I'm just about to purchase a portable player and was interested in feedback from anyone who has experience with these portables. Pros/Cons please.

Edit: I realize this isn't the "portable player board", but I often refer here because of the depth of knowleged of this boards members.

I realize this isn't the "portable player board", but I often refer here because of the depth of knowleged of this boards members.

'Sok, I condsider this "on-topic" for general discussion.

(well damn... I typed a long response, but the window refreshed and I lost it!)

Really quickly, I bought the Archos 20GB recorder over the Riot. I didn't like the "curvy game boy" form factor of the Riot. The menus and UI of the Riot are more advanced than the Archos, but the Archos can be easily used as a simple hard-drive device. Just plug in, copy, and go... no software necessary.

I'd be glad to answer any specific questions...

I'd be glad to answer any specific questions...

Thanks, I'll get in touch if I come up with any.

I bought an Archos 6gb well over a year ago. Kinda bulky, kinda heavy, but it works well. I didn't like the original Nomad's size - way to huge. The III looks to be similar. I have yet to see and play with a Riot, though it looks cool. The IPod is awesome. Looks great, sounds great, easy to use - though I would be worried about scratching it. It's too pretty.

I used my JB 6000 extensively with a line in plug prior to buying an empeg. Afterward, I used it regularly at work. Battery life was pretty good as long as I refrained from skipping songs constantly.
Playlist size is limited to 999 tracks - and that takes a minute to load one of that size. (Winamp playlists work fine - no need to use the bundled musicmatch jukecrap)

Initially, it had some software quirks. At the time I bought it, they were releasing upgrades fairly rapidly. Now they haven't released anything new for it in a lonnnng time. It basically works as advertised - it just takes some experimenting to figure out some things (documentation is lacking). Email requests for explanations never had a response.

The JB 6000 reads ID3v1 tags only (title only). I found that removing the tags entirely, forcing it to use the filename, gave a few more characters in the scrolling display. But still, not enough characters are displayed. That sucks.

Searching for songs depends entirely on how cleverly you arranged directories.

Occasionally, when playing, a song will "blip". Not sure why. And if you bump it too hard vertically, it will also blip - but I believe that might be due to a momentary loss of battery contact.
I also purchased the accessory kit. Remote, headphones, cassette adaptor, car power adaptor. The remote works well, though it feels rather flimsy and I worry about durability. Headphones were crap. Cassette adaptor works about as expected. Power adaptor causes a lot of noise in the system, so is useful only for recharging the batteries. (note that the remote supposedly only works on the player versions - Not the recorder type)
If the fickle gods of weather send some decent snow this year, I plan on trying it out on the slopes. I found a cool over-the-shoulder bandolero-type gameboy advance case that should work well for skiing.

Overall, the unit is serviceable. And makes a great file-transfer device between computers. I do envy the nifty features of the Nomad, IPod and Riot, though. The Archos line is quite a bit cheaper than the others, but does lack their features.

I'm just about to purchase a portable player and was interested in feedback from anyone who has experience with these portables. Pros/Cons please.

OK, it's not one of the products you listed, but Apple Ipod is very good.

• Pro: tiny form factor
  
• Pro: desirable design
  
• Pro: very fast (IEEE1394) file transfer
  
• Pro: nice hi-res screen, scrolls in all the right places for long track names etc, good backlight
  
• Pro: very easy-to-use UI
  
• Pro: well over 10 hours battery life (I've never run it flat)
  
• Con: no insert or append mode (in car-player terminology)
  
• Con: Linux 1394 support is still iffy and I can only transfer from Windows (or Mac, but I don't have a Mac)
  
• Con: no retrieving music from player
  
• Con: you'll need an IEEE1394 card unless you have a Mac (say £20)
  
• Con: the earphones make my ears hurt (but that may be because they're so good at reproducing bass)
  
• Con: relatively expensive compared to physically larger players
  

The Linux 1394 stuff works for some people; perhaps it's just my particular card that it doesn't get on with.

Peter

Con: no retrieving music from player

Actually, you can very easially. The Music folder is simply a hidden one. Nothing beyond that preventing music from being copied off.

I'm picking up an iPod here soon, due to many of the pros above.

