MP3 or iPod

[winny]

Hi, can you give me some advice on which to get. There must be fors and againsts. I have a lap top which i dont particulally want filling up with music if possible. My hubby likes lots of old northern soul stuff which he would like. Many thanks in advance?

[bednobs]

an ipod IS an Mp3 player - its just a brand like zen so i dont understand your question

[winny]

That is precicely the reason for the question. I know nothing!!. I was told if you had an ipod you could only download from itunes. some are free, some charge. I need an idiots guide.

[bednobs]

its not true you can only download from itunes for an ipod, and you can also download from itunes for other MP3 players. You can put music on mp3 players from cd's via your computer too. With an ipod, it backs the tunes up on itunes on your computer, wheras with something like zen you can just put it straight on without storing on your computer.
When you plug an IPOD into your computer, it generally will load onto the ipod whatever songs you have in itunes (no matter if you've bought them or imported them) therefore if you delete them off your computer, they will be deleted off your ipod. Except thats not quite true because you can adjust the settings so that dosent happen
other makes are easier to understand in my opinion

[winny]

so is itunes just like the softwear for the ipod sort of a mac windows media player? What is zen as the idea of straight to mp3 sounds good as i really dont want mt lap top slowwing down too much. we got the free mp3 out of the sun and it has been easy to load our cds onto but obviously it is a basic play back one. We were going to get a better one when someone said get an ipod then someone else said not!!! thanks for your advice. the votes seem to be for the mp3 player. Now i just have to work out the best way of getting his favourite songs

[Wispy68]

I've had my Creative Zen MP3 player for about two years and have never had a problem with it (it gets carried around in my very cluttered bag every day and has been dropped a few times).
I definitely wouldn't buy an iPod, as I've heard that they don't last very long and are not as robustly made as Creative players.