New to MP3 players:

Friday, December 22. 2006

New to MP3 players I know I was, when my mom asked for one. She’s in her late 50’s and wanted one to listen to music during her daily workout. I’m in my early 30’s and have never bought one until now.

I picked up a Zen Nano at the Discovery Channel Store. (Click the picture to go to their site.) It was very small, pink, had headphones, software and said it was 1 Gb. It turns out that it was a competitor to the IPOD. It was fairly easy to use, had a FM radio, could play all MP3 files, and it had a microphone to record 15 minutes of voice messages. So it looks like I did ok on my first purchase.

What’s an MP3 player?

It’s a tiny player, just like a CD player, but it plays wave files you get from your computer. Some also play FM radio stations.

With 1 (Gb) Giga bite you can hold about 500 songs.

With the software that comes with your MP3 player you can copy your whole CD over to wave files and listen to them on your MP3 player.

Your computer has to be a newer model with a USB port. It’s a small slot on the side or back of your computer that the cord that transfers files from your computer to the MP3 player. Without one you can’t put your songs on the MP3 player.

You can also buy songs, or audio books or pod casts (audio lectures or news clips) off of websites. The smaller the (MB) mega bite the quicker it downloads to your computer. Songs under 2MB download in about 5-10 minutes with a dial up internet connection.

What’s an IPOD?
It’s an apple brand, but it can be used with (Microsoft) Windows and Macintosh computers. It’s very trendy and is most popular with the teens. It plays audio, music, and video files.

What’s a Zune?
It’s a Microsoft brand, which was just released to compete with the IPOD this year. It plays audio, video and also works wireless like a cell phone with blue tooth and WiFi. Blue tooth usually lets you use headphones that don’t have to plug into the unit, like the earpieces you see people talking on their cell phones. WiFi is a service you can pay for to get to the internet from you unit. If you can get to the internet you can download music and audio directly to your unit without having to go through your computer.

Well no matter what MP3 player you buy, is only good if you can get you're music or audio book into it. So I went to some free website for music, and they were only the new trendy music. I wanted some Christmas songs, so I ended up going through the process of pre-paying $20 to download 50 cents worth of music. I will let you know when I find some better sites. It was a lot easier to put my CD in the drive and put my songs over to the MP3 player through the cord using the software they provided.

All in all, it only took a few hours to put a few of my mom’s favorite songs from a CD and down load a few Christmas songs on to it and program in her radio stations. I gave her the gift on Christmas Eve and in a few minutes she was able to flip through the songs and go to the radio. I will let you know if it continues to get use, or if it goes in the drawer with the digital camera.