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The Battle Among Popular Music Players


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State of the Art: For IPod, 6 Flavors of Flattery

February 12, 2004

By DAVID POGUE

EVEN this early in the campaign, the battle for the popular

vote is really heating up; the incumbent is being

challenged by lesser-known candidates from all over the

country. The winner will be the candidate with the best

balance of new ideas and appealing looks - and battery

life.

I am referring, of course, to the battle for supremacy

among portable music players.

So far, Apple's iPod is by far the best seller among

high-capacity players. You can't stand in a public place

without seeing a pair of those telltale white earbud cords

pass by; for once in its life, Apple gets to find out what

it's like to be Microsoft. The iPod's success has spawned

an entire industry of iPod cases, iPod accessories, iPod

software - and now, inevitably, iPod imitators.

The rivals come from electronics makers (Samsung) and from

fellow computer makers (Dell, Gateway), as well as from

veteran music-player makers (Rio, Creative Labs, iRiver).

Most have the familiar iPod ingredients: a screen, a tiny

hard drive and a rechargeable battery, all packed into a

rectangular case and accompanied by earbuds. Most come with

jukebox software that loads your collection of music files

- which you've either downloaded or "ripped" from music

CD's - onto the player over a U.S.B. 2.0 cable.

The other notable feature of these competitors is a

marketing message that's either "just like the iPod, only

cheaper" or "just like the iPod, only better."

Now, you're a busy person, so here's the gist: most of

these rivals are cheaper - usually $100 less. But "better"

is another story. The iPod is still smaller, more

attractive and more thoughtfully designed than any of the

upstarts.

It's also much more than just a music player. The iPod can

also display your calendar and address book, serve as a

text reader and alarm clock, help you pass the time with a

suite of games, and so on. And that's before you tap into

the universe of add-on shareware programs. (One intriguing

example is iSpeak It for the Mac, which converts any text

file, Web page or Microsoft Word document into a

spoken-word soundtrack, using synthesized voices.)

Even so, certain audiences will prefer the iPod

alternatives. For many people these days, "cheaper" is

better than "better." Maybe you crave this bell or that

whistle that the iPod lacks - a built-in FM radio, say, or

a built-in microphone. Or maybe your Windows PC doesn't

have Windows 2000 or XP - a requirement for iTunes, the

iPod's companion software. (The iPod works with both Mac

and Windows; most of the rivals are Windows-only.)

Furthermore, if you want to shop at one of those $1-a-song

music Web sites, buying an iPod pretty much limits you to

Apple's iTunes music store. (The Apple store's AAC files

play only on the iPod. The other stores, like Napster and

Musicmatch, deliver WMA files that work on any player

except the iPod.) Of course, that's like being "forced" to

drive a Lexus or "limited" to staying at the Beverly Hills

Four Seasons, but you get the point.

Finally, most of the iPods-in-training can run 13 to 16

hours per charge (manufacturers' estimates), compared with

the iPod's eight. That may be important if you routinely

commute from, say, New York to Tokyo, although bigger

batteries add bulk.

If cost is your main concern, you'll find that the standout

feature of Dell's cleanly designed, very easy-to-use DJ 15

player is its price: $250 for the 15-gigabyte model, $300

for the 20. For now, Dell is even offering an additional 10

percent off at dell.com. (The corresponding iPods cost $300

and $400.)

Unfortunately, the Dell feels half-baked, especially in

comparison with the highly polished iPod. For example, it's

the only player that falls silent when you try to

fast-forward or rewind through a song. Incredibly, you

can't make it play your entire music collection, beginning

to end. And although it has a microphone for low-quality

voice notes, the Dell offers no way to copy such recordings

back to your PC for transcription or sending to friends.

It's a feature in search of a purpose. (Dell says it will

fix the latter two glitches later in a revamped player this

March.)

Like the Dell, Gateway's 20-gigabyte DMP X20 ($300) is

bigger and heavier than the iPod. It features the

industry's biggest screen (2.5 inches diagonally); a

microphone like the Dell's; and an FM radio, which is a

logical and welcome enhancement to a music player. ("Yes,

yes, I know 5,000 songs fit on here - but what am I

supposed to listen to after that?")

The Gateway and the iPod are also the only players in this

derby that can play digital "books on tape" from

Audible.com.

But here again, some of these improvements over the iPod

seem to have been designed more for the brochure than for

the customer. Why on earth, for example, can't you record

songs off the radio? (You can on the Samsung YP-910 GS

player, and it's a great way to expand your music

collection legally.) And to load up the Gateway, it's too

bad you have to use plain old Windows Media Player, a

clunky program not particularly suited to the task - and

one with no integrated online music store.

