Friday, August 11, 2006
Making the hard decisions.
Do I want an iPod, when all I really need is a digital AM/FM radio for the gym?
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About Me
- Angry Professor
- I am a tenured faculty member at a large state university. My teaching efforts primarily consist of delivering statistics lectures to social science majors. These experiences have colored my perspective somewhat.
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15 comments:
I love my iPod. I also use it for listening to podcasts at the gym. I also rent TV shows from Netflix, rip them to the iPod and watch those at the gym, too.
I have my workout saved in the "notes" section of my iPod since I can never remember which are the MWF exercises and which are the TR ones.
You can also justify using it for work: if you buy an AV cable for it, you can project images from it (that is: save your slides as images and call them a "photo album") with most classroom projection systems that work with composite video. Much lighter than carrying a laptop.
I hardly ever listen to music on mine!
If you're talking about an iPod Shuffle, it's not much more than a digital radio, frankly.
I bought a ipod a while back. I justified it to myself because I only have about 5 Gigs of music and use the rest of the space to back up important stuff from my computer. I figured if I'm going to spend money on a back up hard drive why not buy one that plays music? It works well for both.
Figuring out how to get the angry kid from having accidents is hard, this is easy. Go buy one.
--AB
OK, guys. Now think about this one again with this little factoid: I only let Linux applications run on my computer.
Oops. That last comment should have, "Will that limit what I can do with my iPod?" attached to the end of it.
Are you married to an Apple ipod? I have a Creative brand flashdrive-based MP3 player that also has an AM/FM digital radio...best of both worlds in my opinion, and only a little over $100.
RhythmBox has iPod support, although it may still be in development. I never got it to work, but that's because I couldn't get Linux to recognize my Firewire port.
You can actually run Linux on an iPod. I don't know why you'd want to (unless you want to use it as a voice recorder).
New iPods won't use FireWire anyway, USB 2.0 only.
If you're a radio buff, you can download internet radio to it (which is awfully nice, as I can never get radio reception in my gym, and even the BBC has some awful programming every now and then).
Also, Apple has an FM radio attachment for the Nano and IPod with Video which is cheap and works well (the headphones act as an aerial). There are other Fm radios for older model iPods.
If I were you I'd get a smaller, less expensive more feature filled iriver or iaudio flash player.
Do Ipods even come with an am/fm tuner built in? I thought you had to buy and accessory...
I also have a Creative mp3 player. It cost less than the ipod, and I am really happy with it. I have not tried putting anything on it from Linux, but it appears as a flash drive when you plug it in, so if an mp3 runs on linux, then I would guess that you could just save it to the mp3 player.
I love mine, and I use it for more than just music. I put podcasts and audiobooks on it to listen to while working out.
Angry Prof, do you use a PC? Mac OS X is a linux-based OS. I'm guessing iTunes, the program you'd use to put music onto your iPod, would probably run in a linux environment.
The decision, for me, would center around whether there are any radio stations in the area that regularly play music you'd enjoy during your workout. For me, there aren't -- or at least, I far prefer my own music.
Furthermore, the ability to tailor the content and tempo of the music to my mood gives me a huge boost when I'm running.
I think the iPod is out. I would have to purchase the additional accessory for radio reception and I would end up with wires trailing everywhere.
I was looking at the Creative Labs products. Mpls Ju, you said that you have AM/FM with yours? What do you have? My understanding is that only one really sucky DMP has AM, and the rest only have FM to reduce bulk.
In case anyone is curious, the rec center has plasma TVs surrounding the cardio machines. The audio is broadcast on FM, but my receiver is too sucky to be reliable. I must have FM so that I can watch Law and Order while I work out.
I just got a Creative Zen Vision:M yesterday, and already I love it! It doesn't have AM, but it does have FM, and the sound quality is amazing - much better than my previous player. And the ability to use it as a backup disk is pretty cool. The FM scans for stations, and you can preset the stations you like, and it comes in several colors, like the IPod. My biggest beef with IPod, and Apple things in general, is that they are far too expensive, considering that they really don't provide you with any features not available on similar products that cost less and are just as reliable.
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