Use simple terms please, I'm clueless with this stuff.

To be honest, the name and look. Technically they have been poor value for money compared to competing models since day 1.

i think its because of popular services like itunes that work only with ipods.

Mostly the name. Would you rather say "I have a sony mp3 player" or "I have an iPod"?

Does it have anything to do with size? Size as in room for songs. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I bought my Dad an Ipod for christmas. But I have a MP3 player. I am sure I have to load songs for him or it will never get done. Is it a different process?

Not really. You just start up iTunes, select songs from a cd or from the computers library and drag them to the iPod's icon.

Mp3 cd player: CD's are teh suck.
Otherwise, I don't really care, music is music.

True. But if you were a hardcore music critic you would find that the compression of that of mass storage devices like ipods, distort the music and it is then of lesser quality.

CD's suck? I still use a walkman for cassettes!

..and to think that diskmans were old...

iPods are mp3 players, however instead of using a silicone chip as a lot of mp3 players use (called static memory) they use a harddrive (the device where you store all your files on a computer).
The benefit of this is that you can store a lot of files on a harddrive, a lot more than you can store on static memory. The storage to price ratio is a lot higher than with static mp3 players. I should also mention that the ipod nano is a static mp3 player not a hardrive mp3 player.
The disadvantages of having a harddrive player are that shocks (i.e. dropping it) can damage the drive and make it unusable, which isn’t really a problem with static devices, a hardrive is also larger, making the overall device size larger, and it is a spinning disc with a needle so it uses a lot more power than a silicone chip with no moving parts.

For a comparison the iPod nano (static) comes in two sizes 2 gig and 4 gig, whereas the traditional iPod (harddrive) is now up to 80gig.

So when buying an mp3 player you have to choose what you want more, storage or portability, personally I would go for a hardrive player simply because you can store so damn much, and if you are prepared to spend a reasonable amount you can get one with a colour screen which can also view photos and play back video.

But there are a lot of cheap, effective mp3 players out there, most of them are static.

When looking at an mp3 player, the simplest advice I can give is to look at how much it stores, and compare that to it’s price/how much other devices of the same storage capacity cost. iPods are generally a good choice (some consider they are overpriced, but I like them a lot), but if you see something cheaper with greater storage capacity consider going for it.

Oh also, Dear God, don’t buy an iPod shuffle, just don’t even consider it, it’s a piece of s***, never buy one, no matter what.
NEVER!

[ 12-20-2005, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: Intrepid ]

Dude what?
it's transferring the entire mp3 to the device, it doesn't loose quality in transfer. The iPod is pretty effective at reproducing the sound too, the creative zen beat it marginally, but that was a while ago, I don't know what it's like now. And a loss of quality can also be attributed to poor earphones.

Unless you mean that even converting to mp3 is a loss of quality which is correct. However even if you are an audiophile 192kbp/s is pretty good quality for something portable and if you wish you can go even higher or use an extremely high variable compression ratio which doesn’t consume too much storage space. It's not a cd which is well over 1000kbp/s but most of what is on a cd you can't hear anyway, and for a portable device that you are going to listen to with earphones most of the time it's completely unnoticeable.
If you want very high quality and portability, then a high quality portable cd player with high quality headphones is a good choice, but I love mass storage mp3 players because it is very cool to be able to carry your entire music collection around in your pocket and listen to anything you want without ever changing the disc.

One word: MARKETING.

I did a case study on iPod and iTunes - an example of brilliant marketing.

Maybe because of those ipod people who advertises on various forums. Remember the ipod guy sometime ago on this forum? :rolleyes:

I think Ipod, I think of the nice little surprise Sony whipped up for customers buying their cd's, and I think, any other mp3 player would do.

the name does it all. everyone knows that iPod is a valid product and at least trustworthy in some sense.

http://img280.imageshack.us/img280/2...wieipod2xo.gif

Yeah, I guess you're right.

Memnoch is really right, marketing and hype is mostly what keeps selling the iPod. During the time it's been around, the software support for it has also improved, but, in the end, it's just another hard-drive mp3 player.
Yesterday, I bought a Sony NW-A3000, also a hard-drive player with 20 gigs of memory, ATRAC3+ support(really great compression and quality, and the most beautiful design of a gadget I have ever seen. Trumps iPod by it's specifications as well as the price, which was just below 250 Euro.