Expensive, Quickly Obsolete, But Very Handy
Mar 28 '00
The number of available MP3 players has exploded over the last year. Consider that when Diamond released the Rio 300 (the original MP3 player), the RIAA promptly sued, stating that an MP3 player shared responsibility for pirating music. Not the case any longer. Many of the large manufacturers have produced portable MP3 units – Sony, RCA, Samsung, Diamond, Creative, and several other small companies – and not a lawsuit in sight.
So is this hype, or are these players worth it? A hard question, and no easy answers.
Let me do some quick weeding out: if you do not have a computer, or you run an “alternative” operating system (Be, Linux) or have a Macintosh, you will have a difficult (if not impossible) time tracking down a portable player that will work for you. Even Windows 95, NT and 2000 will present some difficulties.
This is because your computer acts as the “master” of the MP3 player – software that you run on your computer downloads files to your player, erases files, and so on. Without a computer, or a computer with the right operating system, your MP3 player is useless.
To use an MP3 player that communicates with your computer via USB, you will need Windows 98, Windows 2000, or the second edition of Windows 95. While Windows 2000 support is imminent, I haven’t seen any players provide Win2000-friendly software.
If you have no qualms about getting a player that uses the parallel port, you may still have problems finding support for NT 4.0 (the Samsung Yepp and RCA Lyra both have NT support) and Windows 2000.
That aside lets look at the benefits of an MP3 player.
They are cool. No doubt about it. They look pretty high-tech, and benefit from the “make it smaller and it becomes more desirable” thing that has made the Motorolla StarTAC so popular.
They are small and light. Walkmans are big, as are portable CD players. If you want to listen to music while you exercise, nothing beats a small, compact music source.
They are usually solid-state. No moving parts means that you can shake them to your hearts content without hearing a strange warble. Keep in mind that MP3 players are coming out that do have moving parts – they use hard-drive technology to store the files, which make them much more vulnerable to bumps and shocks.
Sound quality is pretty good (in between a tape and CD). MP3 stands for MPEG Layer-3 compression. A complex program take a “wave” file (that comes from a CD) and compresses it. A wave file is usually about fifty or sixty megabytes. Compressed, it takes three or four megabytes; this is variable – you can change the quality of the MP3 – the better the quality, the larger the file.
There are some “cross-over” products coming out. Some MP3 players have basic hand-held features (like address or phone lists) and some handheld devices are coming out that can have an MP3 player added (the Visor – there is mention of an MP3 player that will plug into the expansion port, thought it is not yet available). It would be nice to buy one product instead of two. If you want a PDA and an MP3 player, keep your eye out for a single product that does both.
They are media-less. No more buying blank tapes for your Walkman, or buying blank CD’s to make music compilations for your portable CD player.
I have already gone through some of the reasons why you would not want one. Here are a few more:
They are expensive. An MP3 player with sixty-four megabytes will set you back around three times the price of a decent Walkman.
The MP3 format is not ubiquitous across the audio realm. There are almost no car MP3 players. Some new-age DVD players will play standard CDs and CDs full of MP3s, but that is a new development.
Other compression formats are coming out, primarily to prevent piracy. If your MP3 player does not allow you to add new supported formats, its usefulness could be considerable diminished (the RCA Lyra and Creative Nomad II support adding new formats to the player). And there is no guarantee that the MP3 format has “legs” (i.e. not a fad).
Even if the MP3 format becomes the standard for compressed music, portable MP3 players become obsolete very quickly. This industry is in its infancy. We are just now starting to see second and third generation products.
I think it depends on your personality. Are you an “early adopter”, willing to put up with higher costs and bigger headaches to play with a new piece of technology?
Personally, I think they are a great idea (I’ve got one), and I can’t wait till they manufacturers really start to innovate. But that hasn’t happened. Yet.
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Epinions.com ID:
DavidGriffiths
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Member: David Griffiths
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia
Reviews written: 90
Trusted by: 79 members
About Me:
Nothing much.
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