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Zunes, iPods, and Sandisks Oh My!

I’ve gone through a lot of mp3 players in 6-7 years. I started out with a couple different players made my Creative. I liked them. The first was a Creative Nomad, which had a full size laptop drive in it. The thing was huge, but I upgraded it so that it held 60GB of music. This player was old and finally died.

Next I went with a smaller Creative player, which held 6GB of music. It was lighter, but I had repeated problems with the headphone jack. I had bought the extended warranty from Best Buy, so I was able to replace the player. I went through three of these players before I just gave up on Creative.

The next player I bought was a used 3rd generation iPod. It was 40GB. Pretty nice. The display was just grayscale, so no video, but it played music well. After a year I had to replace the battery. It was no problem. About a year later the hard drive died. Time to move onto something else.

The next mp3 player I bought was a Sadisk Sansa, The player held 8GB of music. The player was a nice size, but had some problems. First of all, I had gotten use to using iTunes to manage my music and podcasts. The music management part wasn’t a big problem, but the podcast part was. I have yet to find an alternative to iTunes (or the Zune Marketplace) for downloading and syncing podcasts to an MP3 player that I like. The other problem I had with the Sansa is that it doesn’t play video. I wanted to watch vlogcasts.

I found a great deal on a Microsoft Zune, so I bought that with hopes that it would address the problems I had with the Sandisk Sansa. It did. It was a 30GB player which displayed video and also had a podcast/music manager which worked well. But, the Zune created new problems. It was bigger and bulkier. I wanted a player that would slide easily into my pocket. It also has extremely restrictive copy protection. You can not copy any data to a Zune using Linux or a Macintosh. It’s Windows only, and I like to use Linux at times. Sorry Zune, you had to go.

So, earlier this year I went back to ebay and found a good deal on an 8GB second generation iPod Nano. It was in great shape and pretty small. It got me back into iTunes. Everything looked good. Except for one thing. I made a mistake. It didn’t play video. Damn it! I used the Nano for a little while, but looked for my next player.

A week or two ago, I found a 30GB 5.5 generation iPod on ebay. The price was right. The player was pretty new and it plays video. The screen was a little scratched, but I buffed a lot of them out. For the price I paid, it was worth it.

I also fine that 30GB is just about right. 8GB is a little small, bit 60GB seems excessive. 30GB just seems right for the amount of podcasts, music and video I want to carry with me.

So far I am happy with my "new" iPod, but knowing my track record I make no promises how long I will use it. I sold the Zune to a friend and I gave my dad the Nano. It’s his first iPod.