Portable Music Players
There are also many portable digital music players now on the market, epitomised (arguably) by the Apple iPod. Being a committed early adopter, I bought the first generation 10GB iPod, which I sold and upgraded to the 20GB model when I (quickly) exceeded 10GB of MP3 files. This model was subsequently replaced with a 30GB model, which was promptly lost during a business trip to Washington DC! The insurance company kindly replaced it with my present 40GB model, although after converting my vinyl LP collection to MP3, I exceeded the 40GB limit and gave up trying to carry my entire music collection with me on my travels. Also, the release of the iPod Shuffle and Nano models made me think again about my mobile music requirements.
Because, my 40GB iPod holds enough music for over 21 days of continuous play without repeating a single song, I decided there was no real advantage in being able to carry even more music in my pocket. A larger capacity player would mean not having to decide which 21-day selection of music to take on holiday, but thats not exactly too onerous a task.
So instead of another upgrade, I bought a 1GB iPod Shuffle and was so pleased with it, particularly the better battery life compared with the 40GB model, that it’s my most-used player now and, given it’s much lower cost, I’m far less paranoid about losing it on my travels. The 1GB Shuffle can hold about 12 hours of music, equivalent to about 12 CDs, and I find this is more than enough for a weekend away or a short business trip. I also quickly acquired a 4GB iPod Nano when it was first released, although my son soon made this his own, filling it with his own selection of music from the family music library.
Clearly, I’m committed to the iPod range of digital music players. However, the advantage of this DMMS is that it is fully open and can accommodate any brand of player (providing they support MP3 files – and if they don’t then I’d recommend you ignore them completely!). As a matter of fact I’m keeping a close eye on the recently announced Microsoft Zune digital music player