Portable MP3 Player w/ Unix Support? 459
oobeleck asks: "With my birthday just around the corner and my 8 mile runs needing music, I am thinking of asking for a portable mp3 player. What is the Slashdot community's experience with MP3 portables. What has the most support, what should I stay away from. I have been eye-balling the Diamond Rio 600/800 model. Any opinions on the Rio? I want something that works good with Linux/OpenBSD. Thanks for your help." Ask Slashdot last ran such an article back in April of 2000, I'm sure bigger and better MP3 players have been made since then. Which of today's players would you all recommend?
A Data Point (Score:4, Informative)
Looks like Archos has actually revamped this product, because mine doesn't look like the one displayed at the above link. Has anyone used one of these particular models before and can tell me if they've improved on the problem bits that I've mentioned?
If they have, I'd surely recommend this model to anyone who is in the market for an MP3 player.
rio 300 (Score:1, Informative)
cards for it). i like it since it's solid
state. record my songs in 96kbps and it works
great. i don't need a large selection, and
there has been rio 300 software for years
on linux. i like it so much i bought 2 more
refurb models from buy.com recently for $60
a pop. my first one has lasted about 3 years
and works almost perfectly still.(a piece of
plastic which holds a screw on the button is
cracked which makes the batteryf all out
pretty easy which is why i got the refurb
models. most reliable player i've ever
had. before that i had a $600 discman which
suffered $400 in damages durin the 2 year
life it had, luckily i had the extended
warranty
seems some like the large selection available
on CD-based and hard disk based units,
i like the rio 300 because its light(the
battery is heavier then the unit), its
durable(Solid state), has supported linux
for years, is cheap, and the batteries
last a long time.
Rio Volt SP250 (Score:2, Informative)
zerg (Score:4, Informative)
Durable: I drop this thing at least once a day, it's over a year old and still going. It recharges in ~6 hours for ~6 hours of playback. If you strap the case to your back (as opposed to keeping it on your hip), you won't have as much problem w/ skip, but you will look like a complete dork.
The problem Cliff is experiencing appears to be unintentional jostling of the stop (off) button, so careful how you position it when you run.
Re:A Data Point (Score:4, Informative)
Some issues:
1) Playlists suck.
2) The screen is kinda small
3) It crashes on VBR MP3s sometime. Not too often but enough to notice
4) Turning it on is irritatingly long. You'd think it's just a few seconds, but...
5) It's not a small or light as an iPod.
Overall, having 253 CDs in my pocket has completely changed my music habits.
Oh, BTW, the reason that picture doesnt match it because that's the *recorder*, not the studio.
Mini Disk! (Score:5, Informative)
They are pretty cheap now, I paid 80 bucks for my Sony MD walkman (bit of an older model now). The tapes are cheap too.
One of my favorite things to do is record video game music off the stereo. I'm able to pop in GTA 3 select Head radio (better variety of weird noises between songs
I recently purchased a really nice microphone for my MD player. Now I can sample sounds all over the place and use them on my computer to make music. Great if your into that sort of thing.
Oh plus the tape adapters for the car work great! I'll never understand why they haven't caught on more with consumers. My friends say the same thing now after they have seen all the uses I've gotten out of it.
Re:iPod kicks ass (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rio Volt SP250 (Score:4, Informative)
Another important feature: upgradable firmware. Few players have this. If you get the SP250, be sure to upgrade the firmware to 2.05 (available from Rio's SP250 page under the "Support" section), which adds a lot of neat stuff and fixes common complaints about the OS. I imagine it wouldn't be too hard for some enterprising soul to hack the firmware and get Ogg support.
Also: It comes with rechargable batteries, and the player doubles as a charger.
The only thing I don't like about the SP250 is the fact that it takes a little too long from the time you power up to the time you actually start hearing music. The SP250 "remembers" the information for the last 5 MP3/WMA CDs that you put into it -- so it doesn't need to do the time-consuming scan on them -- but it still takes several seconds of eternity from disc insert to disc play.
Zaurus (Score:3, Informative)
At home I have a 802.11b network, plug in the [amazon.com]
CF 802.11b card and the Qtopia desktop application will work with the IP address - upload, manage, roam!
Besides that, it has a healthy developer community, Sharp supports open source efforts and it's a PDA! I'm sure that a 256MB storage card is enough for your 8-mile run! Short of a solid state device I'll only invest in an iPod.
Personally.... (Score:2, Informative)
I think if I were to get a player today I would make sure it would store the mp3s AS mp3's and that it used compact flash for the storage media. With USB 2.0 support out now for compact flash these things HAUL when copying to them and are much better than their serial (im so slow I wave to the snails as they pass me) counterparts.
Construction before software! (Score:4, Informative)
Using myself as an example of why you might want to listen to my advice, I bought an mp3 player with more or less the same goals you did, with the addition of wanting it cheap. So, I ended up buying a jaMp3 from KBGear [jamonline.com]. One trip to the weight room was all it took. I'm a big guy and I work out hard; the sucker died the first time out from (I believe) getting sweaty.
Anyways, I'm currently looking at the Samsung YEPP-30sh [yahoo.com]. .
Sharp Zaurus (Score:2, Informative)
You can store your contacts & calendar on it too.
Re:CompactFlash players are nice (Score:1, Informative)
Cheap, long battery life, and doubles as a compact flash reader!
