I finally gave in and decided to get a new MP3 player since my other one is one of the first out that was basically a CD player that plays CDRs of MP3s (thats a lot of acronyms) with about a 2 hour battery life. So I had a look around to see what was out there, check out the formats they play and the online shops they are compatible with.
Finally decided to go with the masses and become a poddie! I went and bought one of the 512MB iPod Shuffles. They are nice and small, have a good 12 hours of battery life and hold a good 8 albums of music. I could have gone for one of the iPod Minis but I don´t need that much space and since it´s a hard drive based player I wouldn´t be able to use it at the gym without knackering it.
Also, since I barely go for a day without using my laptop it means that I can swap albums over and charge it up while I´m checking my email and stuff. This means that the reduced storage space really doesn´t bother me at all.
The only problem I´ve read about them so far is that it ties you in with iTunes. What with DRM, limitations on players and amounts of PCs you can play the music on and all that crap, I think that all the online music shops are just as bad as each other. The iTunes software does let you import your own MP3s though, so for the moment I think I´ll stick with buying CDs online and then ripping the tracks myself. Takes a little longer but it means I don´t have morons telling me what to do with my paid for music.
Oh yeah, did I mention they´re dirt cheap?
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