mp3 players?
I'm looking at buying a new mp3 player, and would like some opinions. For those of you who own one, what do you like/dislike about yours?
My current player is a Creative Zen with 30gb storage, which is much more capacity than I need, but it's too large and fragile for me to carry comfortably at work. I would like a new player that's portable enough I can wear it around the lab. The new Creative players also have FM radio, which would be a bonus - I can get NPR even if my coworkers would rather listen to Soft Rock Classics. I'm looking at brand-name ipods also, since people seem to like them so much. Right now I'm looking at players with 8 - 16 GB capacity.
I do have a couple of ipod specific questions:
-- Does itunes mess with your file names and directory structures when you install it? I've had one friend complain that it destroyed his entire music library be renaming and rearranging things.
-- Could someone explain "syncing" to me? Specifically, do I need to always keep a local copy of all my music on my computer's hard drive, for the ipod to "see" and retain that song?
My current player is a Creative Zen with 30gb storage, which is much more capacity than I need, but it's too large and fragile for me to carry comfortably at work. I would like a new player that's portable enough I can wear it around the lab. The new Creative players also have FM radio, which would be a bonus - I can get NPR even if my coworkers would rather listen to Soft Rock Classics. I'm looking at brand-name ipods also, since people seem to like them so much. Right now I'm looking at players with 8 - 16 GB capacity.
I do have a couple of ipod specific questions:
-- Does itunes mess with your file names and directory structures when you install it? I've had one friend complain that it destroyed his entire music library be renaming and rearranging things.
-- Could someone explain "syncing" to me? Specifically, do I need to always keep a local copy of all my music on my computer's hard drive, for the ipod to "see" and retain that song?