Cheap = useless (in this case)
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Kagehi Mar 10, 2005 8:39 AM EDT |
OK, maybe not totally useless. But at the time I got my player, which was a Rio, it was the only one in the store with a decent price and what 'seemed' to be a decent storage. Then I actually tried to use it.... I'm sorry, but there is a reason why the GB players are more popular, and it isn't just the fancy interface. I can fit about 2 1/2 to 3 CDs of music on mine, which is just enough to make it more convenient than a walkman, but not enough to fit all the music and play lists I really want to have on the device. I am endlessly frustrated by the fact that I can't even fit all of *one* playlist I use for my computers player, since their are simply too many songs in the list to fit. Bigger in this case is better. About the only possible benefit from the one I ended up getting is that 'maybe' I could buy a lot of expensive 1GB Sandisk memory modules and store different lists on them. Assuming it even lets me switch them out mid use. I don't know, I can't afford them any more than I could an iPod, which is what I 'should' have gotten in the first place, proprietary or otherwise. |
| devnet Mar 10, 2005 9:50 AM EDT |
Or if you're like me...128MB is more than enough. I only use my player for when I work out. I hardly even get through the entire playlist in a single workout...When I want to manage my music collection, I go to a computer on my LAN...not a portable mp3 player. |
| Kagehi Mar 11, 2005 8:52 AM EDT |
Well, that may be true Devnet. In general, I rarely run through the entire set myself. What I find a problem is "needing" to manage it. Maybe if I had near unlimited storage on my HD, so I could keep all the songs and the playlists there, but even then, it takes an annoyingly long time to wipe the Rio and upload a different set. And I don't want to listen to the same playlist every single time I use the player. If I did, I would be just as well off using a CD player and burning the songe I want for each playlist onto different CDs. The point of an MP3 player is not just to eliminate the bulk, but also to make choosing 'what' to listen to a lot easier (not to mention safer, since its a little harder to destroy a player than accidentally scratch a CD). If something basically turns into a CD player, with only slightly more capacity, but takes 20-30 minutes to change content, not 2-3 seconds, then it definitely isn't "more convenient", it just becomes an extremely expensive, if less bulky, Discman. So yes, in some ways, even a small one isn't bad, but its short comings, if you have any interest what so ever in not listening to the same two dozen songs every single time, make it even more of a pain in the rear than sorting through several CD cases to hunt down what you want. Probably the only thing on the one I have that makes it better than most CD players is the built in AM/FM radio. Sadly given how few stations we have and the fact most if not all suck.... But heh, when I go some place on a trip and and find good ones, it is a 'slight' improvement. But really, for someone to be more excited by the fact that when the songs 'in' the player run out, they can always tune into a radio station, is just sad. |
| einfeldt Mar 11, 2005 4:33 PM EDT |
It seems that you folks come from what Harvard Biz Prof Clayton Christensen calls "distinct market tiers." These market tiers have nothing to do with income or class status, but rather a defined by your needs. Kagehi wants lots of storage. He is a more "demanding" customer. For him, the cheapo MP3 player is nearly useless. He is not the kind of customer that Memorex or similar vendors would be targeting. He is what Christensen calls an "undershot" customer, someone who is willing, on this particular transaction, to pay a premium for a certain kind of functionality. Devnet, on the other hand, is a "less demanding customer." He is the kind of "overshot" customer who is not willing to pay the premium for the added functionality that Kagehi is demanding. The significance of this distinction lies in history. Historically, as innovation races ahead of the demands of the average market tiers, a type of oversupply comes to typify the market. Apple has now reached that point of oversupply, IMHO. Kagehi's implicit point is that the average market users are not overshot by iPods; he believes, for the reasons stated, that small storage MP3 players "undershoot" the needs of most of the market. Devnet seems to be taking the opposite view. IMHO, Christensen's quote near the end of the article shows that he probably tends to side more with Devnet, than with Kagehi. Or, at a minimum, Christensen tends to believe that the trend in the market will be toward greater adoption by the more "disruptive" MP3 players, as teenagers and other less demanding users' needs come to match with the functionality of the more generic MP3 players. Historically, market entrants (like Sony in the 1960s) who deploy disruptive strategies have had the right plan to dethrone market leaders (like RCA) who don't realize that the disruptive technologies are "good enough" to meet the needs of the average market users. This wave of disruption usually is ignored at first by the market leaders, because it starts in the most price sensitive market tiers, where the gross margins are the smallest. My point in writing the article was to argue that we can start to see these lower price devices start to take over the market. Disruptive technologies generally start out appealing only to the most price sensitive sectors of the market, and then they get better functionally, and start to erode market share from the bottom up. In 1870, the president of Western Union called the telephone a toy, and passed up the opportunity to buy the rights to the telephone. WU never recovered, and to this day remains a shadow of its former self in terms of market share. Christian Einfeldt einfel@yahoo.com |
| dinotrac Mar 11, 2005 11:13 PM EDT |
Oh goodness!!! And I was thinking that one of those cute little mp3 players might be nice. But if they're so disruptive, I'm not sure... |
| peragrin Mar 12, 2005 5:50 AM EDT |
I keep looking at mp3 players, and their like but I don't use my portable cd player, i can't see a need for them. Of course I also have a bluetooth enabled phone, with a bluetooth headset. Even at home I just throw the ear piece in. Leave the phone on the dresser(small house) and I don't have to worry about where my phone is. Now if someone would make one that would tie into a regular phone. |
| Kagehi Mar 12, 2005 1:40 PM EDT |
