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Comments
The green house looks like the Miata coupe concept that was never built. The side scoops look like the old Hyundai Tiburon. It's just too all over the place, what's the theme? There are many.
-juice
Bob
Bob
-juice
John
Speaking of Motor Trend. Their quality has improved dramatically over the last year or so, at least I think so.
Bob
-juice
Actually they brought in some old blood - David E. Davis is running the show there now. He can be a little pompous, but he knows good writing (which this isn't).
-juice
John
I received a SanDisk Sansa M240 (1 gig) MP3 player for the holidays from Beth. It has everything that I needed - gum pack small,FM radio, back lit multline display, great sound with adequate capacity for occasional use, business trips, etc. I saw it advertised locally several times for around $89, so the price was very attractive. While I considered the ipod line, I just couldn't see watching videos, etc, so the large color display would be wasted on me. The supplied ear buds are OK, but coupled with my Bose QC2 noise cancelling head phones, the sound is awesome! So now the questions:
1) MP3 vs WMA format. When I insert my own CD's, Windows Media Player fills in all of the directory info, and converts the tracks to Windows Media Audio. I played with the settings and found that 128kbps with a compression that yields "about 56meg per CD" sounds (at least to my tin ears) quite good. That will yield around 18 average albums / 225 or so songs for the 1meg capacity. Any thoughts on this? Is MP3 conversion better? Does WMP do MP3 conversion? Maybe I missed the option, but it is not obvious to me.
2) It came bundled with some '1-2 month free' offers from Napster and Rhapsody, but I have not explored them yet. Is their music MP3 or WMA? Can you mix formats on a player without problems? How do those sites 'control' their downloaded music? For instance, you can download during the trial period, but they say you must remain a member in order to play what you downloaded. If you put it onto your player, burn it to a disk, move it to another PC, how is the "membership checking" accomplished?
3) What is different about the i-tunes site / i-tunes players? Why is their music incompatible with the rest of the world? Is there a conversion method or is everything they have available from the other commercial sites?
4) Beth mentioned using it in the car. Any recommendations on reasonable priced quality FM transmitters?
Thanks,
Steve
i have a mix of wma/ipods in the house and am now exploring how to solve this diverse hardware....
i currently use Napster for the WMA devices and the songs i have bought have downloaded came down as WMA. since i bought these, they have no expiration. however, the monthly service you are talking about will 'kill' the songs if you do not continue to pay for the service.
not that i suggest you do this but. download a free recorder like Audacity. you could download the songs to the computer and rip the songs as MP3 as they play on the computer.
itunes is just apple being apple. see the above method for ideas.
on the FM transmitters, i think there are 1000+ postings in here about them. some say taste great, other say less filling.
Originally, iTunes was different because it was a la carte and you own the music (forever) as soon as you buy it. Back then, the other services were subscription only, but I believe they also offer a la carte now. I really don't understand the subscription model, as I would have a hard time "renting" music I plan to listen to indefinitely.
Steve, if you happen to want an FM modulator (which hardwires into the antenna line) I have an extra one laying around that came out of my OB XT, which you can have for cheap. Modulators sound much better than the wireless transmitters. However, if you have a cassete player in your OB, get a cassette adapter. They sound way better than any FM solution.
You can convert iTunes store songs into other formats, but it can be a tedious process -- you have to burn to CD and re-import in order to break the digital rights management. Same goes for most other protected formats too -- they don't make it easy to copy/transfer music.
I don't know about other services, but iTunes allows you to share purchased music on up to 5 computers and an unlimited number of iPods.
My personal opinion is that the main advantage to iTunes is the integration of hardware and software, and all the advanced features it supports. For instance, my music library and my wife's are cross-shared over our in house 802.11 network, which also accomodates guests running iTunes too. In addition, our music libraries are wirelessly piped to our stereo and everything can cross-talk with our TiVo. All this is done easily in iTunes. One of my buddies runs a similar network under Windows and Linux, and it was much, much more complicated to setup. He actually needs a keyboard to control it all!
Craig
Oh also, if your Sansa has a SD memory expansion slot then I bought the same thing for my girlfriend for xmas. I also scored a 512mb SD card for $15 after rebate that she uses for both her camera and the mp3 player.
~Colin
I've been looking at the LG, NEC, Sony... and of course it has to be black to match the rest of the box
I've been a big fan of Plextor when it comes to DVD/CD burners. They usually get good reviews. I also know that LG has been pretty good. I think soemone had said (at one time) that SONY has some compatiblilty issues. Either way, they are nice and cheap now so enjoy!
Mark
Cheers Pat.
Thanks for the help.
By the way Mark, how's the 7 degree weather?
How's Atlanta treating you and your family?
