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Advocate
Joined: 07 Feb 2004
Posts: 2500
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 Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 1:50 am Post subject: |
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Bust Buy is a great place to buy overpriced crap and talk to "techies" that have no idea what the hell they're talking about. I mean, since when was "CPU" the whole damn system? I see shit like "CPU Speakers" and I just think to myself that they have to be the most retarded people in existance when it comes to computers.
Not only that, but a member of the "geek squad" that my friend Rhythmatic and I talked to before thought that the whole system was called a "CPU". So in other words, I really don't like going to Bust Buy in order to pay a whole lot more to see workers that know a whole lot less. In other words, I shop on NewEgg.  |
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Monkeywrench
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Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 205
Location: Florida
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 4:24 am Post subject: |
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| Pwnz3r wrote: | | Not only that, but a member of the "geek squad" that my friend Rhythmatic and I talked to before thought that the whole system was called a "CPU". So in other words, I really don't like going to Bust Buy in order to pay a whole lot more to see workers that know a whole lot less. In other words, I shop on NewEgg. |
Yeah, all the parts to the computer I'm working on now were purchased from NewEgg
| Fitzsimmons wrote: | | Just tell those punk ass salespeople that you aren't going to spend a single dollar on a laptop at Best Buy if the liveCD doesn't work and if they won't let you, you'll take your business somewhere else. |
hahahaha  I would, 'cept I'm way too... passive 
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Joined: 07 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 5:20 am Post subject: |
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I plan on doing some evil at my local Best Buy store. Nothing illegal, just evil. lol All the parts to my computer here are either from Mwave or Newegg, except one of the sticks of RAM since Best Buy had it on sale for a good price back a few years ago. Of course, I didn't hate it as much then.  |
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khiloa
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Joined: 27 Jan 2004
Posts: 333
Location: Florence, SC
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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| Pwnz3r wrote: | | I mean, since when was "CPU" the whole damn system? |
Yes, I know that is a problem as well.. One specific example was last year my sister said that one of her friend's computer's "crashed" and she had an important paper on it so she "took the CPU to school" so she wouldn't get a "late" grade.
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richk449
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Joined: 24 Oct 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 5:09 pm Post subject: |
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I was taught that a computer consisted of a CPU, a monitor, and input devices (keyboard, mouse, ...). The CPU, or Centeral Processing Unit, handled calculations, the monitor handled output, and the input devices handled input.
The Free Online Dictionary of Computing (http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html) agrees with me:
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CPU:
1. central processing unit.
2. Occasionally used (although less and less) to refer to the system unit.
system unit
The main body of a computer, consisting of a plastic or metal enclosure, the motherboard, and (typically) internal disk drives, a power supply, cooling fans, and whatever circuit boards plugged into the mother board, such as a video card.
The system unit is occasionally referred to as the CPU, though this really means central processing unit.
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As for BestBuy, their philosophy is to hire cheap labor, and sell stuff for less. If they hired more intelligent/experienced people, their products would cost more. Personally, I appreciate the sales people leaving me alone (although they are starting to change this). |
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Advocate
Joined: 07 Feb 2004
Posts: 2500
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 7:33 pm Post subject: |
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| richk449 wrote: | | As for BestBuy, their philosophy is to hire cheap labor, and sell stuff for less. If they hired more intelligent/experienced people, their products would cost more. Personally, I appreciate the sales people leaving me alone (although they are starting to change this). |
Dang, if they started charging more nobody would ever be able to buy anything from them. Their prices are already inflated to death as it is. Hey, maybe that would make them go out of business.
As it says, the CPU is actually the processor (aka Central Processing Unit). The reason that some people call the whole thing the CPU is due to places like Best Buy. Also, I've heard someone call the entire system the hard drive. In all honesty, I think that if people don't know what's in the computer that they need to stop using computers until they learn. People that "just want it to work" easily get taken advantage of and such and that just sucks. I mean, Best Buy charges around $60 to ajust the geometry of a monitor.  |
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richk449
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Joined: 24 Oct 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 7:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Pwnz3r wrote: |
Dang, if they started charging more nobody would ever be able to buy anything from them. Their prices are already inflated to death as it is. Hey, maybe that would make them go out of business.
