Best technology to consume ChinesePod

I use an iPod shuffle because it's cheap, and I can use it when I'm jogging or riding my bicycle. Usually my shuffle is 1/2 full of Chinesepod and 1/2 full of music so I can listen to CPod until my energy starts to wain and then kick out the jams. I print out the PDFs so I can make notes on the side and circle any characters or phrases that give me trouble. I also use the margins to practice writing hanzi that I have never seen before or want to reinforce. I'm sure many people have different methods of using Cpod but I tend to try to disconnect from the screen and use the audio as audio and the written PDFs as hardcopy. Only when I'm at the computer will I do everything on-screen.

scottyb did you mean that you can download the lesson pdf and read it on your nano? how do you do that? i have a 30G ipod, the most recent video ipod (not the ipod touch.)

I am not anywhere as studious as Rash or many other devoted poddies. My purpose isn't so much to learn hanzi as much as to improve my speaking and verbal comprehension. This is how I use CPod: I have all my lessons on my 30G iPod. I listen everyday, multiple times, either while driving, working out, or working around the house. I've never owned any other MP3 devices (so can't compare), but I love my iPod.

An item you may want to consider is a PDA smartphone. Most of these handhelds have mp3 capablities. What helps push this line of thinking into major contention is Pleco Software. Pleco Software produces a very useful electronic Chinese/English English/Chinese dictionary for many PDA systems. http://www.pleco.com/ Making this choice will allow you to have a phone, mp3 player, Chinese dictionary, etc, etc, all in one item. Creative makes good MP3 players also.

I'm like the others with their iPods. I listen to lessons on headphones while doing farm chores (we live on a small homestead in the country), waiting for takeout food, sitting in the waiting room at the dentist, etc. Sometimes I use a speaker dock with my iPod so I can have it playing while I do dishes, make dinner, etc. I rarely listen in the car--just my personal preference. When I think I'm more or less done with the set of lessons on my iPod, I play them one more time while looking at the PDFs on my computer. I use a little notebook to write down key points and new vocab that I'd like to file away.

"It is funny how one can take Ken, Jenny and John, et al, with you - it's like you never are without your friends!" Awww, shucks! ::blush!::

I do 95+% of my chinesepod listening in the car, and found that investing in a new car stereo with an iPod interface was an *awesome* investment. I would highly recommend it. I have all of the newbie lessons along with 30 lessons of Pimsleur Mandarin 3, and the new "dialogs" and "fixes" all on a 4gb mini.... It's so convenient, I never listen to anything in my car other than chinese lessons - unless I have passengers :-) (btw, I would recommend something larger than mini - at least 20gb) But, it depends on your financial tolerance. My cheaper model Alpine stero (you don't need an expensive one) along with iPod cable cost just over $200 (and the iPod was free from work). I personally am waiting on the iPod touch, until they add a hard-drive. I've been playing with an iPhone (from work), and loaded it up with videos (transcoded "Sexy Beijing", "Communicate in Chinese", "Happy China" episodes), but it filled up way too quickly. I've tried using a Treo650 smarthpone to listen on airplanes, but I found the iPod to be much easier to use.

John... Friends or voices in my head speaking in tongues (chinese tongues at that)?

I second Man2Toe's comment that Pleco is a great dictionary program. It has great handwriting recognition so is awesome for characters you don't know the pinyin on and builds your handwriting skills. It is the only reason I have a PDA and well worth it, but I gave up doing my C-Pod from a PDA, the iTunes program is so user friendly and useful. I now do my C-Pod exactly as Rash described above, cheap iPod shuffle for audio, reading and writing on paper.

I do all of my Chinese study on my PDA. Yes, ALL of it! As an mp3 player, it has the advantage of playing through its own little speaker when the headphones are not plugged in. In the car, I just plug into a small set of PC speakers lying on my dash board. While it's playing, sure you can view the PDF on the PDA, but I like to be able to view AND edit while it's playing. So I grab the hanzi from the plain text version (link at bottom of each PDF), and put that into a text file on the SDCard while I'm copying the latest mp3s across. CJKOS (cheap) lets you display and input Chinese on a Palm PDA. You can store masses of plain text in hardly any space at all, most likely in the built in Memos program as one lesson per memo, and of course the Search command will find all instances of, say, "你好" wherever they exist in the whole system. There's always a calendar and a todo program with the PDA, which both take recurring items, can set alarms, etc, and that's one way of planning your future study. Another built in program, Notepad, lets you draw freehand notes, e.g. writing practice. If you want a flashcard program, for words you can't go past PlecoDict's flashcards, but if you want to do whole sentences, there's a freeware program called VocabularyCards which also does spaced repetition and all that fancy stuff. In fact, after you've purchased PlecoDict and CJKOS, you never have to spend a cent on software. There's many thousands of freeware items to do almost anything you can imagine on a Palm, and CJKOS makes them all work in Chinese too. For example, I have a program that lets me change the ID3 tags while the mp3 is on the PDA, a secure password record keeper, SQL, C and Forth programming environments, project management and mind mapping and work hours billing software, Mahjong and other games, time-lapse photography, Cantonese text-to-speech (Mandarin coming soon), and a large collection of classical Chinese texts and other readables from Gutenberg or simply grabbed text from web pages. I don't bother doing hotsync, it's too damn slow and fiddly. I just shove the card into the PC and copy stuff across each morning. Get a free backup program (NVBackup, or for older models InnerBackup or RFBackup) that backs up absolutely everything in memory to the card, then back the card up to the PC and you're well covered, much better protected than with sync. A 1 gig SDCard is probably enough but 2 gig is better, and with 4 gig (that's the maximum) you can be lazy and leave a lot more stuff on there than you're going to listen to. I can't think of any study task that I can do on my computer that I can't do on my PDA, absolutely anywhere. There are some things that work better or that my PC can't do, like watching movies, taking pictures and movies, recording my voice and conversations. There is only one limitation. Because of the character set, it is not possible to do pinyin with tone marks, you have to do numbered pinyin, and that takes a whopping ten minutes to become comfortable with. The most empowering feature, though, is being able to input Chinese, so you can be active and not just passive all the time while the lessons are playing. With CJKOS, you can also highlight some Chinese and ask it to spit out the pinyin for you, or press a different button for PlecoDict to pop up its dictionary entry, without even taking your feet off the picnic table. There's two or three long threads on the Forum for anyone who's interested in Palm PDAs. Now tell me why I need to pay four times as much for an ipod and/or be a slave to my desk and the network.

