I’m not saying Rob’s iPod is unreliable or subfunctional – I’m saying it’s heavily styled, and you pay for that styling in addition to anything you are paying for reliability or function. 

In the context of this thread, “crap” is a categorical term for anything pragmatic or utilitarian.  Try hard physical labor for eight hours in GAP clothing – utilitarian it ain’t, I predict blown out armseams as well as permanent sags and stains.   See if you can melt the heart of the prettiest [insert desired gender noun here] with top 40 – also not your best bet, although it is bound to work occasionally.

In retrospect you don’t really need a replaceable battery, if you play the rockbox games, you will wear through the plastic buttons long before the battery dies. But being able to swap the battery out (I have a spare player that I use as a charger) means I can continue listening without ever having to tether the darn thing.

I am an owner of the Sansa Clip+, running the open source Rockbox firmware (which is supported by Sandisk).

While the love for Rockbox is appreciated, Sandisk does not support the use of Rockbox on their players.

But damnit if it doesn’t do the job if I want a quick, no hassle media player for yard work, running, hiking, biking on the trail or whatever. It’s light, I can stash it in any pocket or under a layer of lycra without fear of damage and I don’t have to worry about openly advertising that I have expensive tech on my person by wearing a sports band.

That iPods don’t let me treat them like a standard HD is one of the major problems I have with them.

You can’t sort out the files into alphabetical order, so when you try to load the thing with the 90+ files for a Discworld audiobook, they end up being scrambled and you have to keep jumping back and forth to try and keep them in order.

For music though, it is really all one needs.  $20, no pain.

Battery power can be an issue, too.  Listening to music on a smartphone means your battery will drain that much quicker.

Also, I highly suggest you NOT go jogging or running while listening to music using a smartphone or an iPod.  The music will skip, or you may damage the phone/player.

Plus, the Sansa Clip+ is at most, $40.  It’s the type of player you can take anywhere, while you are doing anything, and it won’t matter as much if you break or lose it.

Plus, capacity (Micro SD slot!). And the Sansa Clip+ is going to have far better audio quality than any smart phone. And it has more features tailored for a music player.

That said, I’m glad I have my iPhone 4.

After the mini-disc player got stolen, I upgraded to the 5th generation iPod, then I got an iPod touch, and now I have the iPhone 4. All of those devices still work, though. They’ve just been passed around to various family members.

But for me a computer is just a way to move a process from my head into text files – most frequently, for writing glue code, but in any case as a highly generic tool, like a hammer or a stillson wrench.   The macOS is not optimized for that, and gets in my way with its heavy dependence on fanciful metaphors (I want to delete a file or unmount a device, not drag a small picture across a decorative desktop into in a trash can).  Ubuntu is nearly as bad (unless you turn off the GUI) but the price/performance ratio is phenomenally better.

For me, the point of this entire conversation was not “you can’t judge a book by its cover” – it’s the (closely related) point that function trumps form.  Not just the observation that form and function are separate, but rather a wholehearted endorsement of the latter.   Grasp the crappy old world with your bare hands, and discard superficial illusions of style.  A beautifully crafted device is great – especially if you build it yourself – but it’s not always necessary.

One copy didn’t have the main power cords internally hooked up, and the LCD panel looked weird. I think they may have been throwing duds into the batch. Cost savings..?

I will explain why I think a macbook pro is better than a dirt cheap or free 2nd hand Dell that weighs less and runs Ubuntu. But I will first reiterate that everyone’s situation is different. If all you can afford (or want to spend) is enough to get you a 2nd hand Dell, or that’s simply all that you need, then so be it.

I’m no novice to computers, and I have second-hand Dells and several other laptops and desktops. I run linux on both older and current machines (don’t use Windows on anything). To be clear, my current main machine is a 2-year-old macbook pro, but I have several other computers that are in current use as well.

If you have a specific set of simple needs that an outdated, cheaply-built computer running Ubuntu fills, then that’s great and you shouldn’t spend more money than you need to. Problem is, this isn’t an analogous situation to the Sansa Clip because a general-purpose computer is a much different problem than a device meant to do one thing (and a relatively simple thing, at that).

If you’re a serious computer user using a laptop and you travel, go to work/school, etc. with it a second hand Dell running Ubuntu brings with it a long list of (potential) problems and frustrations. Key among them for me when I was using such a machine as my primary computer were issues with certain wifi networks, battery life, poor build quality, bulky power adapter, interoperability with other people’s computers, etc. These were sometimes enough to cause me serious problems with getting things done (and I had these issues with a relatively high-end Thinkpad, not a cheap Dell). A macbook pro has none of these issues, will last longer under abuse because of the build quality, and is much nicer to use anyway.

There’s a reason why once people switch to macbook pros, they generally don’t go back to anything else.

The point of this entire conversation is that you can’t judge a book by its cover. If you just want to play music you can pay $20 for a Sansa Clip or $300 for an ipod, and chances are most people would be happier (ultimately) with the Sansa Clip. Or if you’re a power computer user you can pay $100 ($500 new) for a second-hand Dell or ~$500 ($1500 new) for a second-hand macbook with lower technical specs, and most people would be happier with the macbook. If you just do light browsing and e-mail and don’t move your laptop from your desk at home very often, then yeah the 2nd hand Dell is fine.

You seriously overestimate the time span.

Myself, I was an early adopter and knew that I pay through the nose when I bought a very expensive Sony player (at least with User Prohibitions turned off).   But I was so fed up with VHS that it was worth to me.   It worked for about 7 years or a little bit more,  the cheap discount machine it replaced croaked after 2 years.  (Still less expensive per year and nearly as good, of course.)

key example is macbook pros vs. any other laptop…

@penguinChris:twitter : Can you explain exactly how a macbook pro is better than a dirt cheap or free 2nd hand Dell that weighs less and runs Ubuntu?  Because I fear you are missing the whole point of this thread.

A similar item might be the cheap Casio digital watch that al qaeda supposedly uses. That thing will last you forever. But then… an expensive watch will last you forever, too, and will be more stylish (and more functional, potentially) in the process. The thing that won’t last you forever is a mid-range product – something relatively fashionable.

It’s this mid-range zone that most people tend to buy into. They don’t want the cheapest thing available, mainly just as a status thing, but can’t afford the good stuff. So they buy something that seems fashionable, but which is over-priced and will break fairly quickly.

So, you have to choose your battles. If there’s something available like the Sansa Clip that does what you want and is dirt cheap, get it. If the product you’re looking for doesn’t have something equivalent available, which is the case for most things, you’re better off in the long run getting a higher-end item (key example is macbook pros vs. any other laptop). Just be sure it’s actually high-end, not just priced as if it were.

Which leads to my final point – all of this relies on you caring enough to do serious research before buying something. Most people would not assume the Sansa Clip was actually a great product – and because of its popularity on the internet, this is one of the easiest products to research. If you’re looking for something else, it’s quite difficult to figure out what the sweet spot is.

Like the Sansa Clip that we all love?  I’ve converted my roommate, my last girlfriend, AND every tech-friendly member of my family – and the girlfriend came from an Apple family.

The one in the picture is the fancy schmanzy version with what looks like a 2 colour display.  Pure ostentation!