Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Taxi_Driver on 23 May 2007, 22:38:41
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I won one this week in a competition! :D
Its a 2Gb one.......ok i know the obvious answer ;D
Been playing with it a bit...downloaded some music to it (some how!).....instructions are useless! >:(
And do you 'import' songs to it? or 'add files to library' (which seems to do cack all)?? :-/
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Smash it up.
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Ask a teenager ;)
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Smash it up.
Have you found Sammy??
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Smash it up.
Have you found Sammy??
No, but Sammy Jnr (4lb club hammer) will suffice for this application. Or Percy Pickaxe of course....
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Will hope i can get the hang of it before i take TB's advice.....after all its a £100 prize :-/
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I won one this week in a competition! :D
Its a 2Gb one.......ok i know the obvious answer ;D
Been playing with it a bit...downloaded some music to it (some how!).....instructions are useless! >:(
And do you 'import' songs to it? or 'add files to library' (which seems to do cack all)?? :-/
You have to install the iTunes app.
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I won one this week in a competition! :D
Its a 2Gb one.......ok i know the obvious answer ;D
Been playing with it a bit...downloaded some music to it (some how!).....instructions are useless! >:(
And do you 'import' songs to it? or 'add files to library' (which seems to do cack all)?? :-/
You have to install the iTunes app.
Yup iTunes needed, or an add-on for Windows Media player... which costs money >:(
iTunes is good, runs like a sack of sh!t on Window's, works well on my Mac though :)
I'd be happy to 'lend' you some of my music collection... all 119GB's of it ::)
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i've got a philips mp3 player which keeps me company in the gym, its just plug and play! connect it to a USB socket and open it's relevant window your computer and just copy files directly into it!
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I won one this week in a competition! :D
Its a 2Gb one.......ok i know the obvious answer ;D
Been playing with it a bit...downloaded some music to it (some how!).....instructions are useless! >:(
And do you 'import' songs to it? or 'add files to library' (which seems to do cack all)?? :-/
You have to install the iTunes app.
Yup iTunes needed, or an add-on for Windows Media player... which costs money >:(
iTunes is good, runs like a sack of sh!t on Window's, works well on my Mac though :)
I'd be happy to 'lend' you some of my music collection... all 119GB's of it ::)
Noooooooooooooo iTunes sucks... Even though I now use a Mac, I just decline the EULA if it ever pops up so it's never actually loaded on my Mac :D
Many decent music players will support it, there's a FREE plugin for Winamp, and it's built into Amarok (which is a great music player, loads better than iTunes and the pile of crap that is Windows Media Player... although it's not available for Windows yet as it's built with QT).
Use iTunes if you want an easy life though :(. It's one of the things I hate about iPods though, why the hell can't it just show up as a drive so you can copy music straight on? Even my Nokia phone can manage that FFS!
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Smash it up.
Have you found Sammy??
No, but Sammy Jnr (4lb club hammer) will suffice for this application. Or Percy Pickaxe of course....
Not an Ipod fan then?
I like my MD Walkman
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iTunes has its faults... but it does what Apple intends, easy use. Plug iPod in away you go.... album art, ratings ect all very easy.
If you have a large collection say over (21,000 tracks ::) ) Its nice and easy to browse though the album covers....
Windows Media player is worse really.... Winamp the best, but not user freindly.
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Smash it up.
Or sell it and get a Creative Zen nano ;D
You need to use iTunes to "synchronise" songs to it. Basically you add your mp3's to the iTunes library and then press the synch button with the ipod plugged in. It will then transfer the files to it.
iPods have a gay filing system which makes it impossible to simply copy/paste songs to it like any other mp3 player. Apple have to be different cos they're gits.
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iTunes has more bugs that a Libyan coffe shop, mostly serious as well.
The reason why you can't just drag music on like any decent mp3 (decent? mp3? in same sentence!) is due to the way Apple are trying to enforce DRM.
iPod is typical Apple - style over function, despite the price.
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iTunes has its faults... but it does what Apple intends, easy use. Plug iPod in away you go.... album art, ratings ect all very easy.
If you have a large collection say over (21,000 tracks ::) ) Its nice and easy to browse though the album covers....
