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Portable MP3 Hardware Sales Up
prostoalex writes "In December of 2002 only 12% of US music downloaders owned a digital music player, while for this year the number has increased to 17%. Jupiter Research expects the sales of the digital music players to double this year, while another research agency notes a remarkable shift towards paying for music. Even the music industry tends to agree that online music stores are a boon and expects the Web sales to really take off in 2004." (And the sales of Ogg-capable hardware are up, too, since there finally is some.)
Damn Moronic Editors
Connectivity FireWire 400 and USB 2.0 through dock connector
If you are going to rant get the facts right first.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I dunno. I have an older car (1995) that only had a tape-deck/radio. Since I have a large collection of music ripped to MP3 format, I was growing more and more dissappointed that I could not listen to my music in my car. I started investigating replacing the in-dash radio with a CD player that would read MP3's. Still, this was an imperfect option for me, cause I would still have to deal with CDs which are a pain in the butt to keep from getting scratched, out of direct sunlight, away from extremes of hot and cold, etc... I had resigned myself to dealing with this, as it was certainly better than nothing...but having burned mp3 cd's in the past, I realized that 700megs of music (+/-) is but a fraction of my collection and at best, an mp3 cd player was but a fractional step in the right direction.
So, I resigned myself to spending some cash and started researching players. Then I stumbled across this guy, and I got excited. For $229 bucks I could house 20gigs worth of music. It broadcasts audio on the FM dial, so all I had to do was tune my radio station to the Neuros broadcast station and viola, music instantly available. ...it beats the hell
outta ripping apart my dash to play mp3 disks.
What's even better is that at $229 it cost less than most of the in dash mp3/CD players I was looking at. So, I took the plunge...
Haven't had a complaint yet. Works exactly as advertised. Support folk are excellent, price was great. It's not the sleekest, or sexiest player on the market, but the damn thing is cheap, versatile, and open source. Check it out if you want a solution to playing mp3's in your car. This little thing will let you play 'em anywhere. I'd take one of these over an iPod any day.
http://www.neurosaudio.com