Posted 10:42 AM by Gene

I just bought my first mp3 player. This will seem strange coming a dozen years after the introduction, and over eight years after the iPod, but I am not the early adapter. One reason I took so long is that like so much else on the Web buying something even as simple as this becomes an easy chore. For years and even after The Lord God Steve such players were flawed, first by their unease of use and then by their limited capacity. Both problems were long solved; they day will soon come when one could pack a 100,000-album library in his pocket (if one wished to be so psychotic). But which player to buy? I suppose I could have gotten one of the Lord's but something in me didn't want to march to the beat of 100 million different drummers. There has also been the obsessive-compulsive nitpicking over the iPod's alleged sound inferiority. Clearly the Lord has proved so phenomenally successful because He's paid just enough attention to tweaking the customer while pricing His products exorbitantly enough to make people think they were better. (His laptops may prove that a fallacious gospel.) Anyhow Newegg had this for $89, and it sports a -- cute color. (Thankfully it wasn't on sale in these parts in violet.) But even then I had buyer's regret because one of SUMNER's CNet hacks rather churlishly insisted this was a downgrade from a prior model. Without boring my three readers too much with the details the earlier device had a cute playlist program and a noise-canceling function -- but you couldn't use the latter without the supplied ear buds. What if you don't like ear buds? This model (unlike the other) has built-in speakers (HI-FI!) and a voice and FM recorder I'll never use, but at least I can convince myself I wasn't hoodwinked. I'm waiting for the Postal Disservice to deliver it -- God knows how many excuses the weather has made for it.