So, my iPod Touch is slowly but surely heading towards death. I've only had it for about a year, but apparently the 2nd Gen iPod Touch batteries don't last as long as the 1st Gen ones. I'm mostly to blame for it dying. I use it all the time and as such, I have to charge it almost every other night. But, now the battery doesn't want to hold a charge for more than a few hours. So, I'm thinking it's time for a replacement right about now. I thought about just buying another Touch, but I don't really want to have to keep replacing it every year, so I've been looking around at what my options are.
I want to stay with something that has a touch screen simply because they are usually easier to navigate through music and such than other players. I know that the Zune HD is coming out in the next month or so, and I really considered buying one. But, I'm a Mac user and I'm not sure how well a Microsoft player would work with a Mac. So, I tossed that idea out the window. There aren't a whole lot of huge media player brands out there. Microsoft and Apple have pretty much cornered the market on those.
So, I started looking around at what my other options are. After wading through the various smaller brands of media players, most of which did not have touch screens and had smaller hard drives than I was looking for, I came across the Archos 5 which met pretty much all of my requirements. It had a touch screen (bigger than the iPod Touch's), a large hard drive (250 gigs at it's biggest) and it supported more video and audio files than most other media players. It's also got an internet browser built in that allows viewing of Flash pages (Something the iPod Touch cannot do). There's even a built in PDF viewer. Granted, to be able to access the full range of the Archos 5's capabilities you have to download a few plugins, some of which cost some money (the ones that allow for more media types), which isn't really a problem to me. In the end, I decided to go with an Archos.
Now, the downside to buying something other than the iPod Touch is that I can't use all of those great apps that I downloaded during the course of owning a Touch. I mulled this over in my head and decided that I wasn't too worried about that. I have some great apps on my Touch, but it's gotten to the point that I don't use any of them anymore. Mostly, I use it for music, movies, and pictures, and with the Archos' huge hard drive, I shouldn't have any want for space for those.My final say: I've owned an Archos before and was mightily pleased with it, but sold it for an iPod with a larger hard drive. I've been pleased with what I've seen about the Archos 5 (My friend has one that he let me fiddle around with for a while) and I'm very excited to buy one.
If you're looking for a large capacity media player and want to stick it to Apple and Microsoft, I definitely recommend the Archos line.
Hmmm, very nice. I probably won't have much of a desire to replace my iPod classic though, just simply because I think that pretty much just provides me with everything I want in it myself, kinda like what you were saying. But that definitely sounds like a pretty dang good future investment should I ever have the need to do so.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was just going to go back to using my iPod Classic, but when I pulled it out the other day, I realized that it's battery had bit the dust as well. But, I can understand why. It's nearly 3 years old now and I used to use it as much as my Touch, which meant charging it every other day. I guess it's because I watch a lot of videos on my media players which tends to drain the batteries pretty fast, and the more often you charge a battery, the faster it's going to die. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteOh wow, Apple's media players don't have very good battery life, do they? But then again I guess if you are using it that much then yeah, I guess I can see it. Mine should probably be good to go for a while then since I personally only have to charge it like, once a week, if even that.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I've heard that it's just the 2nd Gen iPod Touches that have a short battery life. Especially when they are used as much as mine has been. My coworker has a 1st Gen iPod Touch and has had it for a while, and other than a dead area on the screen, his is still in great condition. His battery lasts much longer than mine does. I think there must have been something with the 2nd Gen that drains the battery faster. Hopefully, they will fix that in the 3rd gen one that is coming out next month.
ReplyDeleteHmmmm, that's interesting. From the sound of things it definitely sounds like it has something to do with one of those new features it comes with, I think I can see that. It will be very interesting to see what they do with 3rd Gen, that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteThere's not a whole lot of new features with the 2nd Gen. The biggest one was the built in speaker. I really wonder if that has something to do with it. Although, I don't really use the internal speaker all that much, so I'm not sure why it would have drained my battery. Hmmm... I guess we'll just have to see how things play out with the 3rd Gen.
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