I seriously considered getting an iPod. Really. All the reviews I read indicated the new ones were the cat’s whiskers. Easy to use, decent hardware, and intimitately tied into iTunes. Since the lower-end ones are 20Gb, we could put our whole music collection onto it, and iTunes would keep things synced up. Sweet. It wouldn’t be cheap — the 20Gb iPod was $399 at Best Buy ($379 at CostCo), and the 40Gb was another hundred bucks more — and I wasn’t sure my driving need for it was all that critical, but … damn … I wanted one.
Except … my damned notebook has only USB 1.1 ports on it. The iPod only takes USB 2 or (preferably) Firewire.
I could get a USB 2 PC card for my notebook, but that was another $80, which was beginning to feel ridiculous. So I passed on the iPod.
After much further consideration (and many CNet reviews) later, I finally settled on the SanDisk 1Gb Digital Audio Player. It’s all-flash, so the battery life and skipping issues are gone. It’s got a simple interface, it’s drag-and-drop in Explorer to load (and, actually, Copy-Paste from iTunes), supports folder-based play-lists … and, with 1Gb, I can hold 18-20h of music, which is more than enough for most purposes of mine. It won’t fit all our current collection, but it will hold all of Kitten’s collection (for the moment).
The sound, what little I’ve tested it, is fine for my purposes. And if I ever decide to do workout music, it’s quite small and comfortable to carry.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
I considered, by the by, getting some sound-suppressing earphones. But the start (again, at Best Buy) at about $50 and go up from there. I don’t think I need them, but we’ll see if I regret that decision later on.
(Posted by CronDave)
Ummm…
Dave the prices you have listed fos Costso are wrong.
The 40gb is $399 (same as everywher else), and the 20gb is listed as $329.
Dave,
Sound-suppressing earphones are FABULOUS on a long airplane trip. I was given a pair of the 1st-generation Bose headphones for Christmas a couple of years ago, and when I use them on airplanes I feel much less fatigued when I get off the plane. I don’t use them at any other time, but they are really great for that.
iPods are pretty cool too, but that’s another story.
Stan: My bad.
David: My sleep on the flight was not all tht great. Hmmm.
Ok, do you purchase music from the ITunes store or just use the music your rip from CDs? I have a really nice MP3 player but I can’t get it to play nice with ITunes. So, I’m very curious for more infomation on how this works. Maybe you can show me at Thanksgiving. 🙂 RSVP forthcoming.
I think I have purchased one track from the iTunes store. Or maybe I just thought about it. My collection is all ripped from our CDs.
On making your MP3 player work nicely with iTunes (for Windows), here seem to be the levels:
What are you doing up so late?
Night Night!