Anyone have any recommendations?
Price range around £60-100.
Size preference 6GB+

http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/3476801/Sony-NWZA818B-8GB-Video-Walkman-MP3-Player/Product.html

I'm sliding towards this, it looks a pretty tasty bit of kit. There's nothing wrong with my iPod but it's well old school (old style Mini, 3 years old) and is a bit clunky when I'm running now. Needs an update I think.

Sorry if this is a boring topic but in my experience lots of people have MP3 players and like talking about them : )

I've had different models of Sony Ericsson MP3 players for about 3 years now and they are really good.  After many problems with i-tunes I deeply despise iPods - grrrr

On your theme of liking them and talking them... why do MP3 players insist on playing you a song and you go, "no thanks, we'll skip that one" then 10 seconds later it's trying to force you to listen!

I bought a 20gb iPod about 3-4 years ago. It cost way too much for a MP3 player at the time and I had my doubts, but I did it anyway (somewhere in the range of 500$....). And I must say, it was totally worth it. I usually tend to avoid the overly popular everyone-has-got-one hype things, but damn that's a good product. High quality playback, responsive. The only truly horrible thing about the iPod, as far as I'm concerned, is the frustratingly awful iTunes.
That said, my iPod broke a few weeks back, something with the hard drive. I'm not taking it to be serviced or mended, because I was planning to buy a new one anyways since 20gb is way too small for me :P. Everytime I want to put some new cool album on it, it takes half an hour to pick something to throw out...
Thus, a friend will bring me a 80gb iPod classic from the US in a few weeks. Will cost me around 250$.

Given your price and storage ranges, I'd suggest you to seriously consider or at least check out the Creative ZEN series, a lot of people like those a LOT and those are the best I've seen other than Apple stuff.
Such as something like this maybe:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Creative-ZEN-8GB-MP3-Player/dp/B000V9IAYS/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1218094048&sr=8-2

And I totally didn't understand what Bubble said about forcing something or other :P

Thanks for the tip Mani, I'll look in to the Zen's a bit more. I've heard good things abou tthem too.

And I will happily make it 3/3 unhappy iTunes customers. I just thought I was being retarded.. it's ridiculous at times. It should be so simple but they manage to dick it up a lot of the time.

only a lot?  wow... your i-Tunes must like you!  I got my fingers burnt with the sync thing and it wiped a load of stuff off without asking me or telling me it was doing it so as I was walking to work I was wondering why I only had like ONE song to listen too.

I know a few people that have the Zen ones and I've never heard anyone complain about them but I don't know how easy the tranfer softwear is or isn't.  The thing I love about the MP3 player I have at the moment is that there is no softwear to mess about it, you just drag/send it and it's done or you can sync it with Media Player but thankfully it doesn't delete things unless you tell it to.

Hehehe, the automatic sync thingumabub is the very first thing you should switch off as soon as you plug in your iPod for the first time. It's something that's designed for people with completely retarded needs and logic. I mean, for Mac users.
I've always transferred songs manually and that really doesn't bother me.

<rant>
A thing that slightly bothers me, is how your iPod by default becomes glued to the one computer that you connect it to. So that when I'm at my other computer, I can't copy my songs there, not even with iTunes. Why the hell shouldn't I be allowed to do that?
What bothers me quite a lot, is just how the program looks and how the functionality is laid out... I've looked through all the nooks and crannies in all the menus and buttons of iTunes and I can honestly say there are things you could do with the built-in media player in Windows 3.11 fifteen years ago and what you can't do there. It's user-hostile. I passionately hate it.    
But the main thing that bothers me is how desperately slow it gets with huge media libraries. I have around 150 GB of mp3s and I can easily scroll, play and manage all of that in even Windows Media Player. Try managing 2,000 albums in iTunes and the thing is on the verge of death. Might be that it's something with the PC build and that it's better on Mac. I don't know. I don't care.
</rant>

Of course, you can bypass all of that by using third-party software for your iPod. Although it's not supported by Apple, you can avoid all of the silliness that way.

