Seriously. Maybe if I was expected to cover a single topic for each post, a title would be useful. I wish I could just turn it off, and have the date as the headline instead. Anyway, got some updates. I ordered an ipod a few days ago, and it came in the mail yesterday, so that's cool. It's an ipod classic 80GB. Got it shipped factory refurbished for $195, $55 off retail. Works and looks like new. I've always been an anti-ipod person in the past, but after owning one and using it, I see why ipods are superior to other MP3 players. But for the sake of comparison, I'll list some pros and cons:
Pros:
1. Everything works with ipod - virtually every accessory out there is designed for ipod, and virtually every video download and podcast is designed for ipod.
2. It's thinner and lighter than the competition - but interestingly, also larger capacity. I can understand why it may be debatable which is better if you had to choose between high capacity and small size, but ipod has both. (classic anyway)
3. The user interface. It's amazing. I remember on my Zen Vision M, all of the menus were very plain, very simple - and even in the "album art" view, it would take sometimes ten seconds to load the album art. On ipod, all of the interfaces are quick and responsive, as well as unique and asthetically pleasing. You get the coverflow view, etc.
4. Smart playlists. This is actually a pretty big deal that I wasn't aware of until I used it. A smart playlist allows you to create a playlist which uses logic to choose the contents. For example, I could create a playlist which would automatically select any files dated 2002-2004, AND having the genre "metal" AND NOT having the word "Metallica" - there's a variety of switches, even things like beats per minute (you could have fast and slow playlists), and they are all dynamically updated.
5. Extras. You could easily argue that you don't care about extras for your music player, because all you care about is music playback, but I must admit that I really like some of the available extras on the ipod. It comes with a few games - a solitaire game, a 3D block breaker game, and a quiz game. I bought Sonic the Hedgehog, and it's pretty cool as well. The quiz game is really my favorite, though, because if you play in "Music Quiz" mode, it plays like a game show - 5 rounds, each worth more money, each with different questions. The cool part is that they ask you things about your own music. For example, it might play a song, and ask you to choose which album it's from - or it might give you an album title and a few album covers and you have to choose the right one. LOTS of fun.
And now, the cons.
1. itunes. The only way to sync multimedia files on this puppy is apple's crappy itunes software. It's clunky and not customizable. Additionally, if I add a video file, I have 3 choices for the type: MOVIE, MUSIC VIDEO, or TV SHOW. Cause apparently there are no other types of videos. No news, no clips, no youtube, etc. Lame.
2. filetypes. It plays a very limited number of formats. In my case, I don't mind how many AUDIO formats it plays, since ALL of my music is MP3, but the very limited video playback ability is annoying. On my Zen Vision M, I could drop just about any Mpeg, WMV, AVI, etc. file on there and it would play it. On my ipod, I have to convert it first.
3. Customization. There is none. You can't set a theme or color scheme on the player, nor can you set wallpapers or backgrounds. Basically all you can change is what appears on the main menu.
That's all for me talking about the ipod for now. Prom was also last night, it was pretty cool. That photo is me with Nickky B. We's pimps. Shayla's got finals this week, so I won't be seeing her, but I have Elizabethans every day this week but Friday, so I would have very limited time anyway.
That's all for now.
0 comments:
Post a Comment