And one other pro, it's a firewire hard drive. I'll probably toss a firewire card in my machine at work, and then have quick file transfers between work, and my home PC and Mac.

Con: you'll need an IEEE1394 card unless you have a Mac (say £20)

Ahhh... makes me kinda glad I bough that creative Audigy card so many months ago. I knew that firewire port would come in handy someday!

Thanks to all for the thorough replies to my request. After reading these, I will definitely check out the iPod now. I was unaware that the iPod could be used with Windows, so I wasn't paying any attention to it. I would be interested in retrieving music from the player from time to time, so I hope it's as easy as Drakino mentioned it was. I'm really looking for something with easy UI and features like our Empegs, but in a hand held version (for snowboarding, mountian biking, motocross, airplanes, etc...). Thanks again for the great responses!!!

I'm picking up an iPod here soon, due to many of the pros above.

Well, I haven't got my iPod yet too, but this is simply because it isn't available at the suplier's. I've been checking his website on a daily basis for a month now, and the release date of the new 20gig model has been postponed three times already now. Next date that is set is sept 6th. Fingers crossed!

Con: no insert or append mode (in car-player terminology)

From all the cons mentioned this one bothers me the most. But I guess I can live with it. It certainly won't stop me from buying the unit. Isn't the iPod's firmware upgradable? Can't this feature be added in the future?

I was unaware that the iPod could be used with Windows...

It hasn't been that long since the windows software was released. In fact, that was also the moment the 20gig model was released. I guess it's been two-three months now. But as said before, my supplier is still waiting for the first shipment of the "new" iPods and because of that so am I. I hope you have better luck.

Peter,

BTW, How "shock proof" is the iPod? I would be using it in occasionally extreme situations that could shake it up quite a bit. Does it have a large buffer?

I personally have an Archos JB20, which definitely has a sloppy UI compared to the iPod, but seems to be developing an active user community around an alternative firmware implementation (http://rockbox.haxx.se/)

I have an Archos Jukebox Recorder. Piece of crap. Sure, I guess it all looks good, but in use it's just plain crap. I don't know how the people here who have it are having different experiences.

I got mine last Christmas, and defended its features over the iPod. Admittedly, I wanted a portable MP3 player that could record, so the ipod was out of the question.

After using the thing, The software is buggy as hell, the display is crap even with the light on, the form factor simply feels cheap, and many of the things the company says you can do on the player is either not actually possible, or it's incredibly hard to do. They say that you can make a playlist without computer access. Well, following the only instructions I could find - an online message board FAQ, I could not get it to work.

The player has inconsistent behavior, such as wierd display errors where the entire display will be shifted down about 3 lines.

Pros- I guess the sound was pretty good, the songs played normally, and the recording quality was pretty good, considering, but that's only if you had a loud enough input. if you had an unamplified input, you'd get about as much hard drive noise as you do source.

My dad recently asked me for ideas on what portable player he should buy. His iPod ships tomorrow.

Good info to hear from a Archos owner. I suspected as much from reading the customer reviews on Amazon. Thanks for the continuing responses.

DiGNAN17,

Why did you recommend the iPod over the Riot to your dad?

Everyone else,

Why, with all the Empeg loyalty on this board, am I seeing only iPod users and Archos users. Is the Riot a POS? I would think that Empeg users would lean towards the Riot based on the features they like about thier Empegs? Am I wrong to assume that the Riot is similar in features, UI and expandability?

The Riot was not developed by the same team of people that developed the empeg car player. Hence, no specific loyalty on our part. (And no specific similarities in software features.)

The biggest difference between the Riot and the iPod is physical size. The Riot uses a laptop hard disk, giving it more potential capacity but a bigger physical footprint. The iPod is quite small by comparison because it uses a smaller PCMCIA-sized hard disk (with less capacity).

The software is buggy as hell, the display is crap even with the light on, the form factor simply feels cheap, and many of the things the company says you can do on the player is either not actually possible, or it's incredibly hard to do. They say that you can make a playlist without computer access. Well, following the only instructions I could find - an online message board FAQ, I could not get it to work. ... The player has inconsistent behavior, such as wierd display errors where the entire display will be shifted down about 3 lines.

Yes, but how do you like the player? Tell us how you really feel about it.

tanstaafl.