Quote :

It should be so simple but they manage to dick it up a lot of the time.

That's very well said  

As a side note, I used to moderately dislike Windows Media Player as well. But not since WMP 11 came out. The single thing that I care most about is how the library functionality is designed, how easy it is for me to sort, select and find the media just the way I like. In WMP11, these things are just brilliant :P  

--Last edited by Manivald on 2008-08-08 11:57:55 --

Your rant is full of good points too Mani, this is a full on agreeable love-fest.

My brother in law asked me to try and put some music on his new shuffle using my pc and my copy of itunes.  I was stumped, if you can do it then it didn't appear obvious to me. It asks some retarded question like "Hey this brand new ipod appears to be devoid of songs, would you like your library containing 2000+songs to be like that?".  If he asks me anything bout putting new music on his shuffle for him, I kind of mumble a few incoherent answers then tell him happily that I'm off to get him a beer and he seems to forget about the potentially world-ending question he was about to ask.

I like the idea of your drag-and-drop method of transferring music tori but I prefer the idea of software dedicated to that task. But only if it's as different to iTunes as possible.

I've never had a problem with itunes... but I've never tried anything other than an ipod either... so I dunno.

didn't you know that i-tunes roughly translates from the latin words "designed to really piss you off"?

Quote :

Brother Matty wrote : I prefer the idea of software dedicated to that task.

hee hee i is lazy and thought why have two seperate programmes when media player will do

Quote :

didn't you know that i-tunes roughly translates from the latin words "designed to really piss you off"?

Hehe, I had no idea... I guess the only trouble it's ever given me is when my power goes out or something like that, and then it gets... erm... grumpy for a couple days.

We just find it extremely un user-friendly. It won't let us do stuff we want it too and kind of does its own thing (which is usually a retarded, most devilishly frustrating kind of thing)

When I put albums on and sync the library to the ipod I have no problems. Playback, there's no problems either but BIG problems emerge when I want to use my library with another persons ipod or something. It starts having little tantrums then

So what player did you choose, Matty?

Ah I've not got one yet, still doing a bit of research plus my family want to get me a "Hey-you're-going-in-the-RAF" kind of present which will probably be the player so I'll get it in a couple of months probably : )

One of the Zen's or the Sony one I posted originally are the front-runners.

aww thats nice.  i wish i got more presents  think a "hey you got through a new yoga routine without falling over" present is a good one :P

while we're on our musical rant... does anyone else have problems with earphones? the wires gets screwed on min.  been like this since i was a teenager yet mark has no problems so is it me or is it cause i listen to mine more?

The wires get screwed?

The only problem I have with headphones is deciding which ones I want, I'm becoming less fond of the in-ear bud ones but the other style of mini headphones doesn't have the power I want so I went for a over-the-head kind of headphone this time and I'm happy enough but it sucks carrying them around.

yeah, wires end up loose so the connection isn't soild in one ear and it goes on and offwhich is never good.  I like the soud beter from the ones that go right over your ears but i can't get ones that fit properly :S

The wires on mine always tear a few weeks after i buy them, or one of the ear-buds just stops working. It's really annoying, cause it's always just when I'm going somewhere

Finally got my new player. 120gb iPod classic.

What did you choose, Matty?

Haven't got one yet, higher priorities have arisen unfortunately. I'm coming round to he idea of a player with a lot of memory though cos I have a couple of audiobooks I'd like to put on and they're quite hefty memory-wise.  Another question, surely it will be possible to seperate music and audiobooks?  I don't wanna have shuffle on and be listening to Biffy one minute and then some random scene from Lord of the Rings the next.

On another note... being able to get 120gb in an mp3 player still fills me with a sense of wonder, I used to think 20 was mahoooosive.

iPod has separate sections for music, audiobooks, podcasts, etc. I don't know these specifics about other brands.