Does anyone know of good quality portable mp3 players?
I have one made by SanDisk, but in less than a year, no computers can write to it. Tried it on windows and on linux.

I used the USB view, and my linux machine can see it, but can't mount it. Any ideas on how to fix this?


Better yet, which portable mp3 player gives the most bang for the buck and is the most durable? (I'd hope it would last more than three years, which is how long my minidisc player lasted.)

I like the Zen Micro the best for several reasons:
1.) More hard drive space for your money (as compared to the iPod Nano).
2.) Much less scratch-sensitive than the iPod.
3.) Creative lets you choose the music service of your choice.
4.) Looks cooler, in my opinion. iPods are the visual equivilent of a cold, white padded prison cell.
5.) More features than the iPod (10-hour voice recorder that works great; the FM radio doesn't work that well anywhere out of the bustling city but at least it's there).
6.) Much less battery issues than the iPod, and if the battery breaks you can replace it YOURSELF for just 40 dollars without having to mail it in.
7.) Waterproof. I have tested this myself and it is absolutely, 100% true. Even tried bathing it in water for 30 minutes and everything still works like it's new. Dunk an iPod in water for 2 seconds and it's busted for life.
I'm only comparing between the Micro and the iPod because they are the only two I have tried and from what I have heard most everything else out there is garbage.
All of Creative's other players are great too, by the way. The Micro just happens to be my favorite.
As for Linux compatibility, I have never used mine under Linux, but I have heard that it works great from almost all people I have spoken to who have tried it.

I rally like my iPod video. And the quip about a cold white padded prison cell, well mine's black But seriously, the one thing I don't like about it is that you're stuck w/ iTunes basically for online purchasing. It's really nice, but as stated above, there's no built-in voice recorder, and there's not internal FM tuner(you have to buy something external).

The Creative's are cheaper than the iPod, but I personally like the iPod scroll wheel compared to the Creative scroll bar. When you're going through a lot of music, going around in a circle continuously makes more sense then getting to the end of the bar, and picking up your thumb again.

The iPod is almost completely compatable with Linux. GTKPod supports transfer of video, but is lacking in photo transfer support, as well as podcast downloading. You can download it with other programs, but it's kind of a pain. GTKPod isn't as integrated as iTunes, it doesn't rip CDs for you, you need another program for that as well.

All in all though, I really like my iPod, and it's a very nice player. I would spend money on a case though, as the newer one's, especially the black one, show scratches a lot more than they used to.

I have the iAudio U2. It's only a 1GB model (iAudio makes bigger ones with color screens and such), but I love it. It is simply recognized as a mass storage device, it plays OGG files (huge plus, as most of my CD collection is in OGG format now), and it has an fm tuner, line in recorder, and voice recorder. The line in recorder doesn't sound half band when I used some of my pro-audio gear with it to record my ensembles.

I voted iPod, I run IPL on it My iPod Photo became an iPod Video for free, go team linux.

does it work well enough? I was going to wait until they had everything figured out, but if it works, I might go ahead and install it anyway. There's another plus for the iPod, you can install linux on it. Technically only 3rd generation and less are fully supported, but it looks like the other generations are getting right up there.

Seems to work fine for me. Something I failed to mention in my bragging was that in the way of video, it'll only play unencoded AVI so the file sizes tend to be pretty big

Is there a mounting error message? If so post it.

I think we could get your mp3 player working.

When I try manually mounting it like this:
mount /dev/sda1/ /mnt/removable

I get:
mount: mount point /mnt/removable does not exist

So how long have you guys owned your ipods and such? Under normal use, which mp3 players will last longest?

I don't see why it's so dang hard for Apple to add full Linux support, OS X runs on UNIX anyway for God's sake. Why does it make a difference to them??
Oh, and the only thing I don't like about the Creative line of players is that they are compatible with Microsoft's "PlaysForSure" project, wherein a "compatible" MP3 player will work with their Windows Media Player. Obviously this is their attempt to take over the portable player industry without even making their own product; the European Union has filed anti-trust forms with them over this. If you have any strong feelings about this then you should go for the iPod.

Yeah OS X is Unix-based but so what? Do all linux apps compile cleanly on BSD? Solaris? AIX? No. It's not as simple as people make it out to be, linux is a small crowd and it's obviously not financially viable for Apple to port iTunes.

mifan: You need to actually create the /mnt/removable directory, it won't magically appear when you try to use it...

I've had my iPod since Christmas. It get's about 14 hours of battery life, w/ the LCD set to turn off the backlight after 2 seconds. Video however is only 2 hours.

cs-cam said it: Do you have the /mnt/removable directory mifan?
If not do:

because the iPod is so much better in that respect, doesn't play WMA and won't work with any other media player than iTunes.

Both work w/ linux from what I understand, but both companies try to tie you into their product. However, the "PlaysForSure" does allow the Creative players to work with all the subscription services out there, like the one Rhapsody and Napster offer.

iPod, of course. iPodLinux seems interesting, but I'm reluctant to try it becuase have a 4g (and unsupported) iPod.