The Samsung ($300), by contrast, was designed to sync with

the Napster 2.0 $1-a-song service. Unfortunately, the

Napster jukebox software is no iTunes; it offers, for

example, no way to "rip" your CD's into audio files for

loading onto your player.

When it comes to bonus features, the Samsung gets an A for

effort. It can memorize 44 FM stations as presets; record

from the radio; and, when you attach the included antenna

stick, it can even "broadcast'' its music to an unused FM

frequency on your home or car stereo. (Alas, interference

prevents this kind of transmitter from working very well,

regardless of the player.)

Ultimately, though, the Samsung is just too eccentric. Its

button layout is random and illogical, its plastic case

feels cheap, and the large neon-blue lights that surround

its control pad are just as tacky as those light-up frames

people install on their license plates.

Speaking of vehicles, the Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen

Xtra is the sport-utility truck of MP3 players. At this

moment, it's the only player available in a 60-gigabyte

model ($400). That's enough to hold 900 hours of

WMA-encoded music - an important point if you're selected

for the first manned mission to Mars. (To make that

prospect even more realistic, Creative Labs blessed this

model with a removable battery, so you can pack a bunch of

spares in your astro-luggage.)

Unfortunately, the Zen Xtra is truck-like in a bad way,

too. At 4.4 by 3.0 by 0.9 inches and nearly half a pound,

it fits in your hand like a romance novel dipped in lead.

Yet for all that mass, it has no microphone, radio or

Record button. And there's no Hold switch; to prevent the

player from getting powered on accidentally in your purse

or pocket, you have to burrow into a menu command.

Now, most of these machines fall short because their

designers have tried to mimic the iPod without fully

understanding its appeal. Two of the players, however,

exhibit personalities and fresh approaches all their own.

One is the black metal-clad iPod-size iRiver iHP-i20. The

price is the same as the iPod's ($400 for 20 gigabytes; a

40-gigabyte model costs $500). But you also get an FM

radio, a superb built-in voice recorder (with a choice of

recording quality and format), an external tie-clip-style

mike and two line inputs for recording directly from, say,

a CD player or tape deck. Like Apple, Dell, Gateway and

Samsung, iRiver provides a wired remote that controls the

player in your purse or pocket - but iRiver's remote has a

little backlighted screen of its own that identifies the

current song.

Any hard-drive-based player can double as an external hard

drive for carrying everyday computer data around with you

(photos, movies, e-mail, and so on), which gives it a huge

advantage over other kinds of music players. The beauty of

the iRiver (and the models from Apple, Samsung and Gateway)

is that it shows up as a disk icon immediately when plugged

into any PC. The other players require you to install

special driver software first. Too bad if you've just

arrived at the boardroom PC expecting to plug and play,

say, your PowerPoint presentation.

The iRiver's crushing disappointment is that it was

evidently designed by engineers, for engineers; its menus

make the cockpit of a 767 look spartan. More alarming

still, it comes with no jukebox software at all; you're

expected to drag your music files onto it manually, in

Windows Explorer. Techies will love this thing; mere

mortals will be aghast.

Although the Rio Karma ($300 for 20 gigabytes) looks

nothing like the iPod - it's a thick, brownie-like square -

it comes the closest to recreating the iPod's magic. For

example, Rio and Creative Labs are the only companies that

bothered to duplicate what may be the single most defining

and important feature of the iPod: auto-synching. When you

connect the player to your PC, it updates itself to mirror

the playlists and songs on your PC. That Dell, Gateway,

Samsung and iRiver expect you to manage your music

collection manually shows just how little they grasp the

larger iPod concept.

To charge and load the Karma, you place it in an included

docking station; like the iPod's dock, this one can also

hook up to your home stereo when you're not on the go. The

dock's Ethernet jack even lets you manage the Karma's

contents from anywhere on your home or office network.

There's no radio, microphone or other gadgetry-not even a

remote. But as a dedicated music player, it's pure good

Karma.

Apple could have been some character from Greek mythology:

blessed with ingenious, culture-changing innovation yet

cursed with seeing its ideas co-opted by rivals who wind up

making all the money. In the iPod's case, though, none of

the companies who lust for some of Apple's pie can deliver

the elegance and convenience of Apple's music trinity:

iPod, the iTunes software and the iTunes music store.

But if an iPod isn't for you, you could do worse than

buying the Dell for its simplicity and economy, the iRiver

for its super-geeky feature list or the Rio Karma for its

excellent design and compact dimensions. In this election,

at least, there can be more than one victor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/technolo...c5034e42e80ffd0

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