Friday, July 31, 2009

MP3 Players

Thought I'd throw this open to those of you that have one, which I don't (yet). Any recommendations? What I want is something (and forgive any ignorance in what follows):

Easy to use

With good quality sound (I don't care about any video applications--I'll either watch videos online, or--gasp--on television. That's right, I'm old school.).

Where I can take all my CDs and transfer them

And if there's any special hookup where I can play it in my car, too, that would be cool.

Photos would be nice but are in no way a "dealbreaker."

I feel much the same about "shuffle." I know many people like it and I assume most come with it, but if I found one that did everything else, I wouldn't hesitate if it didn't do that.

The design isn't a big deal either, but if I can find one in my favorite color, great.

I'm gonna wanna sign up for an internet radio station (almost certainly last.fm, which seems to turn up 99 times out of 100 when I go looking for favorite songs or groups)

So?

2 comments:

jeopardygirl said...

It is, by far, NOT the cheapest option (although, also not the most expensive), but I very highly recommend the iPod shuffle. The new ones out have 4 MB of memory (holding about 1000 songs)--and that's it. No pictures, no moving images, just songs. Because there's no screen, you have a surprise with every song (there's an option to have it play songs in sequence, too).

It's small, and you can either get the clip-on style or the pendant style which hangs on a lanyard 'round your neck.

As expected, it does work best with iTunes, but if you're planning to rip songs from your CDs, I'd recommend iTunes anyway, since it makes the process a lot easier.

The nice thing about the shuffle is that you can change up what you're listening to on a frequent basis. You never get bored.

I have a 1GB shuffle, which holds about 240 songs, and I find it works well for most of my music appreciating needs.

Either way, you should definitely look around. :)

Corey Klemow said...

Pretty much every single MP3 player meets your criteria, though for ease of use, be careful in your research of players that require special, proprietary software to get the music onto the machine. (Many MP3 players simply read as hard drives and all you have to do is copy the files into a folder on the player.)

So far as a "special hookup" for the car, you can buy one for cheap. If your car has a cassette deck, there's a hookup that goes from the headphone jack to a faux-cassette that goes right into the deck. If your car has a CD player, chances are there's an audio-in jack; again, there's an inexpensive wire for that.

An internet radio station isn't going to put any music on your player; they stream rather than download and you need to be connected to the internet to listen. If you want to put music on your player, you need to actually own the MP3 of each song. Look into Rhapsody instead. (Only exception: if instead of an MP3 player, you get a phone with wireless internet access and a web browser in addition to MP3 playing capabilities. Then you could go to last.fm from your phone.)