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BestBuy has some of the cheapest prices of any physical store. Of course, they get blown away by online places, since online stores don't need to employ salespeople and pay rent and all that other stuff. Try comparing the prices of a HP laptop in a BestBuy and in a local computer shop, or even a CompUSA. The only store I know of that beats BestBuy is Frys, but unfortunately, most of the country does not have access to Frys.
| Quote: |
As it says, the CPU is actually the processor (aka Central Processing Unit). The reason that some people call the whole thing the CPU is due to places like Best Buy.
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The convention of calling the tower (what is the proper name for the box that holds all the components and sits on your desk?) the CPU goes back well before BestBuy started selling computers. As the Online Dictionary says, it is an old name that is no longer used much, mostly due to confusion between the two meanings (I think). |
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Monkeywrench
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Joined: 22 Jun 2004
Posts: 205
Location: Florida
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 8:07 pm Post subject: |
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| richk449 wrote: | | As for BestBuy, their philosophy is to hire cheap labor, and sell stuff for less. If they hired more intelligent/experienced people, their products would cost more. Personally, I appreciate the sales people leaving me alone (although they are starting to change this). |
Yeah, I'm gonna start going with black lipstick and eyeliner and platform shoes from now on. 
And yeah, I'm not a business man or interested in economics in any way.. but Best Buy does seem to have the cheapest prices out of all the "brick-and-mortar" joints here in town. And lots of the big manufacturers seem to cut deals with them. Like.. getting $350 off a new desktop computer in rebates 
richk: you could call it a box, a tower, a system, maybe just 'case' or 'desktop'?
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Last edited by Monkeywrench on Fri Jun 25, 2004 8:18 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 8:12 pm Post subject: |
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| I call mine an ATX form-factor PC case. That's just me. |
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richk449
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Joined: 24 Oct 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Monkeywrench wrote: |
richk: you could call it a box, a tower, a system, maybe just 'case' or 'desktop'? |
It seems to me that all of these are ambigious in some way. If I said to someone, "could you grab the ________", what word specifically means the component that consists of the hard drive and processor and stuff?
Box: Could obviously mean alot of things
Tower: This is the best choice I think, but then it is describing the geometry more than anything. What if you dont have a tower, but a horizontal one?
System: I would take this to mean the tower, monitor, keyboard, mouse ....
Case: This would mean the plastic thingy that holds everything, not includin the components themselves
Desktop: This is confusing too, since "desktop" is often used to refer to the background and icons on the screen.
It is not a big deal, but I really don't think there is a good word for it. Maybe someone should invent one. |
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KuroRyu
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 11 Mar 2004
Posts: 95
Location: Phoenix, AZ, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 1:00 am Post subject: |
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yeah, iPods are definitely overhyped... i got one for my birthday/graduation and it's decent, but not worth it.... i'm just glad i didn't pay for it
off to ebay to sell it and buy an iRiver~!!!
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khiloa
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Joined: 27 Jan 2004
Posts: 333
Location: Florence, SC
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| Posted: Tue Jun 29, 2004 2:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Pwnz3r wrote: | | I call mine an ATX form-factor PC case. That's just me. |
A wha... ?
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pixelcatcher
n00b
Joined: 31 Jan 2004
Posts: 60
Location: Stuttgart
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| Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2004 1:44 pm Post subject: help! |
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Can someone provide me the ipod firmware? I killed mine!
I need the whole /dev/sda1 contents for my 20gb player.
thanks!
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zenlunatic
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Joined: 09 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2004 9:02 pm Post subject: |
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| I was going to get an iriver cd-based player with vorbis support but than I found out that the thing only supports a very limited bitrate range for vorbis. |
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nightm4re
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Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 519
Location: Providence, RI, USA
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| Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2004 8:00 pm Post subject: |
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being an ipod owner, I have to state a few things.