I have the riot. I got it over the ipod because of the hdd size at the time now they have 20 gig hdd ipods and because of the clueless sales people at the apple store in the mall of america.

The only thing I don't like about the riot is you have to use real one or real jukebox to load the music onto it. I would rather have something like emplode that isn't an all inclusive music manager / player I just want something to put the songs on the player with. The size has not been an issue it still fits in my pockets fine. The transfer speed isn't really a big issue to me after I do the big initial loading I only upload an album at a time when I get a new one.

The riot is 200.00 less than the ipod with the same size hdd so if I had to buy one today I would still go with the riot just for that reason.

Did that toshiba ipod clone with the removable drive ever come out in the USA.

Yes, but how do you like the player? Tell us how you really feel about it.

I'm sorry, I sometimes have difficulty expressing my emotions

How's this: I do not have an affinity for the Archos player. No good? Oh well, I guess I'll stick to calling it crap

when looking at the archos player I found it to be oddly heavy. Something that small shouldn't be that heavy.

msaeger,

No problems with the Riot? Battery life Ok? Menus easy to use? Customer reviews I read on Amazon were all over the place about quality, UI, durability, etc... Would you have bought the iPod if the HD size was 20gb when you were making your purchase? If price was not a concern, would you buy the iPod over the Riot today?

Do you know if there has been much success in upgrading the capacity of the iPod? This was one thing that made me purchase the Creative Jukebox I ... later I found that this one pro couldn't come close to stacking up against all the con's for that steaming sack of dung.

If I can upgrade the capacity later without use of a soldering iron or microcontroller programming, the iPod will be our next purchase.

Greg

Apparently, the folks over at MacAddict took apart an iPod (I started getting my free subscription a month or two after this, though). They seem to claim you can just pull the metal back off of the plastic body and get to its innards. I have absolutely no idea if it's possible to replace the hard drive, but the AnandTech guys seem to think so.

The battery life is great the longest I have used it one one time is 10 hours. The menus are easy to use it automatically makes playlists like the soup views in emplode. I usually use Artist - Album or use the rio dj feature which plays at random for a specified time.

When I bought the riot I would not have bought the ipod just because of the dorks at the apple store (and the compusa apple section) not knowing what an id3 tag is. I wanted to know it the ipod used the id3v1 or v2 tags to get it's track info well they didn't know what id3 was let alone there are two versions.

I wonder if anyone has tried upgrading the riot. It has a standard 2.5 inch drive and the pin of the drive just plug into a connector on the PCB. That toshiba one has to be upgradable unless all you can do is stick in another drive of the same size

I'm really looking for something with easy UI and features like our Empegs, but in a hand held version

That would be a great product, wouldn't it?

Rob

In reply to:

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That would be a great product, wouldn't it?

Rob

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Why do I get the feeling that I'm going to have to start restocking my 'gadget fund'?

Getting it apart shouldn't be the hard. It's finding the exact size HD that's the hard part.
It used to be that the 5GB iPod was actually cheaper than the 5GB PCMCIA drive that Toshiba sold. Is this true anymore?

Even if you can't upgrade it cheaply the iPod is still a nice piece of gear...

- Trevor

In reply to:

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That would be a great product, wouldn't it?

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You tease!

That would be a great product, wouldn't it?

I hate it when you do that.
Especially now, since I've just ordered an iPod!

Just purchased a iPod 20gb player for Windows. Should arrive tomorrow by Fedex. I'm off to get a Firewire card right now so I'll be ready in the AM when my iPod arrives. In case anyone who is waiting elsewhere is interested,

B&H Photo-Audio-Video @ 1-800-606-6969 has one more in stock for $499 (Full Retail), but at least if your in CA like me you won't pay tax. I was told by several suppliers that the next available date wouldn't be until the 16th of this month. FYI

That same iPod 20gig costs $650 over here. I hate taxes!

I personally have an Archos JB20, which definitely has a sloppy UI compared to the iPod, but seems to be developing an active user community around an alternative firmware implementation (http://rockbox.haxx.se/)

Cool. Thanks for the link.
I was wondering if anyone would try writing custom firmware for the JB, but had not did a search on the subject in ages.

Thanks again,

I've gotta ask, what is different about their firmware? I imagine anything is better than the company's lousy programming, but I don't want to try anything without knowing what it's for.

