also confirm Apple as a stand-up retailer who backs its products with minimum fuss. Well made products and generally high quality customer service.</p>
<p>Another iPod fan here. I’ve read some reviews of the Zune which were less than favorable. Read the fine print on the sharing features, if you can make it work, shared songs are only good for three plays in three days to the person receiving the song.</p>
<p>I’ve had lots of luck with Creative. I have a Creative Zen Micro (5 GB) onto which I download books to listen to in the car (your local library might have this service available to you–ours contracts with netlibrary.com). My D got one of the bigger Creatives (40 GB?) for a graduation present. She’s had it for 2 1/2 years with no trouble. She puts all ofher music onto it and takes that to college instead of taking CDs.</p>
<p>Of course, there are not as many accessories for the Creative as there are for the iPods.</p>
<p>One kid has a 30GB iPod, the other a 20 GB (I think) Zen. Neither kid would think of choosing the other brand; they both loved his/her device. Both devices are essentially dead now after about two years of use (and my daughter’s first iPod had a similar life). So I’m not happy with the value proposition for either.</p>
<p>If your child is a music person, do NOT go with the Nano. 4, or even 8 GB is not a lot. My daughter went through the 10 GB on her first iPod in about six months, and she was close to maxing out the 30GB version when it died.</p>
<p>Apple = beautiful design, great customer service, and a significant price premium to get those things. My son had no problem getting stuff in a format the Zen would take.</p>
<p>For point of reference: You get about 250 songs/GB in mp3 format encoded at 128Kbps.</p>
<p>Yesterday, the BusinessWeek news program announced that SanDisk Sansa is the second best selling MP3 after IPod. I checked out the Sansa a few days ago and it is quite appealing. And it will work with various music services, such as Rhapsody, Yahoo Music and the Walmart Music store.</p>
<p>Bought my son the 4GB Sansa for Christmas. We have several ipods in the house too. I have a 20GB, with a music collection of > 120GB, and I can never remember what is on the ipod and what isn’t.</p>
<p>Geeky S and I are looking at using an old Xbox as a music server for the car so we can have all our MP3s available.</p>
<p>Son has an Ipod nano and loves it, but he doesn’t have the need to store huge quantities of music. He uses it mostly for working out.</p>
<p>I bought D’s bf a SanDisk Sansa for his bday…he <strong>LOVES</strong> it, and it seems to work beautifully!</p>
<p>~berurah</p>
<p>I have a Zen Micro and I’ve been fairly happy with it, but the quality of Creative’s products varies quite a bit. If the reviews of the Zen Vision are good, as you’ve said, it’s probably a good option, and you probably get more for your money. That said, I find the music management software provided by Creative to be really bad (though this may have changed). If your son is tech-savvy, he can make it work. Also, I had to download and install some firmware updates, which isn’t difficult, but might be a bit difficult to figure out for some people, and deleted the music on my player at the time (make sure you read the fine print). </p>
<p>iTunes and the music store great, especially for people who need everything to just work. Stay away from the Zunes- their share feature isn’t that great, they aren’t compatible with Plays-for-Sure, the price isn’t any better than an iPod, and there’s much less selection in its music store than iTunes.</p>
<p>The paradigm for the nano is somewhat different. It is not the storage for the entire music collection. The whole music library lives on the laptop computer and you set up automatic playlists to update a subset of “walkin around” music on the nano – this automatic updating can be done while charging the nano’s battery. I mean, how often do you need more than 500 to 1000 songs while out and about?</p>
<p>I use the iTunes rating system (one to five stars). The nano only gets updated with five star songs from the larger music library.</p>
<p>Where the larger capacity units are useful is when you spend long periods of time away from your computer. For example, my daughter was overseas for 5 months, so having the larger iPod made sense.</p>
<p>I am certainly not an Apple shill. But, based on the relative pricing and the ubiquitous size of the iTunes/iPod user base, I wouldn’t even look at other brands. The vast amount of iTunes/iPod information on the web (really useful tips and tricks and troubleshooting and accessories) would be the deciding factor for me.</p>