Ethics over buying a decent MP3 Player

[e-fluent]

ethically, you can get a Alba PCD604 MP3 Cd player for £19.99 that holds 700MB on a CD x however many CD's you want instead of paying 10 times that, save yourself 2000%. Spend the other £180 on a new dog.

 

[gentlegreen]

ethically, you can get a Alba PCD604 MP3 Cd player for £19.99 that holds 700MB x however many CD's you want.

Yep did this myself for a couple of years - I was tempted to do it again after I managed to dump my Goodmans in an unexpected puddle on the floor of my car, but I thought I'd treat myself

No way was I having anything with "i" in front of the name - I may shop in Ikea occaisionally but that's as "Sunday Supplement" as I'm prepared to go (and the idea of having anything like itunes as the PC side of things ... Sony's proprietary format / "Sonic Stage" is equally as annoying)
I already have a Creative Soundcard and Webcam ....

 

[starfish2000]

teamed with :-

A bit too small for my liking, but sounds stunning

Thats not bad, the one I saw looked all boxy with big shapes on it. Maybe an older model.

 

[gentlegreen]

Thats not bad, the one I saw looked all boxy with big shapes on it. Maybe an older model.

This is the 80 quid 1GByte solid state model.
One day there will be a multi-gigabyte solid state version - until then I can cope with having to update the contents from time to time.

It's tiny !

The FM tuner appears to be pants though

 

[mauvais]

On looks alone, I know which I prefer.

 

[Phototropic]

The Zen Micro is much nicer looking that any I-Pod

And I even prefer that Creative you posted to an I-Pod.

 

[untethered]

It's interesting to see how quickly a thread apparently about ethics descends into product porn.

Ethics is, of course, relative. There could be all kinds of reasons why one MP3 player might be more ethical than another; it depends on your criteria.

Ultimately, the ethical decision is to somehow redistribute that "disposable" £200 of yours to some people that don't have the luxury of agonising over which electronic toy to buy.

Short of that, there are good reasons for not wanting to support any company that is directly promoting and profiting from DRM. That means Apple, Sony and any product with the Microsoft badge.

Neuros are making players based on open-source software. Not sure if they've licensed any DRM codecs. You can run Rockbox on many iRiver and Archos players, too.

 

[jayeola]

OK then. I'm a reasonably open-minded bloke. What exactly is meant by ethical? Employment conditions, advertising campaign, company profit model....?

 

[StuPC]

Ethical Consumer rated mp3 players/personal stereos last year. Trouble is, with the speed of innovation in that industry it's pretty much useless now.
iRiver and Creative did better than iPods, but only just.

 

[mauvais]

It's interesting to see how quickly a thread apparently about ethics descends into product porn.

That's purely because the OP wrote off one choice claiming it "looked shit", and nothing to do with "product porn".

 

[untethered]

Which did you prefer on looks alone: the iPod or the Creative Zen?

 

[mauvais]

Which did you prefer on looks alone: the iPod or the Creative Zen?

The Creative - I have it.

 

[Idaho]

Er.. rather than start a new thread. Can someone reccommend me a mp3 player for around £100. Preferrably under. Doesn't have to have more than a few gig.

in advance

I have been doing the cheapo CDmp3 thing for a couple of years. But they always start skipping after a couple of months, they chew through batteries and are bulky.

 

[gentlegreen]

Er.. rather than start a new thread. Can someone reccommend me a mp3 player for around £100. Preferrably under. Doesn't have to have more than a few gig.

Current state of the art gets you 1 gig of solid state for about 80 quid - that's what the Zen Nano costs. (15 quid more than the 512Meg).

Personally I have a lingering feeling I should have bought something cheap for now then waited for the compact flash / SD replacement for Sony's HiMD ....
But the Creative does sound very good - especially with the 22 quid Sennheisers

 

[Poi E]

The Apple Ipod : Apple pay an artist royalty of 4.5 pence per track, that 49.5p per album. If an artist sells 100,000 albums they get £50K, after all the business costs of running a band/act. They will be very poor. So technically Apple and co are actually destroying music by making it an uneconomic career choice.

So any ideas?

If they only distribute their recordings through Apple on MP3. CDs still make up a substantial amount of sales.

 

[Idaho]

Current state of the art gets you 1 gig of solid state for about 80 quid - that's what the Zen Nano costs. (15 quid more than the 512Meg).

Personally I have a lingering feeling I should have bought something cheap for now then waited for the compact flash / SD replacement for Sony's HiMD ....
But the Creative does sound very good - especially with the 22 quid Sennheisers

I want better than that for cheaper! You see at that price I can probably talk myself out of buying it. Whereas if it was a 2 gig one for £70 I would be forced to buy one.

 

[boskysquelch]

Can someone give me a Link or an explanation on the Education/discount on Ipods?


btw 128mb Creative flash card job...does me enuff.

 

[Idaho]

I need to be able to put a complete talking book on one upload, or 4 hours of music for long car journeys. I had a minidisc player that could do much of this - but it died on me....

 

[gentlegreen]

I need to be able to put a complete talking book on one upload, or 4 hours of music for long car journeys. I had a minidisc player that could do much of this - but it died on me....

64Kbps mono = 28.8 kbytes per hour so you could get "War and Peace" on quite a small solid state player

Minidisk is 160MBytes (HiMD= 1GByte)
... though Sony's proprietary format lets you get away with a lower bitrate ...

 

[gentlegreen]

I want better than that for cheaper! You see at that price I can probably talk myself out of buying it. Whereas if it was a 2 gig one for £70 I would be forced to buy one.

In my case I would need hundreds of gigabytes to get my CD collection on at a sensible bitrate so for now I'm living with tweaking my player's contents from time to time ....

.

 

[gentlegreen]

Er.. rather than start a new thread. Can someone reccommend me a mp3 player for around £100. Preferrably under. Doesn't have to have more than a few gig.

in advance

I have been doing the cheapo CDmp3 thing for a couple of years. But they always start skipping after a couple of months, they chew through batteries and are bulky.

My Goodmans survived 2 years of daily cycle commuting with hardly a problem - I ran it on NiMHs.