I own a pjb100 (Score:3, Informative)
Pro's:
upgradable hard drive - I'm putting a 40 gig in this weekend, up from 20
rechargable lithium ion battery (internal)
battery lasts ~7-8 hours if you don't modify the playlist too often
sounds better than most other mp3 products I've listened too.
linux, mac, and windows clients
the firmware is very very stable
Con's
The company that makes it is almost invisible
The firmware is stable, but also never gets upgrade
(and worse) the firmware is closed source
Its not as pretty as the ipod
It does not have a regular filesystem, which limits its potential use as a usb harddrive
USB isn't as fast as firewire (ipod)
It's expensive
It could be smaller. Jogging? You would need to hold it or have a fanny pack. it's too heavy for a belt.
It comes with a car cigarette adaptor
The table of contents is constrained by a max size, which makes multiple playlists impossible when you've got 20 gigs worth of songs.
All in all, I love my pjb100. I use it almost every single day on the bus and at work and it boosts the quality of life much more than any other gadget I can think of. Still, I wish the firmware was OS so that somebody smarter than me could add features
You can purchase it at http://www.mp3factorydirect.com
A great thing with compact flash! (Score:1, Informative)
Re:A Data Point (Score:3, Informative)
Finally, you may not believe it but the recording features on the recorder are *really* useful. I can plug my recorder into an LP player and get MP3s ... instantly, no work on my part.
just get a jornada.. (Score:2, Informative)
of course they run M$ pocketpc 2002... so they're not all good
Re:Mini Disk! (Score:3, Informative)
The newest entry into the MD world is NetMD, basically a USB-enabled MD recorder. The implementation is a bit shoddy, for example you can download music from PC -> MD, but you can't upload from the MD -> PC; not even material that is recorded in analog mode (say, at a concert). No doubt because Sony is slightly paranoid about keeping users in check. I still use my reliable (non-NetMD, or even MDLP) Sony MZ-R50 for recording concerts and as a portable. Much more (useful) information at the Minidisc Community Page: http://www.minidisc.org/
Re:Mini Disk! (Score:3, Informative)
vote for rio 500 (Score:3, Informative)
1) Full VBR and all bitrate MP3 support
2) Great command line linux utilities to transfer mp3s. Fast and easy to use.
3) upgradable firmware (the latest versions add some great features)
4) SmartMedia support
5) Long battery life
6) it's $50
7) lasts forever
8) never skips or fades
9) fast USB transfer. It only takes 2-3 minutes to change music with the linux utilities.
I put a 64 meg card in mine (giving me 128 megs of space), and with a good encoder (such as LAME ABR) 3 cds worth of music will sound just fine.
I've used mine for running and working out for years and it's showing signs of wear, but still working great and it's still as solid as the day I bought it.
Re:A Data Point (Score:4, Informative)
I don't think that'll be a problem. Really. Watch.
(grab Archos Jukebox Recorder sitting next to me, while playing music. Shake extremely vigorously)
Nope. Not a skip. It's really resilient. Don't worry about jogging with this one. It'll do just fine.
Re:A Data Point (Score:2, Informative)
You need this (Score:4, Informative)
2) The screen is kinda small
3) It crashes on VBR MP3s sometime. Not too often but enough to notice
4) Turning it on is irritatingly long. You'd think it's just a few seconds, but...
You need RockBox [rockbox.haxx.se]. The purpose of this project is to write an Open Source replacement firmware for the Archos Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio and Recorder MP3 players.
Get it now. It, um, rocks. Really.
I looked into this 6 months ago (Score:2, Informative)
The portable hard drive options looked good, lots of space and easy to configure Linux to mount the thing. I was a little worried about how long it would take to move a gb of stuff through USB.
I eventually decided to get a sony diskman with mp3 support. This allowed me to play existing cds, or burn cdrw in mp3 mode. The cd burning utilities were more advanced than the rio tools and I could burn different disks with different stuff and then easily switch out the disks. The thing runs for many hours on a set of batteries, at least 10h. Its not as portable as the rio, but not much bigger than an Archos.
Re:Frontier Lab's Nex II (Score:2, Informative)
Mini Disc's issue (Score:3, Informative)
mount -t vfat
cp -r tunes/
and fill a disc up in 5 minutes or less.
Ooh, ooh. Me too! (Score:2, Informative)
not for a runner (Score:2, Informative)
Re:i've used the pjb-100 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Frontier Lab's Nex II (Score:4, Informative)
The NexII can be fussy about the CF cards you feed it - branded ones are a good idea. Don't be tempted to flash it up to the 1.42 firmware unless you actually NEED to - Frontier Labs pulled it from their site for a damn good reason (namely that it bites). Stick with 1.4 or thereabouts.
Also note that the current versions of the NexII firmware will list and play back mp3s/WMAs in the order they were written to the CF card, so copy them in the "right" order - if you're a Windows addict, my little utility called copynex [flarp.net] will copy files across in sensible order - I'm assuming linux users can figure out their own solution (shell/perl scripting, rewriting their OS to copy files in the desired order, etc.) ;-)
Re:Rio Volt SP250 (Score:3, Informative)
They've been very good on delivering on their promises so far (and even giving you things you wouldn't expect -- the 5-CD memory was added in a firmware upgrade) so it's a good choice if you want to move to Ogg in the future.
Re:Things to consider... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:zerg (Score:2, Informative)
> SELECT
[] HOLD
While still pressing ON press STOP and it will toggle to "Hold On".
It's a bit unintuitive but it works
A mobile phone! (Score:2, Informative)
Use this mobile phone Sony Ericsson p800 [21store.com].
Sure it's not unix, but then you won't have to carry around an extra device, either!
Runs mp3 player, has symbian OS, java, mms, has GPRS, GSM ,Tri Band, 12MB ram and memory stick upgradeable, bluetooth and built in camera.
yeah!