I can't find anywhere in a quick perusal to actually purchase the 1.8" hard drives that the iPod uses. But Toshiba's 5GB PCMCIA card that uses one is still $400, more than the 20GB iPod.

Ouch! $400 for only the drive and a tiny amount of electronics (if any) is steep! Toshiba must be making a fair profit on these drives.

- Trevor

Yesterday (2002.09.04) I saw 5 20GB IPods @ Fry's Electronics. They were $400 each.

When rob posts, the world MOVES.

I purchased a RIo Riot. I thought the unit was fantastic. I thought the Computer interface (Real Player) was the biggest piece of crap I'd ever seen. Uploading to the player is pretty slow; not that big a deal until you notice that Real Player has locked up, formatted your hard disk and somehow managed to erase all your CDs...

I took it back.

I tried several possible email name combos for SB's president saying, "GEE, if only you could implement emplode for all your rio products.....you might have more customers" One of them didn't bounce.

In reply to:

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That would be a great product, wouldn't it?

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And more to the point:

I'd buy at least one of them if such a beast were available sometime.
I'd also think that others might pay for one as well.

BTW: For specs I'd like fast USB2.0 interface (with inbuilt charging via the said interface when its docked ala the iPod).

Cool scroll wheel support, with [unlike the iPod] "detents" (probably 16/32 per revolution) (aka "bumps") on turning/scrolling like the Empeg volume knob has so its easy to count clicks.

Ability to work like a "usb storage device" without clunky add-on software being required for common M$ operating systems.

Of course, it must work/come with Emplode, support the same cool UI the empeg had and have really cool visuals on its super cool blue/multi-coloured graphic LCD display.

Inbuilt FM tuner, with the ability to record programming from said tuner to disk.

Oh and by the way, it must be able to run solidly for 7 days between charges.

[only joking on the last point].

Hmmm. I like the smooth action of the iPod wheel. But I can understand why one might not.

I used to think that too,

But I have a Pansonic Stereo in my bedroom with a large knob with detents ("bumps" while turning) on it and I much prefer that when scrolling stations, tracks etc than a smooth wheel.

I find the feedback from the detents, when syncronised with the software [as the empeg is] allows you to navigate menus by 'feel' without even needing to look at the screen. You can easily learn to count "5 bumps to this, 6 to that, scroll down 1 page = of songs = 10 bumps etc".

Very useful in a small device e.g. Ipod-a-like or Empeg while driving.
I've tried the iPod scroll wheel and and "no sir, I don't like it".

How "shock proof" is the iPod? I would be using it in occasionally extreme situations that could shake it up quite a bit. Does it have a large buffer?

It has a huge buffer (it's got 16 meg of RAM and the software is probably much smaller than the Empeg software). I imagine it's not all that shock-proof when it is caching -- there's no space in it for shock absorbers à la car-player -- although presumably the makers of the 1.8in drives it uses are even more aware of shock issues than the makers of 2.5in drives.

Peter

Why, with all the Empeg loyalty on this board, am I seeing only iPod users and Archos users. Is the Riot a POS?

No. But it's the usual thing with the computer industry: I'd have to upgrade all my trousers to be compatible with it. The Ipod is small enough to fit in my existing pockets.

Peter

Hmmm. I like the smooth action of the iPod wheel. But I can understand why one might not.

Have you got one of the original ones like mine, then, where the wheel is actually a wheel? They changed that for subsequent versions (10 and 20Gb) to a no-moving-parts glidepad thing. That doesn't strike me as an improvement, but they must have had their reasons.

Peter

> That doesn't strike me as an improvement, but they must have had their reasons.

I think there were two reasons. High failure rate and it allowed them to make the case slightly thinner.

Ok, my iPod has arrived and the packaging alone is enough to score Apple some brownie points (those of you who have new iPods coming will know what I mean). It's charging now and I'm running thorugh my Music Match learning curve so I'll be ready to put music on iPod when it's charged. More later...

It requires Music Match? Well, that's one point against it for me. I can't stand that program. What could make music organization more complicated than Music Match?

I suppose that's one point for the Archos. I'd prefer a simple hard drive structure for loading tunes onto a player over using Music Match or a Real product.

