Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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135 of 140 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
iPod fantastic, MusicMatch a joke, September 17, 2002
Do I recommend to iPod, despite the price? The answer is a loud Yes. This product is wonderful. Holds more music then you may ever need. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. If you're the type that needs to read instructions before even attempting to figure things out, well guess what, even you can use this product. The sound quality is great; the size is petite and easy to put anywhere, whether it's your pants pocket or your shirt pocket. The carrying case may seem skimpy but it actually does a good job of protecting the iPod. The case is similar to the hard plastic cases for cell phones where you slide the iPod out to make any adjustments but the case stays strapped to your belt. The remote is great to, again intuitive in use and after only a use or two you'll have no problem hitting those buttons without looking.
When it comes to listening to all those songs on the iPod you have many search options such as search by song, album, and singer. Add all the playlists you want to make listening to what you want even easier. If I have any complaint, it is the shiny chrome surface which is perfect for fingerprints and smudges but after a day or so of use, you will get use to it and no longer notice.
Now to get the music to your iPod you have to have a firewire port. Many computers don't come standard with this so you may have to invest about $35 to get a firewire card. Trust me, make the investment. All those people that complain about not having USB support do not know what they are talking about. The reason you want the firewall card is simple - speed. There is more then a 10x difference in the amount of information a firewire card can transmit versus a USB card. For example, lets say you have 10 Gigabytes of songs to transfer. With USB, you are talking about 8-10 hours to transfer all that information. With firewire you are talking about an hour tops. Time saved alone makes the $35 investment worthwhile.
So you have this wonderful piece of Apple hardware but what about the Windows software - MusicMatch? Well, it stinks. That is putting it mildly. To add songs to your play list you first have to add songs to the MusicMatch library, no big deal there, but no instructions on how to do it either. So you have your songs in the library and you want to change them so after you have the iPod hooked up you click "Sync" and after thirty or so minutes you have 1000 plus songs on your iPod.
So where are the problems? Well after you fire your iPod up you notice some strange things like the same artist listed five times or the same album showing three times. Looking carefully you will notice the difference is only a character or two so Pink would be listed Pink, Pin, and Pi. So you think, aw man, my iPod is defective, but if you check out your MusicMatch library you will notice that it lists the singer the same way. So you correct those entries using the "Tag" option. But guess what, when you look at the album titles, artists, song titles and genre you notice that so many of them have errors, usually the last character missing from each field. Suddenly you don't have to fix dozen or so titles but quite literally your entire library of 1000 plus songs times four fields, using the tag option. On top of that, there is no guarantee that MusicMatch will transfer those changes to your iPod. The fix according to MusicMatch is to add a space at the end of every entry, and this works but again to have to do this to 1000+ songs for four different fields is a time-consuming proposition. Supposedly a fix will be out for this problem but considering what a basic thing it is to read a text field and duplicate that information there is simply no excuse for it.
Also, another problem is the syncing. By syncing the iPod you would think that meant I added a new album to my collection and after hooking my iPod to the computer, just that album will be added. Nope, MusicMatch deletes your entire library from the iPod and re-adds it, in the process adding the new album. Also, before even doing this you have to tell the library to add this album. It does not automatically add it even though that album is in the same directory that the library is compiled from.
A final problem is there is a feature that allows volume leveling so that all the songs have the same volume when played. Sounds like a cool feature till you realize that for MusicMatch to make the changes to level the volume it actually alters the file on your computer then transfers it. So you can't revert back to the way it previously was and also as a bonus, all that information about album, song title, genre and artist are now gone and the only way you can change them is to use MusicMatch's tag ability because the Windows property section no longer contains those fields.
So to sum up, iPod wonderful mp3 player, quit simply the best on the market. MusicMatch, a joke of software that cannot do something as simple as read text fields properly. My recommendation? By Windows iPod, marvel at it. Take that iPod disc that comes with it and toss it back in the box. Instead, use a search engine to find program called ephpod. It is a free program that makes transferring music to the iPod a pleasure. It actually reads the tags right and when it syncs low and behold, the program only adds the new stuff without removing the songs on the iPod and adding them again. On top of that, it supports calender, contacts, Audible functions that MusicMatch doesn't. Basically, it is everything that MusicMatch should have been but isn't. Did I mention it is free? Remember, do NOT use the iPod disc that comes with, because MusicMatch will drive you crazy, instead get ephpod and enjoy the fantastic MP3 player that is the iPod.
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28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Finally! An MP3 player that delivers, September 20, 2002
By A Customer
At this point I have had my iPod for a week. I went with the 10GB model, but now I think I might go and buy the 20GB model.
It is just that good.Pros: The iPod itself is a great product. I have owned three previous MP3 players, inlcuding the a RIO, and a Compaq. I always felt shortchanged, I gave them away or sold them, because I didn't like them. The iPod is what all MP3 players should be like. I had no hitches installing the software, and getting songs loaded. Can't say that for the my previous 3. Something important to me was that other MP3 players don't seem to be able to drown out outside sound sources. The iPod gets loud enough to drown out sound and more. I have nothing bad to say about the iPod itself, it is sleek, small, has tons of space, and the Firewire connection downloads at blazing speed compared to a USB.