Windows Media player is worse really.... Winamp the best, but not user freindly.
Amarok will get all your album art automatically from the net, just one click away.
Oh and iTunes won't play a single track of my 100+ Gb collection, as they're all in FLAC and unlike any decent media player which supports plugins, if Apple doesn't give a format their blessing, then you're not playing it.
Yes Windows Media Player sucks royally (Media Player Classic is a perfect example of less being more), but it's a very poor benchmark to aim for anyway.
Personally I use Winamp with the FLAC plugin on Windows, and Amarok on Mac or *nix. I don't have an iPod, don't like them for the very reasons described above -- i.e. they're full of artificial restrictions. Although I believe there are hacked firmwares out there for some models that allow them to work in a more consumer-friendly manner.
Oh and by decent quality MP3 player I should have said "decent quality solid-state portable music player" ;). I agree MP3 sucks and is well past its retirement date, personally I always use FLAC to rip CDs at home, and where space is a premium over sound quality I'll use Ogg Vorbis if possible and failing that AAC.
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Granted though Apple now sells tunes with no DRM attached. But they charge 15p more!
I still say they should ditch the stupid iPod filing system though.
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With risk of going slightly off topic.. why do many of you find WMPlayer so rubbish??
I have it on my system and find it practically faultless, it's easy to use and does everything i need it to, i even favour it to winamp!
am i missing out on other media player's full potentials??
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I actually like WMP. The new version is fully featured and has quite a lot of support.
Still use Winamp as my music player though and VLC for my videos. Just means I never ever have to install any codecs, which are a pain in t'arse.
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i dont mind installing codecs so i suppose that doesnt matter
i use WMP all the time as my media player, i have relatively decent (aftermarket) computer speakers with a sub and the quality is perfect, my computer's in a small room anyway which helps
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I suspect many people dislike WMP simply because it is Microsoft. Same sort of people tend to rave over Linux etc, without always understanding the technicalities. WMP is capable, does what it says on the tin, and does it well. It's album handling is suspect when you use network stored media, but other than that, it works.
Winamp - the only other player I used to install - used to be so much better than WMP, but that app lost its way when it got swallowed by AOL, never really recovered.
MS do sell Windows (though not Vista as far as I can see) without WMP. On these PC's, I tend to install WMP if a player is required, as it probably is the best all round player available.
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anyone else as lost as I am on this thread..? :-/ (I got about half way down the first page before the acronyms started)
TD - I've also got a 2GB Nano which I got free with a bank account. You need to install itunes from the web - it runs ok on my Win 2000 system (nothing fancy I promise you). Then it's fairly self explanatory.
I needed to do some jiggery pockery to get it to charge as I recall - some funny with itunes on win2k. I have just ripped cd's , not downloaded anything so can't talk about that.
If you give up, I'm sure you can find a wobbly table ;D
Cheers,
Ian
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I suspect many people dislike WMP simply because it is Microsoft. Same sort of people tend to rave over Linux etc, without always understanding the technicalities. WMP is capable, does what it says on the tin, and does it well. It's album handling is suspect when you use network stored media, but other than that, it works.
Winamp - the only other player I used to install - used to be so much better than WMP, but that app lost its way when it got swallowed by AOL, never really recovered.
MS do sell Windows (though not Vista as far as I can see) without WMP. On these PC's, I tend to install WMP if a player is required, as it probably is the best all round player available.
Nope -- Microsoft do some good stuff, that I freely admit, but WMP is definitely not one of them. It's bloated, buggy crap that really isn't particularly good at playing and managing music, although it's "got da bling" which I guess makes it good in a lot of people's eyes. Oh and AFAIK it doesn't play FLAC either, although I've never tried as I long since gave up on it.
I've yet to come across a media player that is good for both videos and music, mainly because unified media players aren't much good at managing music collections that span tens of thousands of tracks. Hence why on all systems I generally have a seperate app for both, although Winamp is pretty decent for playing videos but not my preferred app.
Personally on Windows systems I use Media Player Classic for videos, which is a free open-source player which has the interface of old WMP (version 6.4 or something, last version before it became bloated and focused on visuals rather than playing media) but a modern back-end that excels at playing videos quickly and easily. It's extensible and can even play Quicktime and Real Player videos so that's another two pieces of junk you don't need installed.
