One of the Best Electronic Devices I've Ever Purchased
Jun 06 '00
My MP3 Player enhances my life every day. I own the 96Meg version of the I2Go eGo portable MP3 player, and it transforms my 1-hour daily commute from wasted time into something that I actually look forward to! There are so many great reasons to own an MP3 player, I don't really know where to start.
Rebuttal to other Epinions Members
Other Epinions members have stated that MP3 players are basically unnecessary if you have a CD burner and a stack of CDs. Well, I do have a CD burner and a stack of CDs, and I use my MP3 player every single day. They claim that there is no point in loading MP3s to a player's limited memory when you can simply burn an audio CD that can be played in any normal player. Well that's fine. But what if I don't want to archive my music in audio format on a CD for all eternity? What if I downloaded some new music last night and want to listen to it for the first time in my car the next morning? Regardless of the fact of whether or not my car even has a CD player (it does not), if it turns out that I hate those songs, I'm now stuck with a useless CD.
Sure CDs are cheap, but it takes time to burn them and you can quickly fill them up with roughly 25 songs in audio format. What if I burn a CD and then decide that I really only like 1 song on the CD? I much prefer to burn my music in MP3 format, and therefore store hundreds of files on a single CD. I then load up my MP3 player only with the songs that I really like. Or I can load songs on my player that I haven't really heard before, and delete that songs I don't like.
Why I Really Enjoy My Player
It turns out that I mainly use my MP3 player for audio books. This has been one of my greatest personal discoveries in a long time. Listening to audio books in MP3 format has really added enjoyment and knowledge to my life. It turns my commute into a useful, enjoyable time of the day. Audio book files are huge... often surpassing 20 megs for each file in the series. If I were to burn these to CD, I could barely fit two uncompressed audio tracks per CD. An audio book can easily require 8 or more CDs for the complete book.
Instead of burning audio books in audio format, I keep them in MP3 format and can therefore fit 10+ books on a single CD. When I want to listen to them, I simply load them onto my MP3 player and listen to them as I drive. If it turns out that I hate the book... fine, I've only wasted some space on a single CD. No big deal.
I Guess It Really Depends Upon Your Intended Use
Because I enjoy finding and listening to new music and audio books, I much prefer to "screen" them with my MP3 player before necessarily committing them to audio CD. I will certainly burn to archival CD in MP3 format, but I rarely make audio CDs without pre-screening. To me this makes sense. Your audio CDs should be your gems... containing only the songs or files that you really enjoy.
Future Technology
Everything electronic quickly becomes obsolete. Some people think that MP3 CD players are the future. This may turn out to be correct, but I currently don't see it. One of the best features of a standard MP3 player is it's solid state functionality. There are no moving parts. Your music will never skip. The memory, whether it be internal or as an expansion card... is overwritable. You're not committed to keeping that music forever. You can delete and reload at will.
And, because of the re-writable memory, MP3 players can also have additional functionality. My eGo player can record voice messages, store data files, and even store email and translate it into speech... which is then read back to me. Let's see an MP3 CD player do that.
There is really nothing that distinguishes a normal CD player from an MP3 CD player except for storage capacity. It can still skip. It can still breakdown, and it is still non-writable.
MP3 Is For Me
I consider my MP3 player to be one of the best electronic device purchases I've ever made. If I lost it today, I would immediately buy another one tomorrow. I simply love the thing, and I would hate to be without it.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
skadar
|
|
Location: Connecticut
Reviews written: 158
Trusted by: 168 members
About Me:
As a charter Epinions member, Skadar has contributed many trusted and highly rated reviews.
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.