Wave the Sails

Ok, so I've spent the last few years knee deep in Geosciences and Engineering and haven't paid much attention to the above!
My husband's birthday is coming up and I thought I might buy him one (not that he knows what one is, but he thinks he ought to )
I know it can be used to download your favourite music (?) but where are these sites and how much are the songs?
What sort of $$ am I looking at for something decent? Which are the good brands?

Thanks everyone.

Mrs J (Numpty)

DrWho

By far the easiest, and best, thing for you to do is click the link below, settle back, and have a good read...

http://www.apple.com/au/itunes/

Pinkie

I have an iPod and absolutely love it. My OH bought a different brand MP3 player (Creative or Zen, or both!!) as he objects to all the restrictions iTunes place on music but even he (a self confessed geek) found the interface not very user friendly. I on the other hand who am not a techie, find the simplicity of iTunes and the iPod great and it just improves all the time. It's really easy to put all of your existing cds onto the system (assuming you have a cd drive in your pc?) and it automatically detects the names of the songs and sorts them out for you. If he's not up with this type of technology then an iPod is a very easy way to get into it. The store is pretty self explanatory too so you can buy albums and they automatically download into your library so they're easy to find and play.

Wave the Sails

Well that sounds super - thanks so very much. Will have a read tonight.

graz79

MP3 is a digital file used to store music tracks (it has no become synomous with electronic music much as hoover has for vacuum cleaners).

The iPod is one device used to play these files back. Think of it as a walkman/cdplayer but instead of tapes or cd's it uses electronic files.

[Personal Opinion]

I have an ipod shuffle (leaving present from work in the UK) which does what I need it to do but I have heard a lot of complaints about the iPods from the lock in on the files (you can only use each file on one ipod/pc combination unless you start hacking around) and the poor battery life that can not be easily replaced (most people end up buying another ipod)

Other players that get good reviews are the creative zen series of players (our stepson has two with no problems). The big advantage of the zen players is they will work automatically with Windows Media Player (the iPod requires iTunes downloading).

[/Personal Opinion]

Hope this helps.

Wave the Sails

Very grateful indeed - thanks

DunRoaminTheUK

I didn't think that this was an issue anymore? Also, iTunes will happily convert to MP3 if required so you can also play on other devices.

EvannTel

We run 2 ipods - and we always use MP3 format - not the Apple default codes for portability.

Any tunes on iTunes can be loaded onto a number of iPods not just one - and if you also have a Zen or the like, if you keep the files in MP3 format you can load them onto this device also.

Where there are restrictions (its called DRM) is you buy music from the iTunes store. In this case it will only only plan on a maximum of 5 PCs - I think thats enough for most people. As others have said there are ways around DRM with some fiddling it depends on your attitude to copyright theft.

All players have some issues, like everything in life not one is perfect (or there would only be one) so its personal choice.

Whatever you get I would recommend at least 8Gb to save haveing to change tunes too often on the PC. have an 80Gb iPod and only half fill it with everything we own.