60GB iPod Coming? 563
An anonymous reader writes "Toshiba today announced that it will offer a 60GB version of its 1.8-inch hard drive in the coming months and that Apple has already placed its order. Cindy Lee, deputy manager of Toshiba's hard disk drive division, said the drive will enter mass production during July or August. All three iPod models (15GB, 20GB, and 40GB) use Toshiba drives, while the iPod mini uses a 4GB 1-inch drive from Hitachi. Lee noted that Toshiba is currently shipping 350,000 of the 1.8-inch drives per month to Apple."
You mean? (Score:4, Funny)
Im only hovering on 5g of songs!
Re:You mean? (Score:5, Funny)
Enough is Enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh, good ol napster.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:5, Funny)
But I shouldn't talk. I'm actually considering the same thing since I don't have anything better to do
Cheers.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:4, Funny)
I hate scratches.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you need it? Of course not. You don't really need any of this. It's entertainment. You need your insulin shots, or your defibrillator.
Some people really, really, really like to have all their music with them all the time. (Not me. I don't listen to music. But I have many friends who do.) It only takes a few hundred thousand of 'em to make it worthwhile for Apple to make this.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Music on the other hand, has been around longer than medicine. It could be considered entertainment, but it's a very important facet of human life. Almost everyone listens to music in one form o
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:5, Funny)
So maybe the 60GB drive is for the mythical video iPod. (Not.)
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:5, Interesting)
"ALLLOT" IS NOT A WORD! (Score:4, Funny)
Can we at least try to spell things the right way? Let's have some coherent discourse, and leave the typos at home.
Show the world you care about good communication. Fucking learn to communicate coherently. Classical music my fucking arse, you can't even spell.
Re:"ALLLOT" IS NOT A WORD! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"ALLLOT" IS NOT A WORD! (Score:5, Informative)
In spite of your errant pedantry, some of your points are plainly wrong.
irregadless is most definitely a word. The OED, Webster's, and the American Heritage Dictionary all contain it as a listed item. (While all "words" are not necessarily listed, all listed items are necessarily words.) It's got nearly a century of documented history. Its usage may be discouraged, but it is nevertheless a word.
virii actually IS a word, however sad this fact may be. Its use is restricted to very specific groups, which qualifies it as part of a specific linguistic register (sort of like a dialect within a social subgroup of a population). So, "virii" is the plural of "virus" in and only in the context of computer viruses being discussed by the sorts of people who think writing them is a good way to spend an afternoon and their ilk. (You may find the discussion of plurals of virus in English & Latin to be found here [linguistlist.org] of some interest. But these facts about what ought to be the correct plural according to English & Latin morphological rules do not discount the fact that "virii" entered one register of the English language via a route that "smacks of pseudo-pedantry.")
And, saddest of all, though this day has not yet come, alot will one day be a grammatical word in the English langauge. Words like "altogether", "instead", "nonetheless", "amiss", "already", and "alright" (the last of which is still in the process of gaining acceptance), all attest to the process by which words that frequently collocate coalesce into new words. Thankfully, we'll probably all be dead before "alot" becomes kosher in formal writing.
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Not yet, but I'm reaching the high-end of 40GB, and since there's no 41GB drives, that leaves me going for a 60GB unit.
I'm sure lots of people only have 10GBs of music like yourself, but many of us are going with significantly higher bitrates, and music libraries are growing fast...
Re:Enough is Enough (Score:4, Insightful)
I listen to all of them. Maybe not all of them on a regular basis, but I can't think of one that I'd be willing to say "I'm OK not listening to that ever again"
It's nice having a big chunk of that library be able to travel around with me.
While I'm certainly not everyone, there are people out there with even more than me. Just because most people are fine with a few hundred favorite songs, or a few dozen favorite albums, doesn't mean everyone is.
Also, how many 60 GB external harddrives let you play music? There may be more economical solutions out there, but the ipod is more likely to be in your pocket when you need it, and the two birds with one stone factor is pretty big for some people.
July or August, eh? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:July or August, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
Dave
Use for 60GB HD (Score:4, Insightful)
just with some quick calculations i did on my own, saving your music as in a lossless format uses approx. 5x as much space as a 256kb MP3.
so only 12GB of mp3's will give you your 60GB of music.
