Zune or I-Pod

[Kurt Strandberg]

We want a portable device to store and use as a backup for our digital photos and have looked at the Zune and I-Pod, I'm leaning towards the 80Gb Zune but thought I would ask your opinion

[Jerome Hanby]

I'll start by saying I have ZERO use for APPLE or any of their products, past or present. I bought my wife and kids the first model Zunes (the capacity escapes me at the moment) and they have worked well. I still hold out the hope of an easy linux port for them, but even with the MicroSquashish software, they are very usable. If you want to put video on them you may wind up with a desktop full encoders and converters, but I can't see how that could be different with any device.

[Eric Franklin]

If you just want a place to backup digital photo's. An iPod or Zune would be a waste of your money. Just buy an external USB hard drive. If you want a device for displaying photo's, listen to music and/or watching movies, I would go with the iPod because of the support offered by 3rd party vendors for accessories.

[Ron Dunn]

I'm with Eric. Even though I can buy Zunes at a good price from the company store, the ecosystem around iPod makes it a better choice.

[curtis rosche]

if you are going to use it as a back up for digital photos, go to www.newegg.com (http://www.newegg.com) they have every thing you could think of for computers. get an external hard drive. het one that is the same size or bigger than your computer. then not only can you put your pictures on and plug it into somones computer with out needing them to have the software like you would with zune or ipod, but you can also use it to store everything else thats on your computer, by using the external hard drive it will free up space on your computer and make it run faster. it may seem like a bit of money but look into it, newegg has really good prices, its worth it, it also makes it so that if you get a new computer that you dont need to transfer files, just plug in your external hard drive. if you ever think that there is a virus on your computer, just unplg the external and it wont matter what happens to the computer be cause everything is saved to the external

[Matt Meiser]

I also agree that if you just want to back up photos you should buy an external USB hard drive. And a DVD burner.

If you want it for music too, I chose and iPod because of the accessory support. Same reason I have MS-based PC's. If you want to buy music online, you can buy iTunes gift cards practically anywhere--I think I've seen them in gas stations. Costco even discounts them.

[Danny Thompson]

A hear and a half ago, I bought the Zune predecessor out of protest against iPod, and it has been a good MP3 player, but ther are absolutely no accessories for it. There are more for the Zune, but, pure and simple, ther are WAY MORE accessories (chargers, clock radios, bluetooth connections, car connections, speakers, armbands) for the iPod. A hear later, I bought my wife an iPOD. If you want an MP3 player . . . go iPOD.

Having said that, if all you want is file backups, get a USB drive. Much cheaper, greater capacity.

[Randal Stevenson]

Office Depot (at least locally), has a 500GB usb hard drive for under $100.
My 40GB Iriver (ogg compatible MP3 player, Linux Likes), was $300.

If you only need backup/storage ($100, Lots more storage, 5 year warranty verses cost more and a 1 year warranty), do the math. If your wanting something to display your pictures on, (and listen to music, etc...) then see who you physically know (look at kids), that has what, and ask them to show you their player (most likely an Ipod).
Another option is the USB hard drive, the multiples of the largest card your camera will take. Then just keep them with the camera. PCMCIA cards (whatever they are called now), are reasonable in the 2 and 4 gb ranges.

[Tim Morton]

why all the hate for iPods and apple?:cool:

[Larry Browning]

why all the hate for iPods and apple?:cool:
Wasn't there just the one guy? Looks like he is a linux lover, so, to him, if it ain't linux, if must be no good.

[Glenn Clabo]

My experience has been the best with Ipod. We still have one that has been used and abused for many years. I bought a 80G for photo backup...but never use it that way. It's okay to have few pics...but it's too slow compared to external drives to store anything beyond that.

[Michael Schwartz]

You should probably try to keep all your photos on your computers hard drive in one library and then back that up to an external drive. That way they are accessible from your computer, and if one hard drive should fail the data will survive on the other.

For long term storage burn the photos onto an archival quality dvd.

Hard drives are not intended to last for more than a few years of use and are destined to fail at some point or another. This is why backup is so important.

If you want an mp3 player get an ipod or a zune or one of the many other products on the market. I personaly prefer ipods though I will admit I am a long time apple user. You can sync photos to most mp3 players now days and view them although this is somewhat of a novelty to me.

For backup stick with a full sized external hard drive as you will get faster read/write speeds than a portal media device and they will likely be more reliable. Use this drive then as a dedicated drive to regularly backup your computers hardrive. If you want to take photos with you to share you can still sync them to your portable media device.

