13-Year-Old Trades iPod For a Walkman For a Week

BBC Magazine convinced 13-year-old Scott Campbell to trade in his iPod for a Walkman for a week and see what he thought. Scott thinks the iPod wins when it comes to sound quality, color, weight, and the shuffle feature. The Walkman, however, offers two headphone sockets, making it much easier to listen to music with a friend. My favorite part of the review is, "It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape. That was not the only naive mistake that I made; I mistook the metal/normal switch on the Walkman for a genre-specific equalizer, but later I discovered that it was in fact used to switch between two different types of cassette."

Comments

Hehe he ain't seen nothing yet...

[ls671]

About giving him an 8 track cartridge tape ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereo_8

At least, there is only one side to those. I still remember listening to Pink Floyd "The dark side of the moon" and "Echoes" while cruising in my car. Even today, when I listen to it on more modern media, I still remember where the sound track would cut for a few seconds in the middle of a song in order to allow the player to change tracks. They did a fade-out in the middle of a song in order to make it sound more appropriated... ;-)

8-tracks came before 4 track mini-cassette :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Cassette

For those who don't know 8 tracks, the tape is arranged in a endless loop so it was impossible to rewind the tape ;-))) I still have an 8 track recorder in the basement somewhere, I used to record my own tapes ;-)

Was that really written by a 13 year old?

[RawJoe]

Either he writes well or I was an idiot when I was 13.

Re:Was that really written by a 13 year old?

[moose_hp]

My favorite part is:

Furthermore, there were a number of buttons protruding from the top and sides of this device to provide functions such as "rewinding" and "fast-forwarding" (remember those?), which added even more bulk.

Emphasis mine.

That part sounded more like a nostalgic review rather than from someone who see the functionality for the first time.

Re:Surely you are trolling.

[hardburn]

Worse, the mere act of not using a cassette degrades it. Not even vinyl can say that. It just degrades in an analog way that will leave the tape technically playable for a long time. But it also starts with signficantly worse quality than either CDs or vinyl and goes downhill from there.

I can understand the nostalgic property of vinyl to a certain degree, but longing for cassettes is just pathetic.

Re:Low-slung...

[nine-times]

Perhaps it's because I'm quite bright, but apart from the metal switch, I never had any of those questions when I first picked up a tape deck.

Maybe because tape decks were in common use when you were a kid, and you saw them being operated?

I'm not sure it's fair to call kids "spoiled rotten" because they see the superiority of current technology over what was in use years/decades before they were born. Kids may have a hard time imagining life without iPods and the Internet, but many young adults have a hard time imagining life before TVs and telephones were in every house. Many of us have a hard time imagining life without electricity, automobiles, or indoor plumbing. Insofar as this kid is spoiled, we're all spoiled.

Re:Gotta love them cassettes..

[ucblockhead]

Best part, you can use them to trade music with your friends, just like the Metallica guys did before they got famous.