Phil Speak: MP3 Madness

Hello there everyone! Phil’s back from the dead after mountains of work. I haven’t gone outside for so long I’m amazed the sun’s still there!

But enough of my senseless yapping, let’s get down to the juicy bits. I want to talk to you for a second about something that’s changed the way we do things in the 21st century. That’s right, our favorite little gizmo: The mp3 player.

This little guy’s been with us for around a decade now, and from the looks of it it’ll be around for another one. For those of you old enough to remember (keep the old man jokes to yourself :P) we used to carry Sony Walkmans and the eventual Discmans around whenever we wanted to listen to music. Heck, we had to get creative with the 8 track tapes to make a mix with our fav songs! Thank goodness that went by quickly. When the CD took over from the audio tape, mixing & matching your favourite playlist was a lot easier thanks to the CD burner. But with mp3 players around, you can put together a playlist in a few seconds without really that much effort. Be grateful you didn’t have to go through analog!

Now, mp3 players have been around long before the first iPod came out. Plenty of brands were available, but they lacked the sophistication & organization that Apple provided when that little white metal box came out back in 2001. With the first iPod you got iTunes, the biggest digital audio distribution service in the world, 5 gigs of space(back then that was huge) AND awesome sound quality to boot!

As I’ve said before, your choices are not limited. You never are with tech. So now I’m going to mention a few other choices:

Zune – This little guy was the brainchild of Microsoft. They wanted to come up with something that could compete with Apple, and to be perfectly honest, it had a fighting chance. I still have one of the original ones, and although bulky and not very good battery wise, the Zune music service & amazing sound quality make up for its shortcomings. What I liked the most out of the music service was that instead of paying per song like you did on iTunes, you paid a monthly subscription and you could download whatever songs you wanted at no extra cost!

Unfortunately, despite being very good quality devices, the Zune never sold well. As a consequence Microsoft has discontinued production of all the Zune models.

Sansa – This is the model from SanDisk. This company is well known in the memory chip/flash drive market. It’s a basic, low priced music player with decent sound quality. Good value if you’re on a tight budget.

iRiver – Although not related to Apple, this one’s been on the market for as long as the iPod’s been around. Be sure to check these out if you’re player shopping.

Archos – These guys are now in the tablet business, but you can still pick up a very good mp3/mp4 player that also supports HD. Again, good value for your money.

So what do you think about these guys? They do much more than just play music, they’ve become powerful little pocket computers. I never leave home without mine, and feel as if I were naked if I did!

Please leave your comments below and don ‘t forget to follow me on Twitter and check out my personal blog! Ta ta for now!

Phil