We've all been spoiled to death by emplode. Damn you empeg people for making such lovely software!

Biggest advantage of the alternative rockbox firmware for Archos jukeboxes is in my opinion that it comes with source and is being actively developed. As opposed to the official firmware upgrades which are sporadic and seem to introduce more new bugs than bugfixes.

The rockbox firmware has some games for the JB recorder, which probably has a bit more CPU to spare compared to the JB studio. They recently got playlist support working and are adding things like mp3v2 tag support, editable persistent playlists, etc. Basically trying to fix all the things that are annoying with the existing firmware.

I looked into the options of upgrading the iPod and it doesn't look good...

The Toshiba 5GB drive has a different interface than the 10 and 20GB drives. And the 20GB drive is actually larger (thicker) than the 10GB drive. This really cracks me up... Jobs brags about how they made the iPod thinner and added the 20GB model at MW... but in reality the higher capacity drive is larger than the original iPod. Heh... he is a master.

EDIT: I REALLY want a laptop drive MP3 portable with an empeg style interface... REALLY REALLY want!

Just because the drive is thicker doesn't mean the overall player is.

Just because the drive is thicker doesn't mean the overall player is.

I am afraid in this case it is.

Size and weight (5GB model)
Height: 4.0 in
Width: 2.4 in
Depth: 0.78 in
Weight: 6.5 oz (185 g)


Size and weight (10GB model)
Height: 4.0 in
Width: 2.4 in
Depth: 0.72 in
Weight: 6.5 oz (185 g)


Size and weight (20GB model)
Height: 4.0 in
Width: 2.4 in
Depth: 0.84 in
Weight: 7.2 oz (204 g)

PS: I am about to overtake you on Shines... Okay-go!

What could make music organization more complicated than Music Match?

Realplayer Jukebox.

Have you got one of the original ones like mine, then, where the wheel is actually a wheel? They changed that for subsequent versions (10 and 20Gb) to a no-moving-parts glidepad thing.

Yes, and I didn't know they did that. I always thought that the wheel seemed a little flimsy, as it wobbles a little bit, but I've never had any problems with it, other than software beyond the original seems to have thrown out some debounce logic, so that the borders between ``clicks'' seem a little pickier than they once were and sometimes go back one ``notch'' due to the movement caused by removing your thumb from the wheel.

I'm not a big fan of iTunes, either. (Personally, I don't like the concept of keeping a database of your music in a program since I have multiple computers all sharing the same network share of mp3s, and that means updating the database on each machine each time I rip new music. Huge pain.) Fortunately, you can totally avoid using the ``features'' of iTunes and simply use it as an upload program. You can just drag-and-drop files from your filesystem directly on the iPod icon within iTunes and it'll never try to integrate them into the iTunes database.

I'm curious to hear your comments on how MusicMatch works with the iPod.

We built the interface as a separate applet that runs independently of the jukebox (sort of). It's similar to how the new burner runs in a separate window. I had to QA the help files, so I learned all about how it worked. Seemed pretty easy and straight-forward to me.

Pro: very fast (IEEE1394) file transfer

I don't see any advantage to the IEEE1394 connection yet. I'm uploading 18gb to the iPod right now and it's taking forever! It's been running for about 1hour now and it's less than 50% finished, that doesn't seem any faster than uploads to my Empeg through ethernet.

I just installed Jaguar on a computer here at work. First thing I did was drag my music folder into the iPod library. After waiting for a while, it began copying files. I was like, "what the hell?". After a little bit, it gave me an error that I had run out of disk space.

Only after doing some searching did I find that iPod automatically makes copies of the files into it's own folder in order to "centralize" your music files. Luckily, there's an option to turn the copying off. What a pain, though. I had to go find where it had made the copies and delete them.

Oh, true. That was the first thing I ever turned off in iTunes, even before they released the iPod, as I had all my music, as I said, on a networked drive specifically so I wouldn't have to copy it all over the place. But it works as I said, assuming you turn that feature off.

Are you copying it off of a networked drive? Local files on mine are insanely fast. Unfortunately, very few of my mp3s are local to a Mac.

Does MusicMatch work with the 5GB iPod? Regardless, I currently have no PC with a FireWire connection, so I'd have no way to comment. (I haven't used MusicMatch in probably about three years, anyway. It was the first program that made me realize I didn't like the concept of a program-specific database for my mp3s.)

