For travel, I'd get (ok, got) an iPod Shuffle, the tiny little one with no screen. Long battery life, weighs nothing, fits everywhere, carries enough songs for all but the really long flights, and costs about $80. Why carry something bulky when you travel?

Zues: Sorry if I sounded a little belligerant in my last post. I'm really pretty easy going. I agree that Microsoft's muscle is substantial and it may help them compete with the iPod.

I own three iPods and two Mac computers so you probably know where my loyalties lie. However, when I heard about the Zune I thought that it was bound to be good for iPod fans because, after all, competition is good for the consumer.

I think what could hurt the Zune is that it will become the MSWord of music players. Which is to say, that MS will try to make it do too much. The strenth of the iPod for the last several years is that it has done one thing very well and has done it very elegantly - it plays music.

AP6380: Sorry your mini doesn't work. (It is kind of old.) I have never had any problems with my iPods but I do tend to sell them after a year or so.

My suggestion is that you get an iPod Nano. I have an 8 gig Nano but I think you would be very happy with less storage. I have a Shuffle, a Nano and an 80 gig iPod Video. I use the Nano 90% of the time.

"Why carry something bulky when you travel?"

Point taken. But why carry that extra piece at all, when a PDA will do everything that an iPOD will (except store ridiculous amounts of sound and pictures)?

Robespierre: The Nano is much less bulky than my Palm. And a whole lot more user friendly for playing music. My Palm works much better than my iPod for accessing my calendar and contacts.

Frankly if you told me I could take either an iPod or a PDA with me on my travels, I'd take the iPod. (And my Nuvi 370 - which also plays music, incidentally.)

Er, that's not either this or that. It's either this or these two things (the second of which is bulkier than a PDA, incidentally).

Sounds like rampant self-delusion to me. I carry <u>one</u> piece that does my PDA tasks, keeps my books and travel guides, plays my music, stores my pictures, shows my movies, and pinpoints my location on a moving map display. Oh - and it's a quad-band GSM phone, too. And a WiFi internet terminal.

&lt;&lt;But why carry that extra piece at all, when a PDA will do everything that an iPOD will (except store ridiculous amounts of sound and pictures)?&gt;&gt;

Because we're MAC people?

Oh, what an excellent reason!

I notice that Jobs is finally catching up to 1999 technology with the iPHONE.

&lt;&lt;Oh, what an excellent reason!

I notice that Jobs is finally catching up to 1999 technology with the iPHONE.&gt;&gt;

Don't get so touchy. It wasn't meant to rile anyone. But, I am a MAC person, do NOT understand Windows at all and quite frankly have no desire to make the transition.

I am neither a MAC person nor a Windows person. They are two operating systems of about twenty in which I am fluent.

They are all marketed differently.

Impressive, Robespierre!

We should get back to talking about travel.

Question for Robespierre re the iPaQ PDA:

I have been looking for a device that does &quot;everything for me everywhere&quot; and it sounds like you have a good solution.

I have noted some of your posts elsewhere about phones that work both in the States and Europe/elsewhere..ie you have said to just get an unlocked quadphone and buy either local sim cards, or a Lux or German or UK Pan Europe sim card to get reasonable calling rates, and free incoming.

Can you play the simcard game with the iPAQ?

Also, can you store 550 Meg or 1 Gig of photos on the PDA if you take a lot of travel pictures, and want to download from your chip each day?

How much of total storage do you allocate for music, and how much do you keep for email atachs and pictures etc.?

How expensive is the monthly fee with T mobile? I spend a lot of time in both US and Europe, and don't want to pay double monthly fees?

And T mobile is a pretty good european hotspot vendor. Have you used skype instead of cell when you have wifi access?