First of all, getting my ipod to play nicely with linux is a hit or miss occasion. Lately, about 5/6 times I plug it intot he firewire, it gives me some dumb error about not being able to log into a sbp2 device, and won't create the device. I have to reboot to try again. Eventually, I figured out you can put it into disk mode, then plug it in, and then it attaches quite nicely.
gtkpod is a nice program, except if you update songs on your hd (I fixed a bunch of bad tags), it doesn't know that they have changed.
Currently, I'm pretty upset about my ipod. It seems whenever it changes where it is reading from on the hd or caching upcoming music, it becomes totally unresponsive to input, which is really annoying if you've got it up too loud for the current song, etc. It can take over a minute to get back to nomral, and then anything I've pressed (on the remote mind you) is executed in queue fashion. I've been told a firmware update will fix this, I'm gonna try that out soon, but not looking forward to resyncing 39gb of music
Interface wise, its alright.. I wish there was an easier way to work with playlists. I always make them on the fly, which means I always gotta go way back to the playlist menu and pick it to clear it, then go back and browse to the songs i want to put on it. Really annoying when I'm having a spur of the moment want to listen to something. Also, putting it into shuffle mode takes a lot of presses.
The outside is beautiful. I own a 3rd gen (got it a month before they came out with the clickwheel gen, thanks for letting me know). I didn't use it much over the summer, but since I've moved to Edinburgh I use it daily. I keep it in my bag while I walk, and have the remote on the outside of the bag next to my waist. The remote control is top notch.
Speaking of remote controls, that iRiver one that someone linked to has a neat control, but why the hell would I need such a huge clunky remote? How is it going to clip to my bag? And hwo the hell is going to read my hip to get whatever's currnetly playing? I'm all for added features, but a whole freakin LCD on it must add a lot to the cost of getting a replacement etc.
I'm surpised that in two whole pages of this thread, no one mentioned the ipod linux project here, which looks really promising. I also have talked to some guys on IRC who have almost gotten MPD to work on an ipod with linux, which is great... plus, new interfaces can be designed with this approach, so I can't wait to see some results from the project.
Anyway, thought I'd give a few thoughts.
EDIT: oh, and you want a pretty player? try THIS (the olympus ones are the ones I'm trying to draw attention to). They are really nice looking, but who knows about linux support yet..
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Archangel1
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Joined: 21 Apr 2004
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Location: Work
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| Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 5:17 am Post subject: |
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Not bad... I quite like the look of that first Archos one though.
I'm not sure about this hdd music player thing... I think flash memory's now cheap enough to make a good player. A GB or so would do me - would only hold a fraction of my music collection, but I don't want to listen to most of it anyway. Does anyone else find that the more music you have, the more you keep skipping tracks? |
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zenlunatic
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Joined: 09 Apr 2003
Posts: 312
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| Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 5:45 am Post subject: |
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| This guy at work has a rio karma the 20 gig player and it is built suprisingly sturdy and tough. I think I would go with that because of flac support. |
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nightm4re
Guru
Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 519
Location: Providence, RI, USA
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| Posted: Thu Nov 18, 2004 12:50 pm Post subject: |
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| Archangel1 wrote: | | A GB or so would do me - would only hold a fraction of my music collection, but I don't want to listen to most of it anyway. Does anyone else find that the more music you have, the more you keep skipping tracks? |
Its true, I only listen to a small part of my collection, BUT... I get totally random at times and want to listen to some obscure track when I'm using my ipod... and when I use it, it means I'm not home, otherwise I'd just listen to it on the computer. So how can I have the foresight of these cravings to load it on my player before?
Another thing thats great, compare cds.. the physical space the cds take up for so little music is just crazy, I like being able to take everything I like with me wherever.
I meant to comment earlier about the Best Buy stuff that occured in the thread. Yes, I agree with many of you about their practices/cluelesness, but in my hometown's best buy (Manchester, CT), the computer people actaully know a decent amount. My stepfather had to go purchase some webcams for the family before I moved here and my stepbro went to Toronto for school, and the guy actaully knew about the whole pwc driver problems that occured right at the end of summer, when the developer of the pwc driver stopped working on it and removed all the downloads in a fight with the kernel developers. I was kinda surpised that he knew that, actaully.