Like I said before for music on Windows I use Winamp, there are plugins available for just about any format you may wish to play, the Media Library is fully configurable so you can set up categories based on lots of criteria if you want, and it's still only a few meg to download. Admittedly it hasn't really seen much development since America Online (ugh!) took it over, but it's still far ahead of WMP and will probably continue to be as long as Microsoft keep adding more bloat and more bugs, while still failing to add basic functionality that decent players have had for years.
WMP is a perfect example of Microsoft leveraging their desktop monopoly to gain traction in other markets (which is exactly why the EU ruled against them in the anti-trust case). Do you really think anyone would use WMP if it were made by an independent vendor and you had to go online to download it (just like you do with Winamp)? I seriously doubt it -- there are far better products out there, but many people are happy to use whatever comes preinstalled regardless of how crap it is. Same goes for Hotmail Messenger.... ICQ had a far bigger market share (and latterly America Online) and a better protocol, but as soon as Windows Messenger came preinstalled with Windows suddenly it became the dominant client and the others all but disappeared.
IMO Microsoft's strategy in markets like this is seldom about trying to deliver the best product, it's about delivering a product that is "good enough" so that the average person isn't displeased enough to make the effort of finding, downloading and installing a superior alternative.
PS You can get WMP-free versions of Vista, known as the "N" editions. I currently have the full version but as I can get a free licence for the "N" version too I'm going to pick one of those up and install it instead, as I'd rather not have the garbage that is WMP installed at all.
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Do you really think anyone would use WMP if it were made by an independent vendor and you had to go online to download it (just like you do with Winamp)? I seriously doubt it -- there are far better products out there, but many people are happy to use whatever comes preinstalled regardless of how crap it is. Same goes for Hotmail Messenger.... ICQ had a far bigger market share (and latterly America Online) and a better protocol, but as soon as Windows Messenger came preinstalled with Windows suddenly it became the dominant client and the others all but disappeared.
I do believe that WMP is the best unified free player. To be honest, it is very stable, and does what it set out to do (except network media storage, that is suspect). Personally, I really dislike the interface, but I know many do like it.
I also believe that Windows Messenger/Messenger/Live Messenger/whatever it is called this week was/is the best IM for mass market, based on ease and feature set. Obviously a requirement now as its now the most popular.
In the same way, I believe IE was (from v3) a better browser than Netscape's efforts. Remember, NT4 came with such a naff browser, and 95 (pre OSR2) came with no browser, that you had to install one. Microsoft's was so much better than Navigator, that is why it became the default. Same now, its not that IE is preinstalled (most people using XP, but have installed the later IE7), but still the best and most secure (!). Now before anyone says about it being forced via WU, that is not the case in corporate environments, yet IE7 still popular. Also, the number of people installing IE7 outside of WU is impressive. Again, personally, I don't like IE7 much, but it is growing on me (slowly!).
Read behind the headlines on the EU ruling - who were pulling the puppet strings. I'll give you a small clue, it wasn't an American group of companies ;)
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Yep got Itunes installed...spose i should read the help ::) :o
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I do believe that WMP is the best unified free player. To be honest, it is very stable, and does what it set out to do (except network media storage, that is suspect). Personally, I really dislike the interface, but I know many do like it.
I also believe that Windows Messenger/Messenger/Live Messenger/whatever it is called this week was/is the best IM for mass market, based on ease and feature set. Obviously a requirement now as its now the most popular.
In the same way, I believe IE was (from v3) a better browser than Netscape's efforts. Remember, NT4 came with such a naff browser, and 95 (pre OSR2) came with no browser, that you had to install one. Microsoft's was so much better than Navigator, that is why it became the default. Same now, its not that IE is preinstalled (most people using XP, but have installed the later IE7), but still the best and most secure (!). Now before anyone says about it being forced via WU, that is not the case in corporate environments, yet IE7 still popular. Also, the number of people installing IE7 outside of WU is impressive. Again, personally, I don't like IE7 much, but it is growing on me (slowly!).
