Ok, this might sound silly, i'm 16, and i am thinking of my christmas prezzie! I know its early, but i always think about it early
I really want an Ipod, but i want a good one, that holds a lot of songs, and will last a good while does anyone what the best Ipod to buy is? Sorry to sound immautre, but i dont know where to look. thanks in advance xxxxxx

This should give you a very good idea of what to buy:

http://www.apple.com/itunes/

The Asda Durabrand ones are supposed to be OK quality and the 1Gb model is £49, that should hold about 500 tunes.

What's the battery life like on an i-pod nano, on average? With my normal HD Ipod I get about 7-8 hours, which is obviously good enough for a day's use, but how much longer, if at all, is a Nano?

The new nano is about 24 hours. Look at apple.com/uk/ipod for the list of ipods.

yeah 500 at an awful Kps. I really hate these ads that state it holds 'x' amount of songs. yes it will, if you rip them at about 32 kps or just above. At the standard 128 kps you will not get 500 songs on 1GB player. it also depsnds on the length of the song/s so don't believe you'll get 500 on a 1GB player, you won't.

i mean the iPod Flea is good
http://gprime.net/video.php/ipodflea

it depends how often you get new music and whether you're a singles or an albums buyer. i buy singles predominantly, so i only need a measly 4gb, and i've still got space after having had it for 18 months

get iPod flea with the flea ticks for extra music thats better idea

Christ, you've used that so many times, it weren't funny the first time...

Grow up.

Wasnt ment to be funny i hate iPods

And like the Zune - says it all really :-p

So don't post in every ****ing iPod thread then.

ok then calm down dear

To help the poster: yes ipod is ONE brand of player that some people love and some people hate. So by all means look at it, but also look around for other players. Someone considering their first music player should also be aware of Creative, iRiver and Sony, so that they find the player that really works for them (whether this is what everyone else has got or it isn't)

I love my iPod and I'm a 100% iPod fan. I just love the interface with iTunes too. But although they are my favourite players, there are others that are just as good out there. So shop around and look at reviews and comments

Apple Ipod, and Creative players are very good, creative players come with their own software so you don't have to use windows media player if you don't want to, (not having to use WM player is a huge bonus IMO), irivers are good, iriver users often claim great sound quality however some models depend on windows media player and might not work right out of the box without installing software/drivers on your pc, a bit of a disadvantage if you want to use your player as a portable storage for things other than music.

I've had an IPOD mini which got stolen, since then I've had two IPOD photo 15GB, one burnt out with a dodgey charger from ARGOS but the other is OK. I'd be lost without my IPOD tunes, just bought a docking station and its great. I had a shot of a mates SONY and I couldn't figure it out. IPODS all the way.

I think one of the biggest factors will be what kind of music you want to buy whether you wish to purchase a la carte like you can on Itunes and some other services or subscribe and download unlimited songs like Napster. I believe Realplayer has a service with Helix that allows you to play music from the Rhapsody service on the Ipod.

Ipod isn't the be-all end-all. Creative's are said to have the best sound quality. If video interests you then there are other players (called PVPs) which have bigger screens and play more formats and things.

The windows playsforsure service with WMP11 works decently too.
Have a look at the following makes for "quality" players:
Iriver
Samsung
Creative
Apple
Microsoft
Toshiba

There's lot of cheapo mp3 players out there too if price is the most important thing.

Ahem.

Sony?

Massive name in consumer electronics for decades now. Some of the early efforts at MP3 players were perhaps a tad ropey but the newer ones are very nice players. Very nice to look at as well if thats a factor for you.

Cowon?

Maybe not a big name in the UK but highly regarded for quality in the far east and USA (which are FAR bigger markets than the UK).

Also recognised as producing some of the best sounding players out there. Sony players are also regarded as producing excellent sound quality.

Perhaps not the most user friendly (that award probably does go to the iPod) but if you can live without a click-wheel and want primo sound quality, well worth a look.

Sony are guilty of making it difficult to transfer files to and from their players, I'm not sure if it is still the case but some of their players weren't 'mp3' players at all, transferring mp3 files to these players was a long and tedious process as the software transcoded the files into atrac format so they could play on the sony player.

I can only hope sony have seen the light and changed this..

I think Sonys play MP3 and WMA natively as well as ATrac now

... and there's loads that are a *lot* better.

For example? and define 'better'.