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Hey

I was gonna call this "Every thing you wanted to know about mp3 players....but were afraid to ask" So be gentle with me here.

I have had a couple of mp3 players now and they have all ways had the same problem....rubbish battery life due mainly to their screens.

I like the look and price of the new i Pod shuffle and it claims to have 12 hours battery life (due to the lack of a screen im guessing)

So my first question really is....are they any good? And how difficult is it to find tracks and albums without a screen?

Also (now this is where im gonna sound like a right Joey Deacon) all my music is stored on my computer in WMA format. i Pods do play back WMA right?

Thankyou in advance....off to watch Jimmys farm now

BB

The ipod shuffle sounds just as good as the other ipods and battery life is pretty reasonable as well.

Track selection will be a problem. You can take it off "shuffle" in order to play the tracks in the order they were downloaded from iTunes but as there is no screen, the only way you can access a particular track is by using the click wheel to run forward or backwards through the tracks.

ipods do not support the wma format, but there is free software that you can download from various websites that will enable you to convert your wma files into mp3 format and then you will be able to play them

The 4gb nanos seem good spec.

They're twice the price of shuffles but hold 4x the amount of songs, have screens, play video and the battery life is 24 hours.

iTunes will convert wma files to either mp3 or aac format, and you get iTunes free. (though I'm not sure how good the conversions are). Remember that the files have to be unprotected.

I don't buy songs off iTunes, or anywhere else with encryption, and stick to buying cd's and importing them onto my pc as mp3s @ 192kbps. iTunes has a lossless encoder but I've not used it.

Thankyou both!!

I have I tunes installed but can't import any of my WMA files due to them being protected.

Again I know im gonna sound simple but what does this actually mean? And how can I get around it?

Only ever used MS based software and products. All this (cr) Apple stuff is really a head scratcher for me. I have a whole wealth of questions re garding "Quiktime" I intend to bother you good folks with one of these days.

Cheers

BB

Can you burn the songs onto cd's (playable) and then import them from the disk into itunes as mp3s? You may lose some quality though.

Crikey Sam!!

Thankyou that is just the ticket!! Even after a bottle of red on an empty tummy I can work that out.

That has also answered alot of my quicktime questions.

Fantastic stuff all round.

Hussars Sir

BB

I think the latest iTunes won't let you create playable cd's from protected files (aac's) but maybe Windows Media Player can?

Good luck trying.