So Einfeldt.. How many teenagers do you know that only have 2-3 CDs? lol Seriously, there is a different possibility as well. Some people get overwhelmed by choice. The variety of any choice becomes so severe that they would rather go with something familiar and possibly even inferior, than sample many things, most of which might disapoint them. Someone who is satisifed with having the same songs on a player for months without changing them 'may' be such a person. However, you are wrong about one thing. I am *not* willing to spend extra to get the extra functionality. If I had the opertunity to do so, I would probably have gotten the smaller version of the iPod (not the new shuffle monstrousity, which doesn't let you order the songs the way you want), since the cost of the full model would have still been unacceptably high. My main complaint is that I paid around $150 for something that even with another 1GB sandisk (another $100??), can't even do what a $199 iPod could. I got robbed, not just due to unavailability of the choice I did want, but by an inferior alternative technology. If the price had been $149 dollars under the iPod mini, not $49, and the added memory to make it useful didn't jump the price to higher than a full iPod, I wouldn't have anything to object about. However, this is like going to a car lot and having them tall you, "Oh sorry! We are all out of our $23k cars and our $20k compact cars, but we do have this nice Sub sub-mini compact for only $14.9k, but I am afraid it only have one passenger seat, which is an extra $10k to install. Uh huh.... Who would think this is a 'good' deal? The price difference is no where near enough to make the cheaper models, even the 128MB ones, worth the expense. Basically, either they are players that shouldn't be competing with something like the iPod, since the technology is too expensive for what they try to do, or they are just flat out over priced. But they are also sadly one of the only alternatives. The only other alternative I saw when looking was a 10GB player (not in stock) that looked like an iPod clone and cost about twice as much as the full iPod.... Bet that sold real well. lol Its price vs. function. Chip based players just don't have 'enough' functionality to make up for the cost in my mind and are only a useful option as a stop-gap measure, until the price of better players drop, or I have the cash to get something better. The only real advantage I can see is keeping individual albums on flash cards, then switching those out, instead of a pile of bulky CDs. But given the cost of the flash memory, even buying 'one' already puts you over the cost of the original iPod anyway, so what is the point? |
| hkwint Mar 13, 2005 2:05 AM EDT |
Well, time for another sound here. I own a _VERY_ cheap MP3 player from apacer (costed me E70 some 6 months ago, which was very cheap in the EU back then), it only has 2 buttons, and one of them is the on / off switch. Very cheap indeed, since the other button is for managing volume, stop, pause, forward and backward, and no LCD screen. No software included, and that's good, since it would be only windows software, and I don't want to pay for it (Linux USB-modules work just fine). But, let me explain why I like the thing. I owned walkmans for several years, the more expensive ones ( 180 dutch florins then, equals some $90). But they were always screwed because sand got in it (used it when cycling 15 km to school every day), the thing got stolen at school, because I left it in my coat because it was too big to fit in my pants, the headphones broke or disappeared, the walkman screwed my tapes, you get the idea. So, if you're used to that, you want to move on. Let's look at the alternatives: DiscMan: Useless. Want fit in you're pocket, can't shake with it. MiniDisc: Too expensive for a school-going teenager who picks strawberry's to earn some cash like I did. Hard-disk-player: too expensive too for me! So, I choose the 256 MB flash-mp3 player. Indeed, my whole playlist (30Gb) won't fit on it, and the playlist repeat after a few hours. But if you're willing to sometimes plug in the mp3player in you're PC, and change the MP3's on it, it works fine (most people aren't willing to). And compared to the walkman I had, there is some progress (the walkman was designed in the 60's, back beyond when twix was called raiders, and we had to walk to the TV to change channels). Now I have the money to buy an iPod, but I can drop my mp3player I have now, leave it in the pocket of my pants, buy a new, slightly better one if this one gets stolen or I lose it in the train, without feeling too sad about losing the thing. Can you do that with such an expensive thing? |
| Kagehi Mar 13, 2005 8:15 AM EDT |
Unless E70 translates to about $10 US, then losing it would piss me off anyway. lol If I don't have the kind of cash to throw around buying one I would 'really' be worried about losing, I certainly don't have it to buy a cheaper replacement every time I leave it on the beach by accident. But I do see your general point. The price though imho is still *not* low enough to treat even the cheap ones as an easilly replacable throw away item. |
| dinotrac Mar 13, 2005 8:44 AM EDT |
Definition of "throw-away" varies with circumstances. I consider the car we just bought to be something of a throw-away: It's ten years old and we didn't pay a whole lot for it. If it lets us ride out our current rough patch, we could give it way for much less than the cost of depreciation/sales tax/new car insurance rates/car payments during that time. If we can sell it, we'll come out ahead. Of course, being a Volvo, it might ride out a bit longer than that... |
| hkwint Mar 13, 2005 9:15 AM EDT |
Kagehi: Well, you're a bit right, but today these things only cost E35 anymore, which these days translates to $45 or so (Cheap dollar! It's a pity American devices aren't becoming cheaper here, but that's a whole other discussion). That's not something I don't want to throw away either. But what I mean't, if I lose this thing, I'd be pissed off. If I were to lose my Ipod however, or dropped it on the concrete, I'd be pissed of BIG-TIME (if that's correct English), since that costs >E290, >$390. The general point here was, an IPod is 8x as expensive as a cheap useless thing, while the cheap useless thing fits my needs quite well, but that's just because of my needs maybe. (And American devices are too expensive here in comparison to their prices in the US. Someone's obvisiously making a lot of money from it). |
| Kagehi Mar 14, 2005 10:36 AM EDT |
Hmm. So about $90 more.. Yeah, that could make a major difference. $45 is about right for a 128MB even here, though by right I mean about the same price as here. But yeah, if you look at it as a slightly more expensive CD, then replacing it isn't too bad. Though, given the over pricing of CDs.... lol |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!