Read behind the headlines on the EU ruling - who were pulling the puppet strings. I'll give you a small clue, it wasn't an American group of companies ;)
I don't believe anyone has come up with a good unified media player, which is why I use a seperate video and music player. So maybe WMP is the best in that category, but it's such a poor category I wouldn't call that much of an accolade.
Agreed the interface is terrible, video players used to be about the video, but ever since WMP7 it's been about how many buttons, context-based links, etc., can be crammed around the screen with the video showing somewhere amongst it all. This is where Media Player Classic gets it so right -- it's a small, fast loading app that lets you get the video playing and stays out of your way, with nice unobtrusive controls. It does mostly everything WMP does (and some stuff that WMP doesn't do) in about a tenth of the size and about 10 times faster.
As for messaging protocols, Windows Messenger had a very poor feature set for a long time, such as no voice, no direct file transfers (they had to go through the MS servers and usually that means very slow). Sure it was easy to use, but so were the others which had loads more features and were just as reliable. I remember in the early days of IM when I was still in school everyone was on ICQ... but gradually after Messenger came bundled with Windows I noticed more and more people using it cos that's what came with their PC -- particularly the less tech-savvy types who came later to the whole internet "revolution". Eventually it got to the point where those of us (me included) who'd rather not use Windows Messenger were forced to do so because 80% of our contacts were on it.
I would say that IE3 was still pretty crap TBH... it was from IE4 onwards that they started to show stability and decent features. Note how MS threw copious amounts of cash rapidly developing new versions of IE until they'd forced all competitors out then left it untouched apart from security fixes for many years.
You can debate about the merits of the EU ruling (the first of which was about bundling WMP, the second which is currently still unresolved is about lack of documentation for their networking protocols hindering interoperability -- for which they have already been found guilty) but those same arguments don't hold up for the US case. Remember that MS were found guilty of anti-trust in abusing their monopoly position in the US, the DoJ were poised to take some pretty severe action but strangely after Bush came to power in 2000 they ended up with little more than a slap on the wrist. Make of that what you will, but MS are known to have spent substantial sums on "lobbying" influential members of congress. Although the punishment was almost non-existant, the judgement stands.
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How about we come up with our own media player? Good looks, simple interface, similar codec pack as VLC and a playlist & media library like winamp?
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I have been using my ipod nano on my laptop....but its a bit slow @ 750Mhz plus its only got a usb1.1 port.....using itunes to compress files before transferring them to the ipod brings the laptop to a halt nearly :(
So decided this morning to put itunes on desktop pc thats 2.8G and got usb2 ports....5 mins job i thought......i thought wrong >:(
3 hours later and ive given up for time being......the desktop with XP Pro SP2 will not whatever i try recognise the Ipod.....carnt see it in explorer or with itunes :(
In fact ive managed to break XP on it, trying different things......at this point i gave up....as i was getting to 'Jaimes Sammy' stage!
I'll need to rebuild it first before trying anything else.....didnt matter i broke it....coz i only use it for storage space....and the 160G disk in it has a seperate 20G boot partition.
Anyone else had probs with XP SP2 seeing ipods on usb2.0 .... and what the fix is.
Looking on the net it seems a common problem.....but things i tried didnt work :(
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Are you using the front panel USB ports or rear ones? Could be a problem there...
Try reinstalling iTunes and the iPod drivers to the faster machine.
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Are you using the front panel USB ports or rear ones? Could be a problem there...
Try reinstalling iTunes and the iPod drivers to the faster machine.
Its got 8 of them, 6 on the back and 2 at the front at the side....tried em all!
I have installed itunes on it? But what Ipods drivers? Or do they install with itunes?
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SOunds like you need the Isledge
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What is generally not known about itunes is that it pretty much 'locks' the ipod to whatever pc it was first used on.
I now use mediamonkey for my ipod, just as easy to use, not that bad to look at and is far better at organising your library, it scans your music folder every time it runs to check for changes, deletions or whatever. Most important of all, it doesn't lock the ipod to one pc ;) BTW mediamonkey is free but the paid for version is slightly better, especially if you haven't exactly paid for it ::) :y
Oh and I prefer VLC to MPC, guess whatever suits? ;)
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SOunds like you need the Isledge
Or otherwise known as Sammy ;D