Pretty much iPod all the way. i've got 280+ lessons on my 20 gb third generation iPod. The only problem is when I riding the subway. I don't have noise cancelling ear phones : ( What is convenient is that you can sync iTune podcasts automatically or just download from the site. I trim each lesson to make it a bit shorter, cutting out some of the beginning and ending segments, to get to the heart of the lesson. Or I can edit similar segments together to make one mp3 file. Using the mp3's in the car is pefect for "du3 che1". I just pop in a ChinesePod mp3/CD and practice while inching along on the road. It is funny how one can take Ken, Jenny and John, et al, with you - it's like you never are without your friends!

Thanks for you input to this It sounds like people are pretty happy with their iPods although everyone listens to them nobody mentioned whether they read the text from the pods on the iPods too. Key for me is ease of use, I have a WM5 smartphone (from work) but it fries SD cards so there is not enough storage and getting things too and from it takes me too long, not to mention the fun I had getting it to display chinese characters. I do like the sound of just getting iTunes to do sychronisation with no input from me..... I do use my work tablet pc to practice Hanzi but I wanted something I could stick all my chinese stuff on and then use it wherever I am (I sure need the practice). I'm going to go look some more, but I think an iPod looks favourite.

trevorb, I read text from the iPod at times, but usually I'm listening in the car during my commute so I will ALWAYS wait until I get in the parking lot (ALWAYS, I swear...ahem). Even then, I often just use it to look up specific characters that are new. Plus, the text on my iPod is pretty small, so for the written part, I generally rely on my review time on the website. I must admit, I'm a bit like AZERDocMom in that I primarily work on speaking and listening. I'd like to concentrate more on the writing, but with kids, job, and teaching I don't have as much time for Cpod as I would like.

Okay, I admit it. Sometimes I sneak a peek while I'm driving. I hope my insurance agent doesn't study Chinese.

I'm a little surprised all the mobile users, but like Henning, I use my small notebook. I like to have my tools handy (dictionaries, hanzibar, excercises, etc)

Henning, I don't really fit the model of the future mobile worker they're trying to market to, because when mobile I'm not networked, and don't want to be. That's where they want to make the money, and their new developments leave me cold. RonInDC, I totally agree, and I too have all of my tools handy, like those you mentioned, in a little flat box clipped to my waist. Sometimes I take along a similar sized fold up keyboard to speed up mass input sessions. You'd prefer the brand of tools you're used to, though, and the main thing is to have them with you in the way that's convenient to you. People who carry notebooks or use desktops: what do you do when you have only ten minutes to do some reading or exercises? Boot up and make it five, or use paper?

Scottyb (we share the b!) so apart from being small the text is readable? i.e. the Hanzi show ok? That might mean with a bigger screen they'd be clear for me...that might mean I have to go for the touch as its screen is an inch bigger and higher resolution. Aunty Sue: My work tablet PC runs vista and has a pretty efficient sleep mode. I use the handwriting recognition (in boring meetings) to practice hanzi. It seems quite sensitive to stroke order so if I do it wrong I get something.....odd. End of the day I don't own the device though so I don't like to leave personal stuff on it (plus I'm not sure I want my employer knowing I'm learning chinese....not great if they bring in an executive from china for me to entertain, get my tones wrong and I could be queing for a new job ;-) ) Whilst on the subject of technology and learning chinese are there any voice recognition programs out there. It occurs to me that could be a way for me to practice my speech in the abscence of anyone chinese.....

Aunty Sue- Your routine is quite impressive. I'll have to study it through it to see if I can benefit from it. I won't boot up unless I have at least 20 minutes. A huge disadvantage is I'm dependent on Wifi outside my home. I have stuff downloaded onto my IPod, but I'd get frustrated without my tools. For those who can practice while doing their routines, that's a great thing.

trevorb, It's not great, but I'd say it's surprisingly readable. My initial thought was "no way" (不信）but it's not too bad, and I have a nano. The resolution seems quite good, so a bigger screen may be great. Now that I think about it, there is probably even a way to change the text size of the display. I'll have to look into that.

AuntieSue, you are indeed the "model mobile worker", who according to all those priests of mobile business will become the dominating future consumer & business generation. But for me? No. I tried some of that, but didn't work for me. 太麻烦。Old-fashioned, or maybe only old. I have my notebook with me most of the time which beats all competing smaller device with its keyboard and the large screen. If the notebook is not with me, I am usually in a "hands-free-mode" and can at best listen to my MP3-player.