MP3 players for dummies

I spend at least an hour a day in my car and listen to audio books to kill time. Since my library is going to subscribe to downloadable books, I've decided that I really need to break down and get an MP3 player. I love new technology, but I've never had much interest in getting a player for some reason and I know absolutely nothing about them, how they work, how to get it to play in my car, etc. I've read some of the threads on this board already, but they didn't really answer my questions. If anyone wants to help me out, it'll be appreciated.

I don't want to spend a ton on this, but how cheap can you go and have something useable? Any particular brands that are recommended or should be avoided as far as quality goes? Impressing my friends or having one that's very cool is not high on my priority list, it'd be more like an added bonus. :)

What accessories would I need to play this in a car? I found some things called FM transmitters on Bestbuy, is that what is used? How does that work? In my cars (both of which are 10+ years old), I only have cassette players with AM/FM. For anyone that has a car kit, how is the quality?

How are these with batteries? Are you better off getting some sort of charger or something to plug into the car's cigarette lighter? It would mostly be for car use, I don't use a portable player all that much.

Do these things just plug into a computer via a USB port or what exactly do you use?

From what little I've been able to find, it seems that book files are around 100MB each, and of course you don't need to have more than one at a time, really. I'd also like to be able to get some music on there. I never listen to any anymore because all my CD players are broken and I haven't bothered to replace them. I used to be a real music-obsessive, I dunno what happened.

Thanks to anyone who can help me out here. :)

you use USB. usb 1.1 can work, so can 2.0, and so can fire wire.

I'll just give you a brief on what i know, but in general going on amazon helps a lot and just searching on the internet is nice also.

iRiver and iPod are two separate things.
The best brands are zen/nomad, iRiver, iPod, and Sony.

Zen, there are multiple versions of them their website is www.creativelabs.com
I'm probably getting either the xtra or touch.
iRiver, these guys have been doing mp3 stuff for a while and they have the best mp3 flash players, which are different then the harddrive ones. Flash players are really small and only hold a gig or something, while harddrive ranges from 10 gigs to 60 gigs. But the standard is 20 and 40 gigs.
www.iriver.com
Sony has the best techonlogy overall, but it gets screwed because of crappy software. Their network walkman thing is phenomenal. It has huge batterlife, great interface, outstanding sound, perfect atrac3 format which sounds just as good as mp3, if not better, along with a smaller amount of size taken up. However sony in an effort to prevent pirating has these dumb digital rights things that are really screwed up, also their cost is quite high, and sonic stage is known to crash for no reason. Some people don't like converting their mp3's or whatevers to atrac3 i say, atrac3 is the best music format by miles and miles. However atrac3 is only useable with sony products. I wouldn't go with sony's audio thing though.
iPod
obviously most popular, i don't like it cause while you can transfer music too it you can't transfer music off of it, this is apple's way of preventing sharing of music. iPod has a little touch wheel thing which is really nice and it has the best interface along with sony, but i personally don't like ipod's.

The cheapest are the zen's stuff. Mainly zen Xtra.

Anyways, any other questions, i can try to answer.

Thanks for the overview, it helps, trust me! I will definitely check out Amazon before I buy anything, their consumer reviews are great.

If anyone has ever used one of these in their car and can comment on their set up and how well/badly it works, I'd appreciate it! :)

Does anybody know when the new Creative Zen Micro 4GB will be available in stores in Canada? Can't seem to find a release date anywhere.

Thanks for the overview, it helps, trust me! I will definitely check out Amazon before I buy anything, their consumer reviews are great.

If anyone has ever used one of these in their car and can comment on their set up and how well/badly it works, I'd appreciate it! :)

Apple's iPod and one of Griffin's iTrip transmitters(around $35.00USD) work flawlessly. Very easy to use. Plug the pod into the itrip and dial up an FM station,,and thats it.
As far as iPod not letting you transfer music off..to me it's a non issue. Don't see the need for it, if you are transferring music onto...then you already have a copy.
I like the ipod cuz you just make your playlist in iTunes( best jukebox type software outthere IMO) and plug it in and your done.

Pretty sweet, plus you can also drag data files on it as well..handy.

Personally, I am staying away from Sony and anything with atrac on it. It is kind of nice, whenever it works. I have an mp3/CD player right now by Sony. No problems with the player itself, works great and is simple to use and get to any of 200-300 songs quickly. But the software they give you is horrendous. I have wasted a good 10-15 blank CDs trying to burn stuff only to have it fail at 90%. I've only successfully made about 6 or 7 mp3 CDs.

Whenever I save up enough money, I'm going to get an iRiver h340, which costs around $400. Very pricey, but iRiver is a great technology company for things like this. I might even try to save up more and go for one of their media players, which in addition to mp3 can play movies.

I've never used anything in the car before, so I can't help you there. I did a good bit of research on mp3 players back after Christmas, when I was going to buy one. I almost had enough money for a Creative Zen player, but opted for the Sony mp3/CD player which was much much cheaper (70 compared to 200+).

I've got an MPIO with a car lighter plug-in FM modulator...the player is fine, but the modulator leaves something to be desired...very staticy at times...I'd go for the ipod/ipod mini and the proprietary FM Modulator.

I got a Creative Zen Micro 5GB over a similar iPOD because of the removable battery, FM radio and a few other things, but I've been very dissapointed. Everything is perfect, except for the battery drain problem they all seem to have. The battery drains excessively while the player is "turned off". It goes into a stand-by mode for 24 hours which really hurts the battery time. Depending how often you listen to it, you will get anywhere from 1hr to 12 hrs of playing time. I'm considering returning it to Futureshop and getting a different MP3 player (maybe the Creative Touch 20GB which is only $50can more and has 4 times more memory and 24 hrs battery life, though no replaceable battery).