[Scott Shepherd]

If you are looking for a backup of photos, I've been exposed to Carbonite.com for a couple of weeks now and so far, it looks like the best value of all.

It's an online backup system that costs $50 per YEAR. Not per month, per year. No limits on what you can store. First backup takes about 3 days, and from there, it only backs up what has changed and it does it automatically and in the background. At any point, you can restore the original files. Since there are no limits, you can backup your entire computer if you wanted.

I personally love it so far. It's well worth a look for backing up at $50 a year, unlimited storage, and automatic backups. I also think if you type in the keywork LEO as a coupon code, you can try it out for 45 days for free.

[Randal Stevenson]

why all the hate for iPods and apple?:cool:

Where is the hate?

They just don't make software that runs on my operating system. So I support those that work more with mine. It would be financially stupid to buy a pc, just to work with a music player (can get a radio transmitter for much less).

[Larry Browning]

Where is the hate?

They just don't make software that runs on my operating system. So I support those that work more with mine. It would be financially stupid to buy a pc, just to work with a music player (can get a radio transmitter for much less).

Yep! Another LL. Whenever they say "my operating system" it's linux or linux based:cool:.


Just kidding, thought I would stir the pot a little this afternoon.:D

[Eric DeSilva]

If you are looking for a backup of photos, I've been exposed to Carbonite.com for a couple of weeks now and so far, it looks like the best value of all.

$50/mo for life seems like a lot... I've got a couple Terastations running RAID 5. At about $700 a pop, they aren't cheap, but I'd pay for the cost in a year of Carbonite. Each of my Terastations has four 250GB drives, and the RAID 5 setup means that the loss of any drive is a recoverable error. I'm probably exceptionally paranoid, but I have two of them, 40 miles apart, that are mirrored. With the RAID 5, I get about 700GB of storage from 1TB. So far, they have been running for about three years 24/7 without a hitch.

Unlike the WD Raptor 15K RPM main drive on my computer, which totally fried itself Sat. morning with 100% data loss...

[Kurt Strandberg]

We want a portable device to store and use as a backup for our digital photos and have looked at the Zune and I-Pod, I'm leaning towards the 80Gb Zune but thought I would ask your opinion


I should have said in my first post also, we have two new grandkids (7 month and 2 month old) that my wife likes to show off, so that is why I was looking at a Zune or I-Pod, I'm not to worried about accessories, I don't think I would use it for music although it would plug in to the auxillary plug on the Goldwing.

I have read good reviews on the 2nd generation Zune, and have never used anything from Apple

[Randal Stevenson]

I should have said in my first post also, we have two new grandkids (7 month and 2 month old) that my wife likes to show off, so that is why I was looking at a Zune or I-Pod, I'm not to worried about accessories, I don't think I would use it for music although it would plug in to the auxillary plug on the Goldwing.

I have read good reviews on the 2nd generation Zune, and have never used anything from Apple

Get the LARGEST cards your camera will take and multiples of them. Cheaper then either, and will cause her to keep the camera around and be able to catch those otherwise missed moments.

[Tim Morton]

Wasn't there just the one guy? Looks like he is a linux lover, so, to him, if it ain't linux, if must be no good.


I think there were two...one had no use for and the other was protesting apple:D

[Jason Roehl]

$50/mo for life seems like a lot... I've got a couple Terastations running RAID 5. At about $700 a pop, they aren't cheap, but I'd pay for the cost in a year of Carbonite. Each of my Terastations has four 250GB drives, and the RAID 5 setup means that the loss of any drive is a recoverable error. I'm probably exceptionally paranoid, but I have two of them, 40 miles apart, that are mirrored. With the RAID 5, I get about 700GB of storage from 1TB. So far, they have been running for about three years 24/7 without a hitch.

Unlike the WD Raptor 15K RPM main drive on my computer, which totally fried itself Sat. morning with 100% data loss...

Ummm...you misread...Carbonite is $50 per YEAR. Looks like you`ll be paying much more for your RAID 5 setup than Carbonite will ever cost you. $700 is 14 years of Carbonite...and if you have 4 of those drives, that's 56 years...I doubt they'll last that long, or be big enough, in a few years. 13 years ago when I bought my first computer (used parents', schools', etc prior), I got a 1 GB drive. I thought to myself, "How will I ever possibly fill that up?" Now I can burn through a 40 GB drive without thinking about it. And I don't even mess with video (yet).