My 11 year old wants an MP3 player. I know virtually nothing about this sort of thing.

Do you buy the MP3 player then subscribe to some program to get songs or what? Is it worth the money?

I have no clue on this.

Any help is appreciated.

Matt

I dont have an IPod, but I use to have another type of MP3 player, all you have to do when you buy it is connect it to the computer *it comes with an USB cables* run which ever media player *Windows Media Player / Winamp which ever it is that you use*. On one of the side bars or pull down menues, you should see a tab named *Device* it would then connect the computer with the IPod showing you what songs you have on it.. and all you have to do if you want to add songs / remove them from is is drag and drop

Okay that is easy. Thanks T-Elf. Now is it still illegal to download music?

Its illegal, yes. You can digitize your own and your friends CDs, you can buy music from itunes and various other places, you can get free music offers, and thats the extent of what you can do legally.

I'm personally a big fan of the iPod. They're relatively easy to use, and with the iTunes store songs are usually $.99 and albums $9.95. You can also use it to rip your CDs and put them on manually. For your munchkin you can also set it up so they have a weekly/monthly allowance for buying music. Just for the love of God do not buy a Microsoft Zune. If you do get a Microsoft based player, get one that has the "Plays For Sure" logo on it otherwise you may get screwed with the music because it might not play protected songs off legit download sites.

Got it... don't get a Zune.

Sounds like a pretty easy thing to do. Especially since you can put all the current CD's on it.

I love my nano.

ok for those who want to keep it legal, aka myself and few other honest people. Napster has a great program called Napster to Go, you can download unlimited amount of tracks, and xfer them to a device with no limitation. You just cant burn them to a CD without paying .99c a track.

I have a Sandisc Sansa c250 2gig with a 2gig storage card i filled with napster.

its 14.99 a month.

can you link me that program?

If you don't go with an iPod (which can only be used with iTunes btw) Sandisk makes excellent players

I heard on the radio this morning that ITunes is opening up to all MP3 Players soon.

I bought my then 13 year old an ipod who is completely and utterly oblivious to technology. She quickly caught on to how to use her ipod and loves it. I have it set up so that each month she gets an allowance through itunes for her to download/buy. This has worked out well for us; I got her the 4GB nano and she's not even come close to filling it up yet.

I can also monitor her purchases through itunes; which as a parent makes me happy. I do not like how difficult itunes makes it if you want to convert those purchased songs to mp3 but that's just b/c I'm lazy. We have 4 ipods in my household and they are all heavily used. This Christmas when I was looking for something for Leah I looked at all the players on the market I just decided to go with the ipod again. No way would I buy a Zune I thought about it and then I started reading all the reviews and decided against it. The display looks nice but that's where it ends; and we don't really watch videos on our ipods anyway. Good luck.

If you don't go with an iPod (which can only be used with iTunes btw)


Completely untrue. An Ipod will use any mp3 as well. Half of my cd's I ripped to my laptop before I got the Ipod were in mp3 format, and they work just fine on my ipod. I've had a few bands email me mp3s pre-release, and those mp3s work just fine as well. I've also had some friends let me 'borrow' some mp3s they sent me over AIM/msn, and those work fine too.

There are also a number of other programs you can Google to work with your iPod in place of iTunes, although I like and have gotten used to iTunes. I was happy with their service too, if you have an Apple store nearby.

Make sure you look at transfer rates for whatever you buy. The iPod is pretty fast, but I've played with a few other mp3 players on the market and wow did they transfer information slowly. When you're measuring the information you move in terms of gig, that suddenly becomes a big deal.

The only thing iTunes completely blows it on is video management, they stink at getting videos onto the iPod and you're basically forced to find a 3rd party program. I use Cucusoft, not a bad little program.

I am goin to put age into the opinion I give.
MP3 players if I am not mistaken can be bought at half the cost of a ipod.

Being that yours is 11 years old and I have 10 year old, I know that mine has a hard time hanging on to anything if he is distracted for a short period of time. You might find a ipod being sat down just about anywhere they might be playing.

A MP3 player I believe might stand a better chance of being returned to you if left, but a Ipod being returned would make make them a saint..lol In fact my daugher lost her ipod at a school function a couple of weeks ago and it was taken out of her back pack in a room with about 300 other back packs. I told her those nanos are so thin that she needs to just hold it in her bra next time instead of her back pack...hehehehe

I would recommend to save the ipod for when they are in their teens. You can transfer I believe all the songs they may have accumulated over the years on the MP3 player to the ipod when that time does come.......just my opinion. :)

Thanks for all the advice.... the kiddo really wanted an "Ipod" after looking them over and talking with his friends. It was his money so I let him get it and we now have 4 songs downloaded .

The sound is pretty impressive. I may get one also :)

I just discovered the IPOD shuffle myself and its definately the mp3 player I am going to get.

1. its ubelievably small and has a clip which makes it perfect for running

2. its cheap

3. because of its simplicity its easy to download software that will allow it to play mp3's that are not bought from Itunes.

4. I could careless that it holds only 240 songs, I dont use it enough to worry about running out of songs.

So when you 'buy' a song from the ITunes, I can then down load it to any of my computers correct? I have different sound systems on different computers and would like to get songs to my PC.

Also, I need to figure out how to make playlists. Grillz and Fergelicious just don't go well with Stacy's Mom and The Remedy. :)

Itunes lets you autherize 5 cpu to play the songs. Burned cds, ipods and stuff like that dont count towards that number, just CPUs.

The first thing you should do with any song you buy from iTunes is burn it to a CD - that destroys the copy protection. Otherwise, I think iTunes limits you in how many times you can copy a song.

Anyone know if you can do the same with movies? Or say, three seasons of BSG?

Playlists are created through File -> New Playlist or New Smart Playlist.

Thanks for the info :)

I don't think iTunes lets you reimport from video DVD, but if it does export to DRM-ambivalent codec packaging that it can read, you're golden.