Whitefish High School

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tech questions for jacob (Read 153 times)

    Hey Jacob I just bought an iPod but haven't put music on it yet My neighbor recommended this thing to me http://www.digitalfoci.com/picture_porter_elite.html# It looks nice, but do you see any immediate flaws? Should i return the iPod? thanks and whatabout the Creative Zen Vision thing that Nick has. Don't bother if you don't have time.
    Jacob Fern


      Ok… I didn’t know much about this product, so I did a little bit of looking on the internet to see what I could come up with. Here’s what I found: Overview: The first thing that I noticed is that this is not really meant to be an MP3 player. It is specifically designed to be a place to store and display your pictures. That is why they have included a memory card reader in the design. You can take a bunch of pictures with your digital camera, then take the card out of the camera and put it into this, and it will transfer all the pictures for you. It also has a nice big screen that would be very nice when viewing pictures. The Good Stuff: 1. It has a large screen (as noted above) 2. Supports a wide range of audio formats, including WMA (Windows Media Format), which and iPod doesn’t support… in fact, iTunes in general cannot play WMA’s. 3. Supports a wider variety of movie formats (although iTunes is able to reformat most videos so that they are playable on your iPod.) One thing that is very nice about it is that it supports .avi movies, which are becoming very popular these days because of their relative small size and high quality. iPods do not, and there is no way that I know of to reformat them. 4. Has a fast(er) hard drive (5400 rpm) 5. Built-in microphone for voice recording 6. Built-in radio tuner 7. Built-in speaker 8. Removable battery – since all rechargeable batteries eventually die, it makes it much easier (and cheeper) to replace the battery. (The iPod battery is not technically removable… although you can do it, and many people do.) The Bad Stuff: 1. Although the screen is large, there runs the risk of eating up battery life. The specs say that you can have up to 12 hours of music playback, which is not as good as the iPod (20 hours, according to Apple). 2. It’s big. This goes along with the whole screen size thing again. A big screen is nice, but do you really want to be lugging this brick sized thing around with you everywhere you go? 3. It’s trying to do too much. I am always very cautious when I see something that is supposed to do everything (records sound, plays radio, has memory card readers, plays video, plays audio, makes your breakfast for you…). When it comes down to it, this usually means that they managed to cram a lot of mediocore stuff into one thing instead of making one refined product. I think that the iPod is also slightly guilty of this, but not to the same extent. And they also have the whole quality control thing down. 4. It’s not meant to be an MP3 player. Sure, it can do it, but that’s not what it was built for. I looked up some reviews about it, and the only thing that they focused on was it’s ability to view, save, and print pictures. The reviews were all good, but it was for a product that you do not need. (unless that was what you wanted…) 5. Price: at 400 dollars, you are getting less space than the ipod for the same price. 6. The iPod can do most of the same stuff, and what it can’t do can be added on with third party accessories (FM tuner, voice recording, etc.) The final word: I really don’t think that this is what you need. If you want something that you can play music on, focus on that alone. When you try to get something that claims to do everything, it ends up not doing anything very well. It might be a great product for picture viewing, but I don’t think that’s why you wanted an iPod in the first place. One final note – I don’t recognize the brand, and there wasn’t all that much online about it, leading me to think that it’s a pretty obscure company. Sometimes this isn’t a big deal, but I’ve been screwed over by little no name companies before, so I might think about that before spending money on it. Ok, that’s all I have. -Jacob
        thank ya very much That's an A+ essay there
        Jacob Fern


          hey thanks... I almost lost it when my computer froze up, but fortunately, i decided to write it in Word... just in case... And about the Zen... it's fine. it's not great, but it's fine. I would recommend the iPod still... it has a much better user interface, and it's better looking. Oh, and forget about the Zune. It's a joke.