New Toys!!

The husband and I just got some new toys; our first mp3 players. Of course, they're known as mp3 players even-though we don't have any .mp3's on them. We have gone against the ipod hoard and have not purchased the popular yet more expensive apple product. In my mind, apple's ipod has become the antithesis of what apple is supposed to stand for. The ipod has turned into Microsoft. All the software is strictly proprietory to apple. You can only used itunes to download music, and you can't use any other format. On top of that, they have completely sold out and have come out with 10,000 different accessories. And, apparently, in contrast to mac's stead-fast legacy, the ipod isn't the most user-friendly mp3 player out there. It's also almost twice the price of its same memory and features competitors. So, alas, the husband and I did NOT give in to the ipod madness. We went in a different direction.

We're essentially geeks. We went onto forums, researched different sites and brands, discussed what our memory needs would be and made our decision: the SanDisk Sansa e260. It's 4 GB, which is more than enough. After uploading all 250+ CDs and all downloaded songs, it's came out to a little over 6.5 gigs, but there's no need for me to have every single album I own on a player. I don't listen to them all. It's not worth it. Personally, we think that getting a 30 GB or even 80 GB player would be ridiculous, regardless of the fact that it's the cheapest per megabyte player you can buy, because with a 1.8 inch screen, it's not worth it to put videos on it. It'd be like watching a movie on your tv, from across the street. Also, unlike the ipod, we can convert out mp3s into WMAs, and have the same quality at small bit rates, so we can put more music onto the players.

This little thing is so much fun. It's got a great color menu. The features are idiot proof and soooo easy to use and figure out. Because it's so compatible with windows media player and rhapsody, creating playlists took no time, and it was a no brainer to figure out. It can play videos and shows pictures also, and you can do other things on it while listening to music, which not every player allows you to do. I don't really care about the videos and pictures, because I didn't buy it for that. But, it's nice to know that it's there. Also, because it's a SanDisk, you can buy up to 2 GB microSD card for only $20. That's awesome! Instead of getting rid of it when we want a player with more space and spending another $200 and some odd dollars to get a 6 GB player. For just 20 bucks, we can get 2 more gigs worth of space. According to a lot of technogeeks out there, this is in the top 3 or top 5 of ipod killers. It's half the price of the ipod nano with the same amount of memory. It also has a bigger and brighter screen, and it can play videos. It's also more durable and not as flimsy. Oh yeah, it also has an FM player and recorder, which the ipod does NOT have.

I love it. The sound is great, and it's such a fun little toy. For a music connoisseur like me, I couldn't ask for anything better, and I was getting so sick of walking around with my cd player and cd case, switching CDs all the time, lugging it around, etc. It was a big pain in the butt, to say the least. Any-one that listens to music needs to get one. FUN!!!

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