“Cnet”:http://reviews.cnet.com/Music/2001-6450_7-0.html? has gone through a list of alternatives. None as easy as the iPod, but they can all at least play WMA format which is need for “KCLS”:http://kcls.org content:
* “Samsung Yepp YP-Z5”:http://reviews.cnet.com/Samsung_Yepp_YP_Z5_4GB_silver/4505-6490_7-31644076-2.html?tag=nav. Like the Nano, but twice (!!!) as thick.
* “Creative Zen Vision:M”:http://reviews.cnet.com/Creative_Zen_Vision_M_30GB_black/4505-6490_7-31632696-2.html?tag=nav. This is a 30GB hard disk player. As the name suggests, it is a very much like the 5G iPod Video and has the same size screen and is just a tad thicker and the same height and width. The main drag is that you need a power cord *and* a dongle to connect to your PC. Yuck! The iPods work much better than that.
One response to “Other MP3 Alternatives”
I love my Zen Vision M. For a year I battled with my iPod. I have a hard time believing their is a huge initiative at Apple to make the iPod more friendly for PC users. Sure it is sort of lame to have the power cord and the dongle but it hasn’t honestly been that big of a deal to me. The image quality is amazing and you can easily connect to your PC and sync without having to install any software. I also like the idea that I can continue to buy songs on eMusic or places other than iTunes and not deal with DRM issues. My computer continually crashed or would freeze up when trying to sync with my iPod. Then 14 months later (2 months past warranty) the iPod crashed. Maybe the technology is better now…