I think communication is a big travel need, so I don't feel bad learning a little more about this on a travel forum. Sorry to those who think it may be out of place on Fodors...for me the info will be useful for my travels.

best, rouss

So, I should be able to upload the songs that I burn from itunes on cd to a new program? Whatever program that I can use with the Creative Zen?

iPAQ answers

Can you play the simcard game with the iPAQ? <b>Absolutely.</b>

Also, can you store 550 Meg or 1 Gig of photos on the PDA if you take a lot of travel pictures, and want to download from your chip each day? <b>I could, but I don't. I just download XD cards to a laptop.</b>

How much of total storage do you allocate for music, and how much do you keep for email atachs and pictures etc.? <b>I have several SD music chips, several picture chips, and several movie chips with 512mb or 1gb on each. The iPAQ only has 56mb user RAM, which I keep as free as possible for program execution.</b>

How expensive is the monthly fee with T mobile? <b>Zero. Airtime is 99&cent;/min.</b> I spend a lot of time in both US and Europe, and don't want to pay double monthly fees? <b>But if you use T-Zones ($5.99) for messaging or WAP browsing, it doesn't use airtime.</b>

And T mobile is a pretty good european hotspot vendor. Have you used skype instead of cell when you have wifi access? <b>Yes. But the WiFi link speed degrades sometimes, breaking up the phone connection. Next time, I'm going to try Yahoo to see if it's more tolerant (it's all in the buffering, methinks).</b>

&lt;&lt;So, I should be able to upload the songs that I burn from itunes on cd to a new program? Whatever program that I can use with the Creative Zen?&gt;&gt;

You cannot use music downloaded from iTunes on asnything other than an iPod. You can take music from CDs etc and bring them into iTunes.

So what do think of this toy. Total waste of money or someting worth the 99&euro;. 6GB harddisk sounds good, but I fear this is rather old. I got about 15000 songs I have (legally!!) downloaded from pay radio. So what about the H10? I does include Sennheiser earphones. Well I made a reservation...

http://www.norma-online.de/angebote/...dex_16478.html

So being that I don't want to lose my itunes library, I may have to go with an ipod. Are there any other providers that I can use to download tv show &amp; movies into the ipod besides itunes?

Another question- Zeus stated &quot;I've even &quot;borrowed&quot; son of my daughter's stuff through iTunes.&quot; So you can use your music from itunes in other mp3's?

&quot;My friend had to reset his Nano a lot, and when he would update it at another computer besides his main one, his music would disappear. The only music that would be left is, for ex., what was on the currnt computer he was using. Maybe that's normal or there is something that he didn't get about itunes.&quot;

That is the way it's designed to work. As a concession to the record companies, Apple makes it hard for people to take songs from one computer and copy them to another computer using the iPod.

So when you hook up the iPod to someone else's computer, it will delete the songs on your iPod that isn't on the second computer.

So you would have to take it back to the original computer to copy it back. Note that it would copy whatever songs on the second computer to the iPod.

But you can get around this by setting the iPod to update manually instead of automatically. That way, it won't attempt to &quot;sync&quot; with whichever computer it's connected to.

Also, if you do want to transfer songs via the iPod to a computer, you can download software which will let you do that. Check ilounge.com.

Most of the other brands of players don't have as nice software as iTunes. The Sony players use software which is widely hated.

The Creative and iRivers can use Windows Media Player. But note that when Microsoft finally decided to bring out their own branded players (although they've been competing with iPod for years by providing reference designs and software to other companies), they made their own software, which only works with the Zune players.

So before considering other players, check out their software and see if you like it.

There are other good players and typically get good reviews from places like CNet, which have been critical of iPods for years for not having things like FM Radio. But these players are thicker, bigger and heavier than iPods, if that makes a difference to you.

I put my Nano on a lanyard because it's light enough. Also worry about it slipping out of a coat pocket.

iTunes only work with iPods, and not other MP3 players.

However, you can convert all your non-encrypted music files (i.e. not those you buy at the iTunes Store) and export them to simple MP3. Save it outside your iTunes Library, and then import them into the software for the other players.