MP3 player suggestions?

[Brian Hale]

I'm looking for a player for the LOML for Xmas with the following minimuns...

Must accept Compact Flash cards
No internal hard drive (internal flash memory would be a bonus)
Upgradeable firmware
$300 max price

Kathy travels several weeks a year for work and carrying a cd player and cd's is getting a bit old. She is no longer allowed to store personal files on her gov't issued laptop.

Any ideas? Anything else i should be looking for?

Thanks!
Brian

[Dean Baumgartner]

Brian,

Does she have a PDA? Some of the Pocket PC versions take Compact Flash cards. I have an older HP Jornada that uses the Compact Flash. I make mp3's at the 64K rate. Not the best for music through big speakers but I can 't tell the difference over most headphones. At the lower recording rate I can get something like 6 hours of music on a 256k card. Load the card up from your pc at home and you're good to go for most any trip. I've used mine on flights to Europe and listening to music for the whole trip used only half the battery. For about the same price as a higher end mp3 player you get a whole lot more. With the Pocket PC i have calendar, contact list, calculator, music player, e-book reader all in one.


If you have any more questions on how this works let me know.


Dean

[Brian Hale]

Thanks Dean!

I can't figure it out but she won't use a PDA, instead she uses the old paper day planer but has been asking about a MP3 player for a couple years now.

Brian

[Dan Mages]

Who is her cell phone provider? Motorola has a few phones that double as MP3 players with removable memory. You should look at the MPX220 for Cingular or the V710 for Verizon.

Good hunting,

Dan

[Tim Morton]

Not sure why it must take flash cards or why it can't have a HD...so that rules out the only MP3 player i would own...the iPod :D

[Brian Hale]

Kathy can be kinda brutal at times and i see a hard drive as a spinny-moving-part kinda thing that might not enjoy being bounced around. :eek:


As for the CF card, i've got just under 5gb in cards for the various Canon cameras floating around the house so a 512mb card would'nt be missed...

Brian :)

[JayStPeter]

I'm with Tim. There's nothing more convenient than having your entire CD collection in one little unit. The iPod is probably not the most durable thing around, but if she can manage to keep a cell phone in one piece the iPod isn't that wimpy. You can also buy cases for it like the rubber covers of Fluke multimeters. I regularly jog with mine and keep it in my gym bag that gets thrown around. So far, so good (around a year and a half).
No offense meant here, but I'd probably just be annoyed by something that used CF cards. Each 512M would store just enough music to make me think it wouldn't get old, but it would (sorta like the 10 disc changer in the car). Somewhere around 10 G is the right amount to store close to 100 CDs worth. Perfect for travel.

Jay

[Brian Hale]

The ipod was what i started looking at and it has a lot going for it as far as storage and easy use. Our daughter has one in her bedroom somewhere that fell off the kitchen table and no longer works. It'll take a while before she has the $$ to get it repaired. Thats what's driving me away from a hard drive based device.

Ipod=$299.99
Built in battery only
12 hours of play, 4 hour for full recharge

Compact flash mp3 player=$60.00 with fm transmitter, car power adapter and neoprene carrying case.
2xAA batteries (some only need 1)
15 hours of play
http://www.mp3playerstore.com/buy_it_now__/NEX_IIe.htm

If there's something more about the ipod i'm missing that will justify the cost please let me know. I don't mind spending the extra $$ but i hate to throw it away for no real advantage.

Thanks for your input!!!!!
Brian:)

[Matt Meiser]

We aren't allowed to store personal files on our laptops either, but our IT manager made it clear that having them on CD was perfectly acceptable. I take a CD of MP3's to work and play them from there. If I had a DVD burner at home, I'd take even more, since my my laptop plays DVD's. I've watched DVD movies at the airport and on planes as well.

I bought an RCA Lyra player about a year ago to make it easier to drown out the noise at the airport and on planes. I also started using it when mowing (takes me about 2 hours.) It only has 128MB of onboard memory but takes SD cards for expansion. I haven't priced SD cards lately, but saw a 128MB one at Wal-Mart today for $15, so I would think you could get a fairly large one cheaply. The player was $70 at Circuit City a few weeks ago when I was in there.

I've only had trouble with it once which was solved by re-flashing the onboard memory. The nice thing about it is that it is very compact, about the size of a box of matches, so it fits into my laptop bag or a pocket easily.