Re:Use for 60GB HD (Score:3, Interesting)
You should be able to do better than that. A cd is 1411(?) kbps. Apple Lossless comes in at about half that so really we're talking 3x as much space max.
Lossless is a waste of space on iPods (Score:5, Interesting)
The iPod's most serious drawback is its battery life. The biggest power drain on the iPod is when it spins up the HD to load new files. Encoding all your music into a lossless format will cause it to access the HD multiple times for each song, in most cases.
Therefore filling your ipod with losslessly encoded files and then playing them will flatten the battery at a very fast pace indeed.
The best use of 60gig iPod drive is to use it to store other large files - avi files for example...
Players with 60Gb drives have been out for a while (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Players with 60Gb drives have been out for a wh (Score:4, Informative)
60GB... but anything else? (Score:4, Interesting)
Does Apple have any plans to beef up their offerings, or are they counting on consumers to keep paying for the iPod's hipster image?
Re:60GB... but anything else? (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, the iPod works with Audible.com. The iRiver does not.
Re:60GB... but anything else? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:60GB... but anything else? (Score:5, Insightful)
What exactly is stupid about it? Players with DRM, such as the iPod, and the Creative players, can play files without DRM. Players without DRM, on the other hand, cannot play files with DRM (without hacking or kludging).
Hence, the players with DRM provide the most flexibility.
Re:60GB... but anything else? (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the "hipster image", well, that's marketing and it's how they sell iPods. Most slashdotters may see it as disappointing that successful products aren't sold on specs. But the dominant group of consumers don't care. They'd much rather have something that's well culturally regarded ("hip") that they can figure out and utilize without too much effort. This is what Apple does and that's why they're so successful with this product. Also be glad that you can get what you want in the iHP 120. But it's unreasonable to expect Apple to market directly to a niche like geeks with the iPod.
They get a better deal than we do... (Score:5, Interesting)
But it brings up an interesting point... right now there are far more digital music players out there on the market than there are makers of small-factor HDs.
Re:They get a better deal than we do... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, actually it looks like it was just a matter of Creative Labs eating the extra cost of the CF drives to get the units out the door on-time.
Almost immediately, the CF card disappeared, and it was replaced with an identical-looking hard drive with only an IDE interface (not really a CF card).
If you've got an example of any other MP3 players selling for less than the cost of the drive alone, I'll eat my words...
Re:They get a better deal than we do... (Score:4, Informative)
Or even the iPod mini... here's the hard drive [google.com] and the mini only costs $249 vs $385 for the stock hard drive.
Woohoo! (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll be really psyched when 80 GBs are available, and then (dream dream) it'll take a 160 GB iPod to make me really, really happy.
This might not seem like a big deal, but when I'm travelling, especially when I'm flying my Cherokee 180-D across country, I won't be able to anticipate what I'll really want to listen to - and I invariably want to hear something that I didn't bring along.
And if you think iPods are expensive, you should price avionics on an airplane. Or really just about anything on an airplane.
Re:Woohoo! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Interesting)
I also keep another 900 GB offline in a storage unit as a backup. I do not want to have to rerip. So that's a surcharge of $1.33 per CD, which means that my music infrastructure is done. I never have to worry about it again, modulo replacing harddrives and reencoding to new codecs, at least until 5.1/SACD/DVD-Audio/Whatever mature as audio formats with the whole software ecology around them evolving. It's tempting, but I don't like that I'd have to use an Apple closed source tool to access the data. Right now, I can convert my AIFFs on any system with a C compiler and a firewire port, so it's safer format. That decision will change if I can ever get source for something that will decode ALE back to WAV of AIFF.
Similarly, I don't use the other lossless encoders because they're not supported in iTunes/iPod, my preferred music playback platforms.
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Funny)
Twit.
Re:Woohoo! (Score:5, Interesting)
That would be very cool, but FAA rules are kind of strange about this sort of thing. If a device is defined to be portable, it's the PIC's (Pilot In Command's) judgment as to whether it can be used in the cockpit safely without interfering with the airworthiness of the aircraft.
On the other hand, if it's a fixed installation, there's a ton of paperwork and bureacracy that has to be gone through in order to get FAA approval and navigating it correctly is neither quick nor cheap.
Worse than that, but as a mere pilot, I'm not authorized to do more than minor cosmetic and maintenance tasks on my airplane - I need somebody certified by the FAA to work on avionics in order to work on my panel. And they do not work cheap.