No, directly from my hard drive, I wonder what gives? It is my secondary hard drive, buut that shouldn't make a difference, right?

It shouldn't. What OS are you using? I'm using MacOS X, and I can believe that the I/O throughput on an OS9 machine might be much less.

I'm on a PC using Win 2000 Pro. Maybe that's the problem?

Oh. I have absolutely no experience with either an iPod or FireWire on a PC.

PS: I am about to overtake you on Shines... Okay-go!

I need to get the USA version and start playing again.

Does MusicMatch work with the 5GB iPod?

I assume you mean the iPods released prior to the official Windows version?

My understanding is that at the moment, you won't be able to use MusicMatch to do transfers from your PC. Apple does plan to release a patch, however, so that older iPods will work with PCs. Not sure the timeline on this. I'm sure Apple will announce something.

I'm on a PC using Win 2000 Pro. Maybe that's the problem?

I sure hope that isn't the problem because that is the exact platform I plan to use my iPod on as well. (the day I'll finally be able to buy it that is. Yesterday the distributor delayed the date of receiving stock again, the fourth time already, for a complete fortnight this time. )

If you solve this issue, please let me know.

Archeon,

I'm not really sure this is an issue, I just expected it to be way faster the way everyone raved about it. For example, I transfered 18.2gb in 1hr 24mins. That's not too bad, but I had heard stories of 15gb in 6mins, etc... I was expecting more speed!

That's indeed not bad, but also not the speed I was expecting. I heard that it was possible to fill the 20gig model in about half an hour.

Could anybody who uses their iPod's with a Mac (that will probably be most of you ) give some more info about the speed they're seeing while transfering ? How long does it take to completely fill your iPod?

Thanks!

Oh. I have absolutely no experience with either an iPod or FireWire on a PC.

Unfortunately, neither had I, until this past weekend. My dad's ipod shipped last Thursday, and since he was down he asked me for help installing a firewire card that he had just gotten. I was afraid, because his Dell runs WinME, which is horrible. Well, turns out that it caused all kinds of problems for us. I'll detail them in case any of you go through it, because looking around the web, some other folk have as well.

So we install the card. Turn on the computer. The add new hardware screen comes up. We start installing drivers. UH OH! It can't find a file. It can't find another file. And another. About 10 in total. We just tell it to skip them all and install it anyway. So everything finishes and the system page shows that the computer thinks the card is some sort of network adapter. We try uninstalling several times and repeating, but it's too late. The computer won't think the card is anything else.

After MUCH frustration, a return and replacement of the card, experiencing the same problems again (because we couldn't find the files it wanted), we finally tried the option of "picking the device from a list". We selected 1394 OHCI or something, and everything worked. It even foud the files it wanted.

I guess ME just hates firewire cards or something, because it had a hell of a lot of difficulty with it. Oh well.

Interesting. Though I'll probably won't have those problems since I plan on using the (already installed) firewire port on my SB Audigy.

How fast are the speeds you're getting while uploading files to the iPod on winME?

I had the same thing happen to me while installing my IEEE1394 card on Win 2000 Pro. Tried a few times to get it to install the way the card mfg sugested and then did it the way you finally did it and it worked. I doubt that has anything to do with the speed still.

Firewire *is* a kind of network card.

Calvin

I'm curious, what is the smallest, but functional, Mp3 player?

Calvin

You can do networking over firewire but firewire itself doesn't emulate a network card.

- Trevor

Firewire *is* a kind of network card.

Fair enough, but the point is that it wasn't supposed to be listed as a network adapter, and it was in the same section as his ethernet adapter and stuff.

I still say WinME is a crap OS, so I doubt a lot of people will disagree with that one.


And he hasn't gotten the player yet. His order shipped last Thursday, we were getting everything set up for its arrival. So we don't know what speeds he's getting.

What operating system are you running? If you're running Windows XP, go to control panel, then double click on Network Connections.

What do you see?

On the system I had with a firewire card in a PCI slot, there was a solid horizontal line dividing the space into two parts: ethernet networking and firewire networking.

In the system with firewire built into the motherboard, there is "local area network, realtek" (ethernet) "1394 connection net adapter" (firewire).

