Gadget Help

[haggis]

I'm going to Ireland later this year and I want to be able to take some tunes along with me without:

1. Hauling pounds of equipment and CDs with me and,
2. Costing an arm or a leg.

What I want to achieve is a music player I can load with my fav tunes and play on a small set of speakers while the MRHYN and I float on the Royal Canal, playing cribbage and conducting a serious survey of pubs within walking (okay, "crawling") distance of the stretch of the canal between the twelfth lock and Kilnock. (Both sides)

I’m usually tech savvy, but the concept of Ipods and other MP-3 players have really left me cold for the most part. There’s enough personal navel gazing these days without the crutch of ear buds to totally divorce a person from society (what’s next? Virtual “sensory deprivation” players???)

ANYWAY, I’ve not paid attention to the technology to my chagrin, so I’m asking for advice

Any and all suggestions will be welcome…well, maybe not OT’s…or Ratsnake’s, or that other weirdo,,,,,,,can’t recall his name.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Advice herewith: ask your sons. Take notes.

[zlosin]

Do you have a laptop? you could rip CDs into the hard drive and listen to them in full fidelity. You might want to add a second HD to it, each CD is about 650 meg, but a 100 gig HD would hold 150 CDs. cost of and additional HD would be about $139.00
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1277
even picking up a old laptop might make it worthwhile.

[treebeau]

Originally posted by Haggis:
...Any and all suggestions will be welcome…well, [b]maybe not OT’s…or Ratsnake’s, or that other weirdo,,,,,,,can’t recall his name. [/b]

Am I Ratsnake or the other weirdo?
Maybe you were referring to Monsieur Rhenals.

A friend of mine got an Ipod for Christmas. I didn't even know what they were for, but he explained it to me. It seems that you could get a HUGE amount of tunes in there AND get speakers AND it would be small.

But you have to pay the price of learning what it's all about and downloading from some other media onto it. I still don't know that.

Good luck and
Regards,
Tim B.


<img src="http://www.fcps.k12.va.us/StratfordLandingES/Ecology/Reptiles/Black%20Rat%20