Yesterday was the first time I was able to view an image from my webcam, thanks to a how-to in the italian section of the forum.  The answer i needed was turning on power_save option when loading the module, so now, I will try to figure out how to use it to talk to people with MSN with it!
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Acidic
n00b
Joined: 07 Apr 2004
Posts: 12
Location: Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sat Nov 27, 2004 6:25 am Post subject: |
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| Pwnz3r wrote: | | The iRiver ihp-140 doesn't look that ugly to me at all. Here's the official page. What's so ugly about it? |
Way to go 
You got my interested then i see that they are out of stock and no more are expected
EDIT: Now looking at the 340, which doesnt look the same "nice". But still is pretty sleek.
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matt_w
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Joined: 17 Nov 2003
Posts: 233
Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 8:16 pm Post subject: |
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| richk449 wrote: | | So howcome every other mp3 player (iRivers included) looks like complete crap compared to an iPod? It sure looks like the iRiver has better features, but it is as ugly as sin. |
Have you seen the iaudio? That thing is pure hotness. |
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zenlunatic
Guru
Joined: 09 Apr 2003
Posts: 312
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| Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 9:06 pm Post subject: Re: iPod |
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| Verted wrote: | | Do these work on Gentoo Linux? I've heard than can be big problems with the Sony Net MD's. |
Honestly why did you not just do a google search as this subject is very popular all over the internet. |
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zenlunatic
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Joined: 09 Apr 2003
Posts: 312
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| Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 9:15 pm Post subject: |
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| nightmare wrote: | | Speaking of remote controls, that iRiver one that someone linked to has a neat control, but why the hell would I need such a huge clunky remote? How is it going to clip to my bag? And hwo the hell is going to read my hip to get whatever's currnetly playing? I'm all for added features, but a whole freakin LCD on it must add a lot to the cost of getting a replacement etc.. |
Personally I think the remote on the heaphone cord is the most intuitive feature out there for mp3 players. I do not want to pull my player out of my pocket to change the song, I'd rather just use a remote that already sitting out. |
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richk449
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Joined: 24 Oct 2003
Posts: 345
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| Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Duder wrote: | | Have you seen the iaudio? That thing is pure hotness. |
I had never heard of it until your post. It looks pretty nice. And it plays ogg, which is an advantage.
So, I am actually going to buy an mp3 player very soon. My 3 candidates are: ipod, rio carbon, and the iaudio thing.
The criteria are (in no particular order)
1) ease of use - i like things that make sense, and i don't like having to memorize buttons or read labels to do stuff
2) play ogg
3) price
4) work easily with rhythmbox
obviously, the ipod doesn't play ogg, which hurts, but it makes up for that in what seems to be the best interface ever.
does anyone have any thoughts? |
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nightm4re
Guru
Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 519
Location: Providence, RI, USA
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| Posted: Mon Nov 29, 2004 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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| zenlunatic wrote: |
Personally I think the remote on the heaphone cord is the most intuitive feature out there for mp3 players. I do not want to pull my player out of my pocket to change the song, I'd rather just use a remote that already sitting out. |
Agreed, i live by my remote. I was really commenting on the size of the iriver one (i think it was the iriver one) which is pretty much the same size as the player itself with a fancy LCD and all that. Quite useless, imho. I just want a really small functional controller, like the ipod one.
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zenlunatic
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Joined: 09 Apr 2003
Posts: 312
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| Posted: Tue Nov 30, 2004 12:02 am Post subject: |
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| nightmare wrote: | | zenlunatic wrote: |
Personally I think the remote on the heaphone cord is the most intuitive feature out there for mp3 players. I do not want to pull my player out of my pocket to change the song, I'd rather just use a remote that already sitting out. |
Agreed, i live by my remote. I was really commenting on the size of the iriver one (i think it was the iriver one) which is pretty much the same size as the player itself with a fancy LCD and all that. Quite useless, imho. I just want a really small functional controller, like the ipod one. |
Do you have a pic of this remote?
Personally I prefer the LCD remote to the "simple" apple one. |
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