Page 1 of MP3 quandary - which do I go for?

I was all set on getting an iPod, but its lack of WMA support and supposed poor battery life (third-gen.) has led me to possibly getting an alternative. These are the three I am considering:

[*]Apple iPod
[*]Creative Jukebox Zen
[*]X-Clef Personal Jukebox

Could I have a list of pros and cons for the three, please. And also, if it is possible for me to import WMA files into the iPod`s software (iTunes?) and then encode them as MP3, please LMK. :-)

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If I were you I`d go for the second one, the 30gb option.

I bought an Mp3 player 3 / 4 years ago and it has 96mb on memory (sounds s***) but it holds about 30 songs, most of which are long (The End, LA Woman, Riders on the Stormn etc) and to be honest, I would have trouble putting anymore on it if I had free space.

You might be a real music nut though and fill 30gb quite easily :/

decisions decisions...i wish they were decisions I had to make! :)

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"There are things known and there are things unknown, and inbetween are the doors."

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Definitely go for an iPod; my flat mate has one and loves it - especially with the release of iTunes which makes the whole thing alot easier. The Zen is huge in comparison and doesn`t look that pretty.

BTW, is "quandry" your word of the week Rik?

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The things that worry me about the iPod are its battery life and also the fact that it doesn`t support WMA - when I put a CD onto my laptop, it will convert into WMA when it gets stored on my HD. Can I get around this, and make the CDs a different file format - i.e. MP3?

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Most software will encode CDs into MP3.

MusicMatch is one of these, there is a free version and a PLUS edition. The free edition will encode CDs into MP3 up to about 128kbps I think.

Obviously obtaining the plus edition for free by illegal means is totally illegal and you should not undertake this under any circumstances.
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"There are things known and there are things unknown, and inbetween are the doors."

My Top 20 Movies
My 54 Strong DVD collection

I`d personally go for the IRiver iHP 120, but whenever the price comes down - its the same size as an iPod and crucially can be plugged directly into your HiFi - iPod can only ever work with the Mac/PC you hook it up to originally and also cannot record from a HiFi.

I wanna be able to record stuff whenever I want and not have to go to my PC to do it...

This item was edited on Tuesday, 11th November 2003, 17:36

There are plenty of free, high quality MP3 encoders out there - I use LAME in conjunction with Exact Audio Copy, which works very well.

Mike

I`ve got an Intervideo MP3 codec for my Windows Media Player, so I can choose to convert it to that rather than WMA in the options. Just works exactly the same as when you convert to WMA; it`s dead easy.

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"The Internet is a communication device that allows people the world over to bitch about movies and share pornography with one another."

Can the Creative Zen go straight into a hi-fi, as well?

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Go for the ipod, its amazing. Truely portable - they weigh nothing - and are the coolest gadget about if thats important ;)

The ipod was shipping with a version of Musicmatch for converting to MP3, still is I think.