22 Dec 2001
Matt’s in the market for a MP3 player. After reading about Ron’s preparations for his Holiday trip (transfering his CD collection to his Nomad Mp3 Jukebox), I got the hankering to buy a large-volume MP3 player for my trip home (so I don’t have to pack a lot of CDs). Sadly, the local Walmart and Staples didn’t have the Nomad, but they do have the the RCA MP3/CD Player and the
Philips MP3/CD Player (both of which I’ve found widely differing reviews for).
I’m faced with a quandry — should I wait to buy a hard drive-based player, or go now with a CD-based MP3 player?
A hard drive-based MP3 player would have a large capacity and allow me to carry practically my entire CD collection, play different types of file formats, and have upgradable features. And how cool would it be to be able to output lists of my music like Ron can with his Nomad?
A CD-based MP3 player would have theoretically unlimited capacity, but would require me to carry around discs. The players now only play MP3 files and typically aren’t upgradable. They seem to have better battery life. I’ll likely only use it for travel (which is not very often), because I spend most of my time by computers in my home or my office and can access my music from my computer’s hard drive.
If I go with a CD MP3 player, which one should I buy? The RCA player can read ID3 tags and display them on it’s little screen and recharge batteries, but the Philips player can access the discs more quickly (but only displays numbers for each folder and track).
Basically, I know whatever I might buy will be outdated in a month.
iPod.
Well, seriously, the iPod is awfully nifty but I suppose I can’t offer good advice since I’ve never felt the need to have such a player. I do, however, have megs and megs of MP3 ripped onto my laptop, which shuttles easily from home to office, sits in the passenger seat of my car on long trips, looks cool when I whip it out on the plane and has way more capacity than any stand-alone player I’ve seen.
The downside is that I can’t jog with it. Fortunately, I don’t jog.
TheBrad | 23 Dec 2001