This is an outstanding product, although pricey, but well worth every penny. Cons: To find something wrong with the iPod you'll have to look at the software it comes bundled with. MusicMatch has made a decent attempt at software for the iPod, but it does fall short. It doesn't download the tag information for MP3's correctly. Therefore you will see misspelled artists and repeated names on your iPod screen, even when they don't show that way on the computer. To fix this, I found deleting the tag completely (just editing it doesn't always work), and then re-creating the tag for each song fixes the problem. However, be warned when you delete the tag information for a song, MusicMatch will place it at the top of the list in your Music Library screen, and file it under Miscellaneous. All you have to do is go there and re-create the tag and MusicMatch will place it in its proper place. Also MusicMatch will truncate band and song names for no apparent reason. Fixing this isn't too bad for one song, but since the iPod's can carry thousands of songs, this is a real problem. I must say though, that MusicMatch does allow you to edit and re-create tag information for multiple files at once. So this helps a little when editing entire albums. But the software developers at MusicMatch have let the public down by letting this one slide through. Don't you guys test your software before you put it on the shelf? How could you guys have missed that? (I develop software by the way). There are other bugs in MusicMatch, but I won't go into them here. The one described above is the real annoying one. MusicMatch would be well advised to take care of this soon.
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64 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
iPod fantasic, MusicMatch a joke., September 16, 2002
Do I recommend to iPod, despite the price? The answer is a loud Yes. This product is wonderful. Holds more music then you may ever need. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. If your the type that needs to read instructions before even attempting to figure things out, well guess what, even you can use this product. The sound quality is great, the size is petite and easy to put anywhere, whether its your pants pocket or your shirt pocket. The carrying case may seem skimpy but it actually does a good job of protecting the iPod. The case is similar to the hard plastic cases for cell phones where you slide the iPod out to make any adjustments but the case stays strapped to your belt. The remote is great to, again intuitive in use and after only a use or two you'll have no problem hitting those buttons without looking.
When it comes to listening to all those songs on the iPod you have many search options such as search by song, album, and singer. Add all the playlists you want to make listening to what you want even easier. If I have any complaint, it is the shiny chrome surface which is perfect for fingerprints and smudges but after a day or so of use, you will get use to it and no longer notice.
So you have this wonderful piece of Apple hardware but what about the Windows software - MusicMatch? Well, it stinks. That is putting it mildly. To add songs to your play list you first have to add songs to the MusicMatch library, no big deal there, but no instructions on how to do it either. So you have your songs in the library and you want to change them so after you have the iPod hooked up you click "Sync" and after thirty or so minutes you have 1000 plus songs on your iPod.
So where are the problems? Well after you fire your iPod up you notice some strange things like the same artist listed five times or the same album showing three times. Looking carefully you will notice the difference is only a character or two so Pink would be listed Pink, Pin, and Pi. So you think, aw man, my iPod is defective, but if you check out your MusicMatch library you will notice that it lists the singer the same way. So you correct those entries using the "Tag" option. But guess what, when you look at the album titles, artists, song titles and genre you notice that so many of them have errors, usually the last character missing from each field. Suddenly you don't have to fix dozen or so titles but quite literally your entire library of 1000 plus songs times four fields, using the tag option. On top of that, there is no guarantee that MusicMatch will transfer those changes to your iPod. The fix according to MusicMatch is to add a space at the end of every entry, and this works but again to have to do this to 1000+ songs for four different fields is a time-consuming propostion. Supposedly a fix will be out for this problem but considering what a basic thing it is to read a text field and duplicate that information there is simply no excuse for it.
Also, another problem is that the syncing. By syncing the iPod you would think that meant I added a new album to my collection and after hooking my iPod to the computer, just that album will be added. Nope, MusicMatch deletes your entire library from the iPod and re-adds it, in the process adding the new album. Also, before even doing this you have to tell the library to add this album. It does not automatically add it even though that album is in the same directory that the library is compiled from.
A final problem is there is a feature that allows to to do volume leveling so that all the songs have the same volume when played. Sounds like a cool feature till you realize that for MusicMatch to make the changes to level the volume it actually alters the file on your computer then transfers it. So you can't revert back to the way it previously was and also as a bonus, all that information about album, song title, genre and artist are now gone and the only way you can change them is to use MusicMatch's tag ability because the Windows property section no longer contains those fields.
So to sum up, iPod wonderful mp3 player, quit simply the best on the market. MusicMatch, a joke of software that cannot do something as simple as read text fields properly. My current recommendation then is to wait till the fixes are added in a new version of MusicMatch or buy the Apple iPod and XPlay software so that it can run on Windows.(Doing this by the way provides you the option to jump platforms from Windows to Apple and back, something to think about) Personally, I am going to return my Windows iPod and try the XPlay method and see what happens.
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