Advise Me, O Internets
Mar. 20th, 2011 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteIt's time to play a rousing round of Help The Luddite!
As far as I (and my far more technologically literate husband) can tell, my antique Ipod just had a serious aneurysm, and is in the process of dying. It's making odd ticking noises, refusing to sync, and crashing Itunes every time I try to plug it in. It's also doing "strange things" according to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
umbran; he won't specify what exactly. I assume this is because he knows full well that my imagination is capable of supplying far more interesting images than reality; odds are it's only lagging and skipping instead of wearing a basket of fruit on its nonexistent head or ritually slaughtering chickens for its circuit-laden pagan god, but a girl can daydream.
Anyway. Did I mention this thing was an antique? It's an Ipod classic, with an 80 Gb capacity, that was given to me as a gift about 4 years ago. The practical result is that I know precious little about mp3 players in general, and what's available right now in particular. And now I find myself needing to replace it, with no idea of what my options are or what I want.
This thing is my daily companion. No matter where I'm working, odds are I face an hour commute each way. I don't listen to it that much at home or on foot, but it's hooked into my car stereo and playing almost every day. I need something with a display big enough that I can glance at it at a stoplight and see what's playing, so the little fingernail-sized thingums probably aren't for me, and while I never used the full 80 Gb of memory, I need more than 8 - my music and audiobook collections are only getting bigger.
I've been browsing Apple's online store, and mostly it just seems to be full of Shiny! and Whizbang! And made-up words and phrases that mean precious little, but are designed to sell me little pieces of colored metal and plastic. So, I figured I'd come to y'all for advice instead.
What would you recommend as a replacement for my dear dying baby? It looks like I'm going to be dropping a couple hundred dollars no matter what, and I'm going to have to do it but soon if I want to stay sane driving to Sharon and Salisbury later this week. So, if I'm going to spend that kind of money, I'd like to make sure I'm getting the right toy.....
As far as I (and my far more technologically literate husband) can tell, my antique Ipod just had a serious aneurysm, and is in the process of dying. It's making odd ticking noises, refusing to sync, and crashing Itunes every time I try to plug it in. It's also doing "strange things" according to
umbran; he won't specify what exactly. I assume this is because he knows full well that my imagination is capable of supplying far more interesting images than reality; odds are it's only lagging and skipping instead of wearing a basket of fruit on its nonexistent head or ritually slaughtering chickens for its circuit-laden pagan god, but a girl can daydream. Anyway. Did I mention this thing was an antique? It's an Ipod classic, with an 80 Gb capacity, that was given to me as a gift about 4 years ago. The practical result is that I know precious little about mp3 players in general, and what's available right now in particular. And now I find myself needing to replace it, with no idea of what my options are or what I want.
This thing is my daily companion. No matter where I'm working, odds are I face an hour commute each way. I don't listen to it that much at home or on foot, but it's hooked into my car stereo and playing almost every day. I need something with a display big enough that I can glance at it at a stoplight and see what's playing, so the little fingernail-sized thingums probably aren't for me, and while I never used the full 80 Gb of memory, I need more than 8 - my music and audiobook collections are only getting bigger.
I've been browsing Apple's online store, and mostly it just seems to be full of Shiny! and Whizbang! And made-up words and phrases that mean precious little, but are designed to sell me little pieces of colored metal and plastic. So, I figured I'd come to y'all for advice instead.
What would you recommend as a replacement for my dear dying baby? It looks like I'm going to be dropping a couple hundred dollars no matter what, and I'm going to have to do it but soon if I want to stay sane driving to Sharon and Salisbury later this week. So, if I'm going to spend that kind of money, I'd like to make sure I'm getting the right toy.....
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Date: 2011-03-21 05:08 pm (UTC)If the nanos hadn't become so itsy, I'd say one of those - the old style mini-classic nanos sound like about what you are looking for.
I like my touch, and the quasi smartphone whistles are useful and fun. (e-reader! games and time wasters! memos to remember stuff for later!) Flash memory is more resilient to getting dropped and bonked around than disks, and I put out a lot of abuse on my tech, so that is important to me.
However, the ipod classic isn't broke. There are a laundry list of reasons why this could make sense for you, the first being that your fingers already know the drills. When what entertains you is *listening to music now* rather than *learning new techie bits*, sticking with what you know isn't a bad thing to do. Deciding not to spend a couple of hundred dollars on something that may infuriate you for the first three weeks of ownership is a solid decision. No matter how easy the learning curve, there is still going to be one.
So, in short - I would balance amount of abuse you expect your toy to live through vs. amount of crap you are willing to put up with through the learning curve.