what is the advantage of ipod over mp3 player?

Answer 1

Three primary things:

1 - Downloading 99-cent songs from iTunes. Those downloads won't work on an MP3 player, as they're in an iPod-only format. (However, you CAN play standard MP3-format audio on an iPod.)

2 - User interface. Tap, slide, scroll, all from a single faceplate, with a good GUI above it.

3 - Aftermarket support. The REAL win if you want to interface your player to your car, a home system, etc.

And one other thing, more difficult to define:

4 - It's cooooooler...

Now, that being said... I have an older Creative Labs Zen which has performed very well for almost three years. I bought it instead of an iPod because, when I was shopping, the iPod's battery life was not sufficient (I needed 10+ hours for regular long car trips), but that has changed and the newer iPods have longer battery life. (Also the overall effective life of the built-in batteries in iPods was problematic, but I believe that has changed as well.)

I play my Creative Zen in the car and at home; it's not rocket science, you just plug a mini-jack cable into the headphone outlet and connect the other end to powered speakers of some kind and you've got great sound. At home, I have a cable with a mini-jack at one end and RCA jacks at the other and I play through my receiver; in the car I have one of those adapters that goes into the tape player. The sound is adequate, MARGINALLY less clear than a CD, but you can buy iPod-compatible stereos that take the DIGITAL output from the iPod and convert it internally, so you don't lose any quality through the connectors if that keeps you awake at night.

All in all... we got my younger daughter an iPod for Christmas last year, and it's cooler than my Zen. And the 30Gb video iPods are now $249 at the Apple Store, which is about what I paid for my Zen two and a half years ago. The upshot is that we're planning to get my oldest daughter an iPod for her birthday (early next month), because the cost differential isn't great enough for the features to make it worth getting something else.

Answer 2

Apple has basically dominated the legal mp3 game. Itunes make for like 80 or 90% of all legal downloaded music. Plus they have games, tv shows, news movies. I think the advantage is that you'll have more purchasing options with an ipod, and if you decide to sell it will be a piece of cake on ebay.

Answer 3

I depends on what MP3 player you get some are cheeper but with an ipod you have the program you need to download all your music in a sytem their fairly easy to work with they look cooler than most MP3 players and their a big name brand if your into name brands

Answer 4

I know a disadvantage. ITunes wants to keep everything in it's proprietary format, so it is not that easy to port the songs to standard MP3. You can change the default to MP3, but last time I bought from ITunes I didn't get that choice. Therefore to get these as MP3 I had to burn a CD with the songs, then re-rip them with Windows Media Player to get the MP3 version