Why I Switched from Archos Jukebox Recorder to Ipod

[Guy Kuo]

After happily running about with my 80 gigabyte AJBR with Rockbox, I was convinced I had a far superior choice over an iPod. The replaceable batteries and larger storage capacity were enough to shoot down any Apple Store employee who tried to sell me an iPod. No arguments when you hit them with 80 gigs of capacity. Stereo recording capability as well as digital audio input and output were also things I liked on the Archos.

Then, time came to put mp3 music into my car and I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do. One pathway was to do an inbuilt unit like the Dension. Another was to install an iBook and external screen as mp3 jukebox. I even went as far as mapping out where to build in the LCD screen, touchpad, power system, etc. After a while, I went back to the idea of using my Archos as the semi-permanent player in the car much as I always had. The only problem was convenience. The Archos was frankly tough to use on the road and increasingly hard to use with iTunes and Mac OSX.

I visited the Apple Store and actually tried out an iPod. I was flabbergasted at how much better a match it was to my user interface tastes. I could select songs much faster than I could with Rockbox (an open source alternative firmware for the Archos) and probably the biggest boon was I could finally have FAST FAST FAST synching with my main machines. Yes, I was one of the very few Mac users who actually took the time and effort to support an Archos with Mac OSX. It was always a pain to add albums or modifiy playlists on the Archos because it entailed a LOT of work to get iTuens, OSX, and an Archos to like each other's files and data. As a result, my computers' music collection often got ahead of the Archos.

Then there was the convenience of the Apple Music Store in iTunes. Those specific songs I wanted came down in a protected format. The only way to get those onto the Archos was to burn them to CD and rerip and compress them. I didn't like the sound quality drop nor was the hastle of burning discs conducive to keeping my Archos truely up to date.

Dynamic playlists in iTunes couldn't be used with the Archos. That was a feature I really really wanted for the car. The ability to shuffle through various playlists that were also easy to set up and effortlessly sync to my portable player was something I wanted to make car use simple.

I ended up with two iPods. Gasp! and have been very happily running iTunes and the iPods at fully functionality. The system works far more conveniently than when I used the Archos in the car. The iPod's shuffle through playlists and as each song is played data is gathered that is fed back into iTunes. That very quickly let me build new lists based upon my song usage patterns. Something I couldn't even dream about doing with the Archos.

The Archos has its pluses and I've gotten a LOT of my friends to buy one, but the iPod has some real advantages in terms of user friendliness and music management capability. Ultimately, for me those attributes have made the iPods more enjoyable than my AJBR. It's certainly not a cheap solution, but I'm very happy to have made the jump and my wife can finally run the mp3 player.

I let the iPod shuffle through the entire collection. If a song is played all the way through, its play count increases. By skipping over songs I don't really want to hear, the system automatically gathered playback info so I could intelligently rank songs in iTunes. It was a simple task to build up some car playlists in iTunes. I still have access to anything I want, but primarily I let the iPod shuffle through playlists of a few hundred songs. The iPod automatically pauses and sleeps upon shutting down the car. It picks back up where it was within 1 second of pressing play on the remote. While driving, simply being able to skip forward to the next song is great functionality without distraction. The key was getting my playlists to be accurate and up to date. The iTunes and iPod comibination powerfully does that and with litte effort. Smart playlists also automatically update as I use music both on my computer and the iPods. The usage data transfers both ways and everything stays in sync. It's a wonder compared to all the hard work I put myself through for years on the Archos Player and then the AJBR.

On a PC, it may have been easier to use the Archos, but now I have a very elegant solution - one that I resisted for years, an iPod.

[EdgePod]

Welcome to the club! I've also owned a few different mp3 players, but finally came to the same conclusion you did: the iPod is the best of the pack!

Originally posted by EdgePod
Welcome to the club! I've also owned a few different mp3 players, but finally came to the same conclusion you did: the iPod is the best of the pack!

Same here. I've owned players from Archos, Creative, and I now wonder why I had wasted my time and money. My iPod is definitely a keeper.

[Darrell]

I owned a Nomad before. The iPod beats the hell out of it! Welcome to iPod world!

[Guy Kuo]

I really had no idea that a portable player could be this much easier to use and convenient. I had the impression that once the basics were in place, they were pretty much the same. I was ever so wrong. The iPod is a statement in elegant and efficient functionality. Elegance is something I always associate with my Macs compared to my PC's. I now see that a parallel is true with the iPod vs the Archos. If you don't know what you are missing, the difference seems trivial. Once you grasp how an iPod's hidden, under the hood, power begets simplicity, you can't help but be awed by how well the player takes care of you rather than you take care of the machine.