As I understand it every decide on the firewire bus has an identification, same as ethernet. So ... what are you saying?

Calvin

Actually, it *is* supposed to be in the same section as the ethernet adapter. In Windows XP. Dunno about WinMe though.

Calvin

That is still TCP/IP over Firewire. If you remove or disable the "1394 net adapter" from Windows XP all of your other Firewire devices will still work that don't rely on using TCP/IP over Firewire.

There is a different interface depending on what type of device you're trying to talk to. SBP-2 is for harddisks and DVD style drives. IEC61883-1 is for audio transmission over Firewire.

It's true that each device on the bus has a different address on the bus. You still need another layer on top that provides the necessary interfaces. Nothing to stop you talking to another PC using a raw isosynchronous channel apart from the lack of a driver. Or whatever protocol that takes your fancy.

I'm using Windows XP as well and I do have the 1394 Net Adapter listed. I've also got a OHCI compliant 1394 host controller listed seperately which is the actual hardware device itself. Anything else is a virtual device.

- Trevor

WinME is a pile of crap to be honest. The default Dell installation is especially flakey. If you've got the time and the proper install media it is a much better idea to wipe it clean and reinstall from scratch.

Not sure what Dell does to it exactly but I've always had terrible trouble with the default install. It could be because they've got a vaguely standard HD image which they clone onto all of their PCs and then customise it from there. This standard image has extra cruft which affects the PC.

- Trevor

Hey guys,

I found this review of the iPod which directly compared Firewire speeds between the Mac and PC. From the article:

"The transfer speeds via FireWire on the PC, while very fast compared to Universal Serial Bus 1.1 players, are still noticeably slower than Apple's implementation of FireWire on the Mac.

In one test, I transferred nearly 1,600 songs to a Mac iPod in 14 minutes. The PC iPod received the same songs in 32 minutes. "

I wonder if that's due to the software implementation, or if they just had a crappy FireWire card in the PC.

If it's in the software, that's a good basis for a conspiracy theory. Jobs tells his engineers developing the PC version of the software to slow it down just a bit...

Hou Hou Hou....(it should sound like a kind of Santa Claus)...

I read all the posts today....my first thought was..uhmm...how do you dare to compare an state of the art machine like the iPod with absolute crappy items like the Archos JB or Nomad JB or Rio Rot (this last one is a bit less crappy maybe, don't know).

Both are MP3 players and an Honda Civic and a Porsche Boxter are also both cars. Of course you can put a 300 HP engine in a Honda Civic but it's still not a Porsche (to the critics of Hard disc space).

The interface of the iPod is superb for me. Of course it could better, but it's much better still than the competitors. You should take a look at this product thinking that it was developed for Apple users in mind. Apple users don't usually need to know about complicated configurations, registry tricks, dll's and memory conflicts or installation problems of stupid stone age [censored] OS like guindows.

You have to see that Apple take "care" of the normal user, that one how doesn't have a clou about all the stuff you speak about here everyday, man wir freaks for them. The real people out there just want to use it. So you buy your Apple Machine with OS X which have iTunes, you put a CD convert it to MP3, plug in the iPod and it syncronises automatically, and it works fine!!! that's it, what's wrong with that?

'normal' users, don't give a [censored] if the code is open source? of if the wheel makes danm 'clicks' or not? or it is 20 [censored] gr heavier than the older version? or a 1/7 of an inch wider or whatever it just pure simplicity and design and what they want. Guys, Apple sold 150.000 of this machines in the first three months!

iTunes?...iTunes is for me one of the best MP3 tools I ever used, and you know why? because is damn easy! and does everything I need and pretty well. Yes, I like it and very much. So as I love most things from Apple, they are beautiful, easy to use, well design and they work. I just wished the Empeg and Emplode convination could be so good as the iPod and iTunes convination which I find superb.

What you need three days to install a bloody Firewire card on a guindows machine? what you use stone age Win 2K or XP? well, do you really care about quality? or do you care about quantity? I personaly change from guindows to Apple 5 months ago and I wished I did it 10 years ago!

Um, we had other threads discussing religion over in "Off Topic."

Tony

well this thread has been a Religion's Off-Topic since the very first beginning........IMHO :-)