What is the difference and what one is best??

My 12 yr old wants an ipod or a decent mp4 player. All he wants to do is put music on it and walk around with it connected to his head like all the other kids. What a great x~mas gift this would be!

If only I knew whats what out there in techno land. Sales people only want to sell you the $300 ones! My eldest son says most ipods ...you have to pay for itunes or limewires. (like I know what either of those are) But I don't want to pay for songs or memory cards or gigabytes or whatever. He's probally gonna loose it in a month anyways.

He don't need it to take pictures , make phone calls or get the internet (If it did the laundry,that would be okay! ) I did try a very cheap MP3 player last year ....that barely worked. He could'nt even d.l. music on it. I did research a bit but I don't understand all the techno garbo.

Any suggestions???? Helllllpppppp!

The technology behind the iPod is proven and fairly easy to use...you can pick up the smaller ones fairly cheap now. I have a 1st generation one (that weights about 45 times more than the new ones) that still works great after taking a serious beating through it's life.

iTunes which is the computer program you use with the iPod is easy to use too.

As far as MP3 players go...I bought my dad a Sansa Fuze last year for christmas and he LOVES it...

Okay Shadows I'll check that out thanx!.....

Is itunes expensive? I don't want to put anything on my computer that can risk a virus.Can't he just go to a website or Media player and get songs?

Also if I go with a MP3.... can he d.l. music off a computer or PS3? Whats the differenve then a MP4?

AAC & M4A are the format of the IPod community those format sounds good and are of a great sound quality, there players are reputed easy to use and of very good quality, you have different choices of sizes and utilities you can do with each versions of the IPod. Some of the negative points are the prices even if not that expensive they do cost more in general and also its the format IPod uses when buying from their store or when ripping music with its ITune program it will convert the songs to its format (AAC,M4A) those formats do not play on any of the the regular music player but only on compatible Apple devices (IPods, PC and few others).

MP3 is the the worlds most used and accessible music format and you have the majority of devices (PC IPods, MP3 players, Majority of dvd player and sound systems, car radios & +) and the MP3 players are various in size (GO) and of all prices from cheap to expensive. The MP3 format is worldwide available everywhere so easy to find. The down side to it is maybe the enormity of the choices you have in choosing the brand of the players compare to IPod (only one) you will have the must obscured company names offering you MP3 players to the most reputable so it can be confusing when choosing one to your liking and needs.

MP4 are players that play all formats (musics, videos and images) so are usually more expensive.

If your 12 year old wants only to listen to music I would suggest a MP3 player, first because you can get a good one at 1/3 of the price of an IPod and also because usually 12 years old are not always gentle with their stuff (maybe yours is) and paying 1/3 less won't hurt as much if it is broken after only a couple of months. If you think that it will be well taken care off then a better quality MP3 player or an IPod would be a very good gift.

Thankyou Alzeimer! I have been trying to sort these gadgets out in my non technical ways My co worker also tried to explain and advised me to go with a mp3 player. I think thats what I will do....now to decide what brand and what store to go buy it at

since i'm too lazy to type it all like that will second the OP
agree 100%

I second the iPod! I'm very happy with mine. Itunes is free and you can get it from the apple website. http://www.apple.com/itunes/

Thanks for all the ideas & opinions.I've even grilled some of my kids friends on this. All I got to say is....Bring back the boombox! Much easier lol! Actually.... I think I'm gonna go with the SanDisk Sansa clip MP3- 4gb. I found where Ican get it for about $40.00.

To be honest i might be the only person around who wont tell you to go Ipod, and not because they aren't cool, or anything else.. But because really? i mean 250 bucks for a 160gb mp3 player?
The electronics in the Ipod are about 15 bucks to buy, the hard drive is a 7200rpm laptop drive, which is usually about 50 bucks at most to buy... so their is 65 dollars... that means the white plastic is 185 bucks, must be pretty nice plastic..

I do however have a Sony Walkman..
It is a solid state drive, it is only 8gb but their are no moving parts which means if you drop it off a building it would still work.. (probably shatter the LCD but the drive would be good to go)
It has Tv tuner, Mp4 Mp3 M4A Mpg and Divx support, which means you can watch movies.. it also has FM tuner..
it was well under 250 bucks and its well worth it...
It will work with I-tunes, and will work with Windows media music transfers.. english, you can transfer cd's to it.. its easy to use, and can be used as an external storage as well, so if your son goes to a friends and wants pictures he can transfer them to it, or homework, or anything he wants... they make bigger sizes but for what i use it for, 8gb is plenty, after all that is 120 really high quality songs..

In that case, I'd get him something off of ebay for $20.

Seriously, I've bought a few of those devices over the last 10 years and I have always been happy with them. They will fall apart within a year or two, but the $200 player will become obsolete almost as fast. Plus you never have to worry much about theft or damage, and they do the job.

Also, if you don't want to pay for him to have digital music, don't. He'll figure out how to rip his current CD collection to mp3 format, and he may figure out a few other things, like trading music with his friends. You might be held legally accountable if he illegally downloads music using your computer.


Edit:

Missed this the first time:



Now thats what I'm talking about. $40 for a GOOD player, instead of $200 for an excellent player. Way to go!

iPod shuffles are actually very cheap right now. They are the smallest ones. 55 bucks at walmart in all colors. I agree that even 55 dollars isn't actually "cheap", but in the world of these techno kids today, it kind of is. They are easy to use and load don't require much of anything else. I have found that the other brands don't always load as nice as iPods.