I-pod/MP3 pro's & con's ?

Hello there. As we speak I'm part of the small % of people that does not have a MP3-player just yet. I do however have a discman that plays mp3's from cd-roms.
As I'm planning a 6 months trip through S-America, I was wondering if I should buy some-Ipod like device?

PRO:
It would save me a lot of weight & is handy to carry around
It would surely save me some space if I didn't have to carry a bulky cd-folder with me.
I hear I could also store digital pictures on there, but can I do this without using a computer to link my camera to the I-pod?

CON:
It's going to be pricey right
If everything from music to pictures is on that one tiny little device, I'll be devistated if it should get damaged or stolen. I'm absolutely addicted to my music.
I can't swap cd's anymore as I meet new people along the trip.
It doesn't work on normal batteries in case of emergency
How would I ever get new music on there?
Again: can I put the pictures on there myself without having a computer at hand?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts & opinions about this.

Grtz from Belgium

you should buy an mp3 player with an SD card slot (SanDisk Sansa etc.) , then you can put your pictures on there, that is if you use SD cards on your camera. then you won't need a computer...

Get an Ipod. Unfortuantly in my experience they're about the best option. I stored my pictures on mine whilst travelling, you dont need a computer to do this, an ipod camera connector works fine (look on the apple online store). Also with the newer ipods you dont have to sync your ipod to just one computer, so if you're travelling for longer periods of time you can find a computer somewhere and stick new music on it. The newer ipods also have a better battery life which helps. The only downside though is the ipod itself is pretty expencive and because apple are well apple they dont provide a mains charger so you'll have to buy that in addition to the camera connector. But if you think about it if you buy a cheaper mp3 player that needs batterys it'll all even out in the end. I love my ipod, simple to use and hardwearing, when mine dies i'll replace it with the same.

You could also check out the Creative Zen Vison:M; the 60GB model addresses all your concerns; the cheaper 30GB won't have the USB Host/OTG capability.

Ok so you're going to be in South America for 6 month so that basically rules out all hard drive mp3 players (including iPods) as these have an operating ceiling of 3500 metres and using it above this altitude may cause irreparable damage to the hard drive (or you could avoid the Andes! Not recommended they're class!!)

There are a lot of Flash based players out there including some made by Apple (Nano and Shuffle) although I wouldn't recommend those mainly because of relatively poor sound quality and a low fixed storage capacity. The player I used when travelling South America was the Cowon iAudio G3 which was fantastic due to the sound quality and the battery life (about 40 hours on a AA battery). This player however doesn't support photos and only had 2GB of storage.

Cowon have recently released the iAudio D2. It seems to be the ideal travelling music device. It has 4GB storage but it supports SD cards (and HDSD card which can be up to 32GB). These are the same cards used in most digital cameras (except Fijifilm) and have become extremely cheap recently.

The battery is apparently the best on the market at 52 hours of music. You don't need software as you can drag and drop music files as it is recognised as an external drive which means you can easily swap music with people with mp3 players at an internet café. You can also encode music on the go (basically plug the D2 into another device i.e. a CD player and record the music to mp3 format. It also has a radio and it can play movie files. Oh yeah, it's touchscreen too, sweet!

I've tried a lot of players and nothing comes close to Cowon in terms of sound quality (I've tested it against Apple and Creative (using the same mp3 file at 192kbps) and the G3 was way ahead. (Being honest haven't tried the new iPods yet). Just ordered my D2 today so if you have any questions PM me and I'll let you know how it is. The reviews have been great and I loved my old Cowon player which I lost due to drunkness :-(.

Just on the whole getting you player stolen thing... back up photos and music on DVDs. You're gonna love South America, it's fantastic... so want to go back!!

Thnx you guys for all this info!!

to mkecof: Are you 100% sure that those othher types will simply not work?
The player you suggest sounds great but only has 4Gig capacity as opposed to the others which go up to 60Gig for just 50€ more in price...

In general: could anybody explain me the difference beteween the "flash-based" players & the "normal" ones?

Thnx!

The Cowon advice is good, excellent sound & quality. A caveat though: that Cowon D2 with 4GB of storage is $220 from Amazon in the USA...I'll bet it's a lot more than that in Europe with those crazy-high taxes. That's basically the same price as a 30GB iPod or Creative Zen Vision.

The difference is easy: iPod, Creative Zen Vision, Microsoft Zune, Toshiba Gigabeat S, and Cowon X5 use a hard drive like in your PC or laptop...it spins at high speed and has mega-capacity. There's always the chance that the parts will break if you drop it or something. Flash players like the Cowon G3 above (or Sandisk Sansa, Samsung YP-K5 or K3, Cowon D2, many iRiver, etc. etc.) use flash memory like the RAM in your computer; no moving parts, faster, but smaller in size (for now). If you buy a flash player, a slot for an SD card is a great feature to watch for.

You should consider altitude with iPod-like players, but I've read plenty of travellers who say 'no problem' as well.

get one with an SD card theire apparently going to be REALLY cheap by the end of this year like 30 NOK!:D yay so its not gonna be more expensive than getting a 60 GB player, but they're good too.
but creative is great too except the line in jackplug thingie seems tobe broken on many of them:(

Another consideration to think about is to consider how many pictures do you normally take and want to keep? Do you have a high-end digital camera which saves photos in very large files? If you do, I suggest you store your photos in a different way - e.g. burn CD's along the way, have a large hard-drive etc. You can use your mp3 player as a storage device for photos but many of these are sooooo incredibly slow. Also, if you're paranoid like me, you'd need a backup of your photos so that if the mp3 player is stolen/lost/breaks, you don't lose all your photos of your trip.

SD cards are the way to go, IMHO. I have multiple electronic gizmos, and all of them use the same cards. PDA, MP3, GPS and camera. Hard drive units are much more prone to crashes, especially at altitude. Yes, you will spend more for a bunch of cards, but they are resuable, you can often find a place to download them to a website to hold them-even occasionally in remote places-and they are tiny, tiny, tiny.

Ed

One more point to consider. The issue with iPods and other hard drive devices is ONLY a problem at high altitudes if you turn it on. If you leave it off, there is no likelihood of damage to the hard drive. Since you probably won't be spending weeks at high altitudes and can probably survive for a couple of days without music or storing photos (especially if you use SD cards), you can still safely bring an iPod or other hard drive device with you.

Ruth

good point ruth. My ipod is often sitting forlorn while I am loitering above 4000m.

is it just ipods and creative harddrive players that get problems above 3000 metres? what about regular laptops and pocket PCs?