On top of all that, I do want to be able to take my music library with me in the car too, so portable is preferable to me anyway.
Drives? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Drives? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Drives? (Score:4, Funny)
Pricing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pricing (Score:5, Informative)
right now
15gig = $299
20 = $399
40gig = $499
it would make sense if....
20 gig = $299
40gig = $399
60gig = $499
or something like that depending on what drives are available
though it depends on what kind of deal Apple get's on the drives..... Apple has said theyw ould like to lower the prices on the iPods as much as possible, but there is a set profit margin. as parts come down in price, so will retail prices. the iPod Mini follows another parts list and plan, and those drives are another manufacturer, so it's price has nothing much to do with this.
Portable HD durability? (Score:5, Interesting)
Something I've always wondered: just how resistant are these HDs to (physical) shocks? If you drop an iPod while it's reading from the disk, for example, will it still work or will you be left with a worthless chunk of metal and plastic? Portable devices tend to get a lot of wear and tear, so I'd tend to stay away from anything using such a seemingly fragile storage medium.
Real world - drives are like a tank (Score:5, Informative)
I think few things short of a sledge hammer are even going to make the iPod skip, much less harm the drive. I have yet to ever hear the iPod skip for any reason.
I did have a little less luck with a portable photo storage device that used an HD - I was jogging along with it in the lower pocket of my shorts bouncing against my leg while it was writing files from a CF card to the HD. In that case I did manage to get one bad sector on the drive, but that was pretty good considering the abuse it was going through (I wanted to see what extremes it could take for shock while operating). I don't know if that drive (standard laptop drive) was any differently speced than the iPod drive though.
Sure hope... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sure hope... (Score:4, Funny)
How long is the iPod thing going to last? (Score:3, Interesting)
The iPod is a different thing. It's just a music player with some storage and a cool look. It's the kind of thing that can be designed fairly easily. It requires the iTunes service, but that's also something which any company can set up for not too much money. I guess it gives Apple some "cred" but it also sets Apple up to be priced out of the market when iPod-like things become commodities. Just wondering... Do any iPod users have thoughts on this?
---------
WML porn [steamymobile.com] - you must have a WML-capable browser like Opera to click that link
Re:How long is the iPod thing going to last? (Score:3, Informative)
But mostly it's a work of art... note tha
Re:How long is the iPod thing going to last? (Score:4, Insightful)
They had some iPod minis coming in. Buying frenzy ensued, and the color ones (blue only) were sold out in half an hour. Imagine a 50% off sale of Hermes (or LV) bags in Japan - it was kind of like that.
This is a fashion phenomenon, like none has happened in technology before. People buy them because they are sexy, sleek, the thing to have - especially the minis.
So this is not just a piece of tech with a cool look. It's a cool look (if you want to put it that way) with a piece of tech. Therefore, the competition will fail - they don't get it. Of all tech companies, Sony is probably the only one which would be able to launch a successful competitor. But they haven't so far...
The iPod, especially the mini, is about one thing: Being the coolest person in the gym - or in any other social situation. And you don't get there with a Dell, a Creative XYZ or an Archos whatever.
The biggest danger to the iPod thing, therefore, is fashion itself. Fashion trends tend to be unstable and things that were cool last year tend to be not cool anymore this year. But i somehow think the iPod will be spared this fate - maybe the Design is too timeless for that to happen.
Here we go again... (Score:5, Funny)
1. 60GB?!? Who would ever use that much space?
2. 60GB?!? Thank god, I'm out of space on my 40GB.
3. Does it support Ogg?
4. Stop whining about Ogg!
5. Apple rules!
6. Apple sucks/is dying/is out of touch!
7. Imagine a Beowulf cluster...
8. The Nomad/Muvo/two cans and a stick are just as good or better.
9. I, for one, welcome our excessive HD space Overlords
10. In Soviet Russia 60GB iPods buy You!
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Funny)
11. I don't have ears, you insensitive clod!
Re:Here we go again... (Score:5, Funny)
Affordable harddrive sub $100 MP3 players ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Affordable harddrive sub $100 MP3 players ? (Score:4, Informative)
Sorry to shoot your idea down so harshly, but now you know the reason no one makes portable mp3 players with 3.5" drives.
In the Year 2012 . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:In the Year 2012 . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Easy -- listen to the newly-released Duke Nukem Forever soundtrack.
