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?
I would buy one of these if it supported ogg! (Score:2, Interesting)
Nomad/iPod experience (Score:1, Interesting)
iPod kicks ass (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had the 5GB version for about 6 months, and am constantly impressed with just how usable it is. I just wish Apple would hurry up & put out a PDA in the same vein....
--Mid
My experiences (Score:5, Interesting)
I picked up a Diamond Rio 500 when it first became available. I really liked it at first, though the Rio Manager software (for Windows) was so gawd-awful that I bought a replacement (musicmatch). There are fairly mature drivers and software for Linux though I must admit I haven't ever played around with them. I suspect they work with the later models as well.
That said, I am now not so happy with my purchase. The RIO contains only 64 megs of memory which, in your case, would probably be fine. I wanted more. More importantly, though, I have been unimpressed with the 'customer service' for this product. At times (last month), Windows drivers were not available for download. Finding a contact email address was difficult (though this may be resolved now). But more importantly, these devices just aren't very sturdy. Mine is now unusable except when left flat on a table and NOT MOVED. If I pick it up, the thing powers down. My brother and sister both bought one as well and at least one of the two no longer works for them, either.
So what did I get? A Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. 20 gigs of storage and it works very well. I doubt this would be suitable for you, though... no good Linux support yet and it is very much overkill for 3 mile runs. :) In fact, as it is hard-drive based, I wouldn't want to run with it at all. On the other hand, it is great for a one week trip to Mexico (yay!) and for extended bus trips and the like. Heck, I have ALL my CDs ripped to MP3 and stored on the device and I still have over 1/3 of the storage available to me. Firewire and USB, oh my.
Frontier Lab's Nex II (Score:5, Interesting)
It uses a Compact Flash slot. I've used several brands and they've all worked. It currently has a 128MB card in it, but it could take the IBM Microdrive, 1GB!!
It acts like a removable drive, attached via USB (I actually have some non-MP3 files on it and the player doesn't care). You can drag and drop (or cp) right to the NexII. You can take the NexII to another machine and drag and drop from the Nex to the machine. Lovely.
It's incredibly small and light, just a few ounces plus battery weight. Mine came with a sweet neoprene case to carry it in that has an attached belt clip. Perfect to run or bike with.
You can find it for dirt cheap brand new on eBay, about $80. This company [ebay.com] sells them, it's where I got mine and I'll vouch for them. (I'm not associate, just a happy customer.) 128MB compact flash card go for about $40 new on ebay.
You can get "Nexkins" to change the look of the device. Pretty trivial (the machine already looks cool) but there are some neat ones you can find on ebay.
The Nex is really easy to use, and it's just so userfriendly I love it. Moving between tracks, changing the volume, adjusting the built in equalizer (it really works!), using the backlight are all very easy.
I haven't had any problems with mine and I've had it for over a year. Love it, love it, love it. It really is everything you want: light, inexpensive, n*x compatible as removable USB storage, usable, and reliable.
I really don't think you could go wrong with this.
Try an iPAQ + CF card (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using my iPAQ (with Linux) as a portable music player for a while, and it works extremely well. Capacity is not enormous, but you can add compact flash cards (or even PCMCIA hard drives if you don't mind the bulk).
-John
Re:I own a pjb100 (Score:2, Interesting)
I purchased mine from K55 [k55.ch] in Zurich, Switzerland. They only sell mp3 players, and they have a long list of different devices. It's in german, and the prices are in Swiss Francs, but it's still an interesting browse...
If someone has some links or HD references for an upgrade, please feel free to answer to this reply.
There's only one choice (Score:3, Interesting)
I've owned a Nomad Jukebox and used an Archos model, and they're both horribly inferior to the Apple unit.
Note that it's somewhat easy to scratch the exterior, but the new iPods come with a decent carrying case, so that's mostly irrelevent.
can take quite a beating (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact that it only uses Compact Flash cards (no internal memory) allows me to mail him more cards and let him listen to new content without having to mail the player back home to be re-filled.
<freedom rant>
Because this player takes CF cards and behaves like a external drive it does not have any SDMI/DRM trappings of other players, allowing me to put whatever I want on the player from whatever computer I choose. Plus it works great with my linux box as a removable drive (no dumb special purpose drivers or reverse engineered hacks).
</freedom rant>
Re:Mini Disc's issue (Score:2, Interesting)
Note that it requires a SCSI Data Minidisc.
These are not used very often, but they exist. Also you can get camcorders that record to MD
Re:Frontier Lab's Nex II - Ogg support (Score:1, Interesting)
and their reply:
This is a company I would love to deal with, if we could just get the ball rolling in some way. Let's help them make the decision to proceed!
-ac