Slashdot Mirror
Portable CD-R/RW/MP3 Player?
Eldie asks: "My ancient (1995) portable CD player has finally rolled over and died. I'd like to replace it, and I'm not looking for something as grand (read: expensive) as an iPod. I'd like to have something a bit more useful than the baseline -- it should at least play CDs, CD-Rs, CD-RWs and MP3s. It would be great if there was some sort of useful hierarchical MP3 interface so that I didn't simply end up having to skip back and forth through 100 tracks, 1 track at a time. Is there anything out there that fits the bill?" This was touched on almost 3 years ago, where quite a few of you had useful recommendations. Three years is a long time, however, and it would be interesting to note if there are any better (or cheaper!) options out there. If you were to look for such a player, today, what would you buy?
are mostly on thinkgeek
:)
check the link
http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/mp3/6356/
seems like an handy device for me
if i wasn't like 12000 miles away from america
i would get this one for myself.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
They are all Amazon "So you'd like to..." guides, but they are worth looking at, anyway.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
Beyond the fact that they're durable, they're relatively cheap. Most of the Target stores in my area have portable Memorex players for around $40-$50, with the slightly more expensive ones including a backlit screen and a digital radio tuner. I'm not sure how much they run in other stores or online; you'll have to do a bit of research to check.
And lest I forget...they work. Very well. They have no problems with reading CDRs or playing MP3s, though I'm not sure how they handle CDR/Ws.
Hope I've helped.
Goo goo g'joob.
I have a Sony CD Walkman D-NE510 here in my hand, it works well, plop your mp3s on a cd in a folder all to themselves, stick it in, and close the lid.
Some notes: It will play on a pair of NiCD AA batteries seemingly forever, the advertised battery life is 18hrs playing MP3s, so I guess thats good enough.
Problems:
1. I've noticed skipping when playing VBR mp3s on batteries... I think the player is VBR agnostic, so it runs out of frames to play and haves to spin up the disc out of powersave to get more the track, if this bothers you, don't do VBR or something I guess.
2. Like I said, battery life is awesome, but not in -30 something degrees weather, like we had here a few weeks back, I had to do the public transportation thing, and it dropped out a few times, I had to press stop, play, stop, open the lid, close the lid, whatever to get it to work, and this meant taking off my gloves, which sucks because it's freaking cold!
Also, I must be spoilded, because I want a backlight! How can I see what track I've selected when I live in eternal darkness heh.
Good stuff:
The battery life, like I said, and those batteries are two AA's, not something wierd like a lithium ion sealed inside the case or 3 AAA's burining a hole in my wallet, because I only have AA rechargables, and throw away batteries cost less to buy, but more to use.
Damn near impossible to make it skip, you can shake it, drop it, whatever, of course I've been gentle to it, but it's nice.
Quick tip:
Name your files like this:
AlbumFolder/01Title of Song.mp3
It'l show up as 01Title or 02ABCDE, you get 7 characters in folder display, so if they all look like "08 U2 -" then that would kind of suck. It shows scroling tag info, Title, Album, Artist, Track #, Bitrate, Time played, press the display button to rotate through them.
Good lick picking your player, I really do like this player, two flaws ain't half bad.
The ATRAC support may also be a flaw, since I don't give a damn about SONY's propritary crap, but it isn't a flaw, because you don't have to use it, MP3s work just fine.
I recharge the batteries about once every two or three weeks, not bad.
When I'm not lazy, I plug it in to an ac adapter, it didn't come with one, but It's 4.5 Volts, and you can get the correct head to stick on one of those multi voltage A/C adapters from rat shack.
- Sony D-NE10
- iRiver iMP-550
- Panasonic SL-J905
I think the last one looks pretty geeky!I'd definitely go with the Turbo Ass-Reamer 5000-XT line of papers from AssCo. The XT stands for eXtra Thickness. It costs a bit more than your usual paper, but man is it nice. That 16-ply softness just can't be beat. Plus, it even comes with a free musical toilet paper holder that plays well-known game themes from the C64! You just can't go wrong with AssCo.
But yeah, CD players? That's kind of old tech, and completely uninteresting. Does nobody have any good questions? Slashdot these days...
That's where people discuss concumer hardware!