Cheers,
IT
Reinforces the video-capable iPod rumours (Score:3, Interesting)
People asking who could possibly need 60GB for music storage (by the way, I can't fit all my music library on my 40GB model) are possibly missing the point of the need for greater storage capacity.
Sure, 60GB is a lot of 6MB music files, but it it's a whole lot fewer movie files.
Personally, I think a fully multimedia iPod would no longer be an iPod, but I'm sure that Apple would find it hard not to capitalise on its mega-brand if the potential market for such devices ever became widespread enough.
Pah! 60 GB? That's nothing. MS xPod will top it! (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft's xPod will have 600 GB! It will go for 8 months on a single charge, and cost less than $50.
Hell, we may even give them away in cereal packets!
Please wait for it and don't go buying one of those silly white iPods. Our xPod will be black. Black is cool! It will run super-DRM, hyper-product activated music in the form of the industry standard (it's a STANDARD okay... or else) WMA, which is what everyone wants, in the sense of "here's where you're going today" kind of wants.
And no, there is no truth that WMA stands for "We May Ask for your first child." Who do you think we are, bloodsucking vampires or something. (Looks like we'll have to start using smaller print on the EULAs.)
Oh please please please wait for the Microsoft xPod. I wanna be just like you Steve. I've even started to wear turtlenecks and say "phenomenal" all the time... We wants it, the precious.
Home Folder on iPod (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a quick reminder (Score:5, Insightful)
"iPod is a good product, but nothing to get excited over." - harlows_monkeys
"It's not cool at all. It's just another Mac attempt to have the coolest looking, hippest sounding gadget on the market. It adds nothing serious to the current options. For instance, no Ogg Vorbis support (and yes, I realize it probably decodes mp3 in hardware, but...) and it doesn't appear to be cross-platform. I guess this falls into the Dilbert principle of "the best target market is stupid rich people." Since they'll fall for anything and have the money to burn on it." - ichimunki
"...the "rose-colored glasses that you will need for this to seem like a worthwhile product. What a let-down, geez!!" - david614
"People need to realize that all apple ever really delivers is mediocre equipment that, while it may look really cool, is less technically advanced/powerfull/whatever than competing products that cost 20-25% less." - greysky
"A waste of time. Probably OEMed by someone else. Agree with the article poster - Lame. Not only is this a lackluster MP3 unit (which by virtue of being firewire will be limited to Apple Mac owners), but it has virtually no UI wizardry that might define it as an Apple product. A total waste of time." - Ars-Fartsica
"I'd rather pay $100 for a Rio Volt. 700mb of songs per CD with an unlimited number of CD's, provided you change them. Yeah, this should compete favorably with the solid state units, but they've already lost to the CD-MP3 units, IMO." - Fred Ferrigno
"I think it'll sell as well as the G4 Cube. Oops.
"And I was all excited they were gooing to release a OS X based wireless web pad. Instead we get yet another portable MP3 player
"I am very sad that Apple seems to be repeating the same mistake they made with the Cube - great, nifty product that anyone would love to own, except that it's burdened by an unbelievably poor price/performance ratio." - jchristopher (Apple shareholder)
"...this was a VERY poor design decision. This could have been a $150 device if they'd used a regular laptop drive." - jchristopher again
Re:Too much space! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because you don't have that much music doesn't mean other people don't.
Re:Too much space! (Score:4, Interesting)
Mo cap is better always.
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Insightful)
While I had thought about this, I realized that my iPod is also the bit of storage that I own most likely to be stolen. Having my critical files (i.e. financial records, tax returns, address books, etc.) on a device that has a (relatively) high likelyhood of being lost or stolen seems like a very bad idea.
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Insightful)
On second thought, of course, you could always encrypt everything that you store there, but that's a more complex backup system and one that I'd bet a lot of people aren't as likely to keep up with...
But yeah, encryption is an option, dare I say a necessity, if you want to use your iPod for backup.
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Too much space! (Score:4, Informative)
[Fnord:/Users] fred% ls -Fal
(snippity)
drwxr-xr-x 4 fred fred 136 5 Nov 2003
drwx------ 69 fred fred 2346 2 Jun 17:02 fred/
(snippity)
[Fnord:/Users] fred% ls -Fal
(snippity)
-rwxr--r-- 1 fred fred 7476502528 3 Jun 16:17 fred.sparseimage*
So, basically, in your
- A link of some kind to
- A directory called
In the directory called
Have fun.
-fred
Re:Too much space! (Score:4, Insightful)
And what was that someone said about not storing the MP3s on the player, where they could get lost? Hello, you have them on both. And actually, my home HD busted recently, and the only MP3s I didn't lose were the 30GB of music on my iPod. Next time, I'll back them all up, so I don't need to rerip.
Re:Too much space! (Score:3, Funny)
Someone must be able to do this, people RAID'ed floppy drives on a mac, why not iPods.
Re:Too much space! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Informative)
-17 gig songs (granted, a 4000+ collection is fairly rare... and i could go to 128 instead of 160)
-Encrypted backup disk images of
digital pictures of friends, family, myself
backup documents from all my classes
family guy episodes
-Standard apple iSync stuff (very small, mind you)
contacts, address book, iCal, etc
I have about 3 gigs free right now (not COMPLETELY full, but close). Bear in mind, my music collection continues to grow, and I have stuff from my office that would be nice to have another backup in my pocket... just in case.
So absurd? probably. But if i didn't have an iPod and was given a choice between a 20,40, and 60... i might still jump for the 60. Always better to have room to grow.
Now that's Paranoia! (Score:5, Funny)
Wow. What kinda tinfoil-beanie wearing nutjob do you have to be to encrypt your family photos? Who're your family, the Sopranos or the Bin Ladens?
Re:Now that's Paranoia! (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd guess he's not encrypting them because they're family photos, but just because he encrypts all his backup data. I do the same, just on general principles--it may be overkill, but better overkill than underkill, no?
Re:Now that's Paranoia! (Score:5, Insightful)
more than music (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:more than music (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Interesting)
Peace
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Informative)
Nearly lost a late cut of the film in a mugging as well if the DVD is to be believed.
Digital Pics on iPod (Score:4, Informative)
Heck, yeah. If I had an iPod, I'd be all over this media reader [drbott.com]. It's a bit bulky, but you can download photos to it, then when you sync up with iPhoto once you get back to your computer, it keeps the shots in the "rolls" you shot them in. Nice.
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Funny)
Next thing you know cops will pull you over just to scan through your iPod's storehouse looking for pirated music. No doubt someone will die choking on the iPod he frantically tried to swallow...
Re:Too much space! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Too much space! (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe Apple will also join the video bandwagon as they step up to the bigger drives?
Re:Too much space! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how narrowly people seem to need to define the iPod. And I'm surprised that so many slashdotters can't seem to see past the "iPod == music player" shortsightedness.
iPod is a great music player, but it's also a great way to carry around a LOT of data of any kind.
iPod is also a hardware platform. That fact is emphasized by Apple's recent reorganization into a Macintosh group and an iPod group. At the moment it seems to be a relatively closed platform, but it has a processor, plenty of memory, a big disk, power, and I/O. It remains to be seen how Apple will use that platform, and when, but it's a pretty good guess that they'll do something interesting with it.
Software Thieves Will Rejoice (Score:4, Insightful)
With 60GBs at their disposal, the possibilities are endless.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Somebody's gonna buy it... (Score:3, Interesting)
It's not the fastest firewire drive on the turnpike, but it rocks in terms of dual-use. Came in quite handy when I wanted to repartition and put Yellow Dog Linux alongside OS X on my Powerbook.
Re:Somebody's gonna buy it... (Score:3, Interesting)
It wouldn't surprise me if we see the same thing with higher capacity mini-HDs. Apple's surely willing to pay some premium to be the only ones who can ship a 60G mp3 player.
Re:Somebody's gonna buy it... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not reading the article I can understand, but not reading the fucking summary?
Toshiba today announced that it will offer a 60GB version of its 1.8-inch hard drive in the coming months and that Apple has already placed its order.
Re:iPod and UFS (Score:5, Informative)
Just because a linux kernel can read UFS doesn't mean it's GPL'd. Almost any unix including commercial ones like Solaris can use UFS. In fact it is the default filesystem used by Solaris. Nowhere does Sun distribute the source to their UFS implementation.
And then there is this:
$ uname -a
FreeBSD xxxx.xxx 5.2.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE
$ pwd
$ grep -ir GPL
$
So are the BSD guys violating too? Not likely.
Re:iPod and UFS (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:iPod and UFS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:iPod and UFS (Score:4, Informative)
Because its not a GPL'd file system?
UFS stands for UNIX file system, which was originally developed from the first versions of UNIX at AT&T. The file system reached its current status in the 4.x BSD distributions. It it currently used in FreeBSD, NetBSD as well as OpenBSD and the Solaris Operating Environment. Linux support is available, but is not standard.
Now, take a deep breath and repeat after me. Not all that is open source is GPL.
Re:iPod and UFS (Score:3, Interesting)
No, in fact it's well-known that the iPod is using HFS+. It was a big issue when the iPod first came out, because Linux users were hoping to use it, and Linux has HFS support (but not HFS+).
As for the Windows version of the iPod, I would imagine it's using FAT32, but I don't know that. I find it highly unlikely that Apple would write a UFS filesystem driver for Windows, just for their iPod.
Personally, I would much prefer if they DID
Re:iPod and UFS (Score:5, Informative)
here's a fantastic idea,
instead of removing the hdd from your ipod and potentially voiding your warranty say y or m to;
"CONFIG_SCSI", "CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD", "CONFIG_IEEE1394", "CONFIG_IEEE1394_SBP2"
reboot with your new kernel (or modprobe the modules) connect your ipod and mount as you did before (except it will appear as a scsi disk)
Re:Arrest Upon Purchase (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gyroscopic effect (Score:3, Informative)
It's legal to, you know, shift the format from CD to ogg/mp3. So I took my entire CD collection (~350 CDs) and ripped them to shiny, high-quality ogg files. All legally. No more scratches, no more blips, no more hunting for disc. I'm listening to them right now, in fact.
It's not a crime to own digital media formats, you know.
Re:I think the real interesting question is... (Score:3)
Either way, they'll surely drop one of the models when adding a new one, and probably the smallest one (15), which whould leave 20, 40 and 60. Or, they could go 20, 30, 60. We
Re:A bit of an off-shoot... (Score:4, Informative)
The Neuros beats the Karma in a lot of ways. I know this because I have a Neuros and my brother has a Karma. The Neuros can record from line-in (also has a cheap built-in mic which works for recording lectures) to either MP3 or WAV. It can also broadcast over FM radio (which is great for the car / anywhere someone has a radio but no decent music). It works as a normal HD (USB2 now even). The backpack system rocks too: A new 40G USB2 backpack will be running me $260 instead of $330 for a new player (I sort of dropped my 20G backpack one too many times...). With my now dead 20G backpack (gah, making fun of hardcore kids skanking and getting beat up at a death metal show is NOT a smart thing to do with an mp3 player in your hand) the battery backpack has become a lifesaver; even though I can only fit two or three albums on the 128M of flash (the new Neuros II due out in about two weeks has 256M of flash and looks cooler) it's still a lot nicer to carry the Neuros around than my two CD binders (270 discs now ... that's too many to carry around safely).
The Karma, on the other hand, has better playlist management and a much better equalizer (parametric eqs are fun...but only if you know what you are doing). The visualizations are nice and all but are basically just useless (and battery draining) eye candy. I'd gladly take a Neuros over a Karma any day. If the Neuros would release 1.8" drive based backpacks...the iPod would be dead in a minute. Size is the only thing holding it back now that Firmware 2.x supports all of the things people have been asking for since the beginning.
And if you're looking for just a portable hard drive, you can always get a USB2 backpack from the Neuros store [neurosaudio.com], a power adaptor, and a USB2 cable...all for around $300 total for a portable HD (the USB2 packpacks can operate as standalone hard drives without the head) that can operate on its built in battery for a while (which is great for quick transfers; at USB2 speed I've found that I can copy the entire drive in around 15 minutes and without needed the power cable at all). If you get the urge to listen to music it's only $100 more to get a head for your backpack.
And think about the guy who has 160G of music. Just grab a few 40G backpacks and swap between them; much cheaper than getting the same number of Karmas or iPods. 60G backpacks are supposed to be released sometime soonish too (and 1.8" HD backpacks...in December; they may or may not meet it...but the Neuros II is at least confirmed as shipping June 10 because several resellers have been preselling it).
Re:60GB on the go??? (Score:5, Insightful)
A $500 iPod is pocket change.
Cheap insurance, especially if you keep your CDs in a safety deposit box