Ipod or karma again

chice is a mk2 ipod not the current skinny one or a karma

easy chioce the karama but i got a mac so that complicates things slightly

It will be used in flights and in the 7 as the empeg ain't going in the 7 due to vibraton,space,water,security issues

So any thoughts

Karma (empeg in a box) or ipod (musical fire wire drive)

For flying, I'd think battery life would be an issue. The Karma wins big on this one. Also, if you're traveling a lot managing your player might be something you're concerned about. As I understand it (and I could by WAY wrong as I've never owned an iPod), you can only manage your iPod from one machine and if you hook to a different one it'll wipe out your player since the existing tunes won't be on that machine.

Tough choice!

The iPod is very mac-friendly, and since you're a mac owner, it might be a no-brainer.

But then there's the battery life question. If you're going to use it in your car and on airplane flights, the 15-hour battery life of the Karma might make all the difference. I'm not sure what the exact battery life of the iPod is, but I get the impression that the Karma is about double the iPod. If your flights are frequently overseas flights, the Karma might be your only option.

But remember that if you use the Karma with your Mac, you can only load tunes with ethernet, so you won't get the speed benefit of USB2. Ethernet to the Karma will be faster than sending tunes to your empeg was, so you'll still see an improvement of speed, but it won't be nearly as fast as firewire-iPod or USB2-Karma from a PC. Also, you'll have to find a friend with a PC any time you want to do a firmware upgrade on your Karma (the upgrades only work on USB2).

But the features of the Karma are pretty darn cool, certainly you can do more stuff with organizing and selecting your music than you can with the iPod. And there's that battery life to think about still...

I'm guessing you don't buy your music from iTunes, so AAC support isn't a critical issue for you...

If you have a lot of custom playlists on your Empeg, you can (with Mike Schrag's utilities) copy those directly over to the Karma, hierarchy and all. Maybe that is the clincher for you?

Any attempt to play music in a Caterham deserves an ultra-flaming. The engine noise is all the music you need.

I'm the proud owner of a Ipod 40Gb and a Karma. The Karma beats the Ipod all the way. It's FAR FAR more superiour in both sound, technical features, ease of use and last but not least batterylife.

I travel alot on planes, and use the Karma to help me focus on work in the sometime noisy planeenviroment. I can strongly recommend the karma over the Ipod.

Cheers

Kaare

Yes i know i have sinned i considered tunes in a 7

On the odd occasion that i end up on a mtorway it might be used

But when blatting the exhaust wins hands down, full race exhaust with tiny silencer and long headers that give lovely torque and a great noise.

But i think flights are going to the main use

Also, you'll have to find a friend with a PC any time you want to do a firmware upgrade on your Karma (the upgrades only work on USB2).

When the next firmware for the Karma comes out, I am going to try and load it via VirtualPC on the Mac, since VirtualPC can capture a USB device to pass on to the slave OS.

An iPod is equally friendly on a MacOS or Windows machine now that iTunes exists on both sides. While the Karma supports more operating systems via Java to sync music, the iPod wins for having 2 operating systems that can do a dock and auto-sync.

Personally for me, the big thing was the ability to open Jemplode and just sync my empeg and Karma. There still seems to be a few issues with this (issues I will troubleshoot a bit more here soon), but a portable empeg beats out the iPod in my book.

the karma it is