Eman

Do any of you run with a MP3 player? My old walkman is in need of replacement. I wanted a Ipod Mini, but I heard they have a greater tendency to skip than the flash players. Any thoughts of a brand/model that works well for you during exercise (running as I would not wear it when cycling)? Thanks.

Eatadonut

if you like the apple brand, go for the iPod shuffle, they're reasonably priced, sound excellent, and have 512mb or 1gb of flash storage.

personally, i've got an iRiver iFP-895 that I love when I'm excersizing, it's rugged and easy to manipulate on the go. I flew off my bike once (got cut off by another biker and crossed the street by air!) and landed my then-240 lb body directly on it. The rubber casing got all sorts of gouged, but there was no damage to the player.

cjbruin

I really like my iPOD mini...never had a problem with it skipping and I'm a pretty heavy "thumper".

Sprocket Man

That's exactly what I was going to suggest. I have one, and that thing is so incredibly small and light. The thing I like the most about it is the Itunes interface. If you don't mind spending the extra $50, get the 1gig model, especially if you run a lot and want a big variety of tunes. I hope I'm not stating the obvious when I say that it works just as well with a PC as it does with a Mac.

mom2three3

I have a Rio Cali and love it...

manual_overide

I'd recommend a flash based player for any kind of activity. Bouncing up and down is generally a bad thing for sensitive hard drive platters spinning away. I realize that iPods and others don't continuously spin the disk either. They spin a little bit to fill a cache, stop and play from the cache, and when the cache gets low, they spin the disk to read more info. When the disk isn't spinning, it's locked or "parked".

A hard drive player will work fine if you carry it somewhere where there's not too much motion and bouncing, but for me, they are much too expensive to have fail because I was too rough. A flash based player has no moving parts, so it will stand up to much more abuse.

jab

I set out to buy a 1GB iRiver 700 or 800-series flash-based player, but ended up with a Creatve MuVo Micro N200. At the time, the iRiver units were sorely overpriced for their capacities, and iRiver had been dragging their feet for almost a year on the promised firmware update to support "USB Mass Storage" operation (which is operating system-independent, and requires no drivers). So, I gave up on them.

This little player is powered by a single AAA cell (I use rechargeables), it has an FM tuner, a voice recorder, and analog line-in-to-MP3 recording ability. It's shorter than the iPod Shuffle in one dimension, but a bit thicker, so overall I guess they occupy about the same volume. I had some problems initially with music becoming garbled and the unit resetting, but firmware updates have cleared them all up. The amplifier isn't partcularly strong, though; in order to drive nice full-sized open air headphones, I have to crank the volume setting way up, which probably cuts down on battery life and leads to more distortion. I've stuck with using the included ear buds. I rate the FM reception as "decent" (versus "good"); I liken the performance to that of cars with antennas integrated into the windows, versus cars with dedicated external antennas.

I didn't consider any of the iPod series, because my requirements included:
- Ability to operate as "mass storage", requiring no special software; I can plug my player into systems running Linux, Windows, OSX, etc. without Creative explicitly supporting it, and without having to install stuff on random machines. This is huge.
- FM tuner for news, local music, talk radio, etc.
- Ability to use standard-cell batteries (AA or AAA), so that I can put my existing investment in rechargeables to use. Recharge times are down to about 15 minutes with modern cells.

With my MuVo to handle my music needs, and appropriate use of remote-access software, I've almost totally weaned myself from carting my laptop around when commuting by bike. I win!

-JAB

Daijoubu

I think you'll be better off with a player you can slide in your pocket than having a white sticks dangling around your neck

No offence but those ipod ads looks ******** with their el-cheapo plastic earbuds and the way-too-long cord

RoadToad

I have a 128MB (you can add up to another 512MB) Memorex player (MMP8500) that I have had for a while. It isn’t the fanciest, but I love it. I have had many others, but no problems with this one! Cheap, small and light! It is only about 2" x 2".

www.smartbargains.com has it for only $49.99!!! I think I paid $99 for mine a couple of years ago…

Sprocket Man

The Shuffle comes with two USB covers, one has a cord you can hang around your neck and one doesn't have any cord so you can put it in your pocket.

But Daijoubu brings up a very good point, the ads look totally ********, so by all means, DO NOT BUY AN IPOD!

oldskoolboarder

I have various MP3 players. For running, I use my Creative MUVO. It's an older one, 128MB no FM tuner. It's a flash drive so there's no special software required, just drag and drop your tracks and treat it like a disk drive. VERY easy and simple. I've seem them down to about $50. 1 AAA battery.

The Shuffle and new Muvo's w/ FM are nice. I like mine because I use it at work to transfer large files (Powerpoint, PDF's, etc) between computers and to bring to customers when my email server can't take large attachments.

Stevezipp

I have a regular ipod - it is great but somtimes just stops during my run, never skips just stops and sometimes I have to re-set it, sometimes I press play and it kicks right on. The first time I used I ran my longest distance, it made the time fly by. I would not get the ipod shuffle because the ipod and mini let you customize the play list. I have quick run lists, and long run lists. I have the perfect song ready to come on when I need a pick me up during the run, nice songs to start and great selections in the middle. It is a great training tool for inspiration.

Sprocket Man

Actually, the Shuffle (and the Mini as well) with Itunes will allow you to pick the songs you want to load onto the device. The one thing the Shuffle won't allow you to do is to customize the song order. It either plays the songs in random order or alphabetically by artist.

H2OChick

I have an iPod mini and haven't had any trouble with it - aside from the ear buds slipping out when I'm sweaty (yeah, yeah, I know the solution to that, just haven't been to the store...)

Spubin

RIO Cali

Works great good sound
highly rec. it

Jeff

Paul W.

I have the mother of all ipod killers, the 80GB DMC XCLEF 500.
It has a fm radio, a recorder, 14-18 hours battery life, incredible volume, functions as an external hard drive and doesn't require a special program like itunes to load music.
https://digmind.com/store/index_500.html
I run with it 4 times a week, doesn't skip as long as it's on my waist. It skipped when I tried to carry it in my shorts pocket. Too much thigh bounce for it.
It's downside is that it is bigger than the ipods and flash players. It doesn't bother me though. I clip it to my belt when I run and it also fits in my pockets. It also has a bigger screen with bigger font size. Much easier on my 47 yr old eyes than my gfriends ipod mini.

ZackJones

I just bought 5 of 'em. One for Donna, me, and each of the kids to use when we go on vacation