Mark
It's been averaging low to mid 50's
-juice
Wait-- I can't get it to work with dual-layer media, but I think that's a fault of the software I am using. I don't think my (older) software realizes the capacity of the disk. I bought a few pricey DL discs to check it out, but after getting stumped I decided that I'd keep burning on the cheap media instead of bothering with software upgrades.
~Colin
Swampy! Never saw you type so much before. Usually you are the man of one liners! But thanks. I went to the Audacity site and looked at their package. Places like Napster have several different pricing options - some in which you purchase, and some where it looks like you 'rent'.
Craig, thanks for the offer and advice. I have a cassette adapter left over from the old days when a CD player was something that sat on the passengers seat, and you played it thru the indash cassette player. I'll give it a try.
Colin, I am using Media Player 9, so maybe that is why I did not see an MP3 option. I guess I will stay with WMA as it sounds fine to me. The Sansa M240 is not expandable, but at under $90 for the 1gig version, is a pretty decent deal.
http://www.petitiononline.com/SpdTV/petition.html
Bob
You can petition all you want but as long as Fox is making money with the current programming, they're not going to change.
They already pay for NASCAR broadcast rights. Each additional program is cheaper to make than the previous because it's the same footage.
I do wish they were more varied.
Thanks.
El
They where the '54 Pontiac Bonneville Special ($2,800,000) and the Futurliner Parade of Progress Tour Bus ($4,000,000.
Bob
-juice
They're pieces of automotive history - one of kind.
:surprise:
-juice
Bob
Bob
Whilst there were two Bonnevilles, there were twelve of the Futurliners, nine of them surviving in varying forms. The idea came from Charles F (Boss) Kettering who suggested a Parade of Progress to Alfred P Sloan and the head of PR for GM. The endorsed it as a showcase for GM products and from 1936 to 1956 9with a break for the war) 55 young graduates got to tour the USA, establishing a a GM display in various US (and on occasion Mexico and Canadian) cities.
The presentation was targeted at showing new technological developments and was very successful but with the coming of TV, the need to market this way diminished.
The story is fascinating and the attached link provides a good starting point
http://www.futurliner.com/
Cheers
Graham
http://blogs.edmunds.com/.ee8ed35
Bob
http://www.just-auto.com/news_detail.asp?art=50678&dm=yes
It will be selling the Legacy and two ther models from the Indiana plant to start. Okay, Tribeca and??? The Baja reportedly will no longer be produced, so what is the other model? I guess it could be the Outback.
Bob
-juice
Welcome to the world of portable digital audio! :-)
Looks like most of your questions were answered. Just a few more things I thought I'd add:
- There are plenty of other CD Rippers that will pull CD information for you and encode MP3s. I believe WinAmp and LAME are some freeware programs that do that for you. CD information is pulled from the CDDB so it's automatic. Also, some programs will scan your CD first and set the appropriate output level to prevent clipping -- pretty neat.
- iTunes has a function to convert their ACC into MP3 format, but that alone would not be a good reason to go with them. As Craig mentioned, the main benefit to iTunes/iPods is the integration and ease of use. Unless you absolutely wanted to take advantage of the iTunes library and keep your MP3 player, there's no reason to switch.
- FM Transmitters will deliver the lowest sound quality. You're better off with a casette adapter, even if it means having some unsightly wires hanging around your center console. If you want to try either an in-line modulator or a basic transmitter, let me know -- I have one of each lying around.
Ken
Ken
Oooh, it's gonna be a long few weeks waiting. You don't have a local Apple store to buy it from?
tom
Bob
The new Core Duo chipset seems to be faring well based on the tests and benchmarks that are coming out now. SW written for the universal binaries supposedly run very fast and Rosetta seems to do a pretty decent job of on-the-fly translation. Since I don't have any older SW to run, that's really not an issue for me.
I was going to buy from a local Apple store (there are three within 10 miles of me), but they didn't have any upgrade memory nor the extended graphics memory either. Plus, a friend of mine who works at Apple graciously extended her discount to me so we had to order on-line. :-)
Ken
I have heard that the intel one requires a different more expensive memory upgrade and the case is harder to open. Mine required removal of three phillips screws to take the back off and add a 512 SIMM which cost $50 to take me up to 1 gig of memory.
I am interested which way the laptop thing will go. I was disapointed that the rumored 13.3" widescreeen iBook did not show up. I have a 2003 model iBook G4 12" 800mhz. I love the widescreen format but I have never wanted to shell out the money for the 15" wicescreen Powerbook. If they do a widescreen iBoo, I am buying,
TWRX
Did you get a better deal than the Academic discount? I'm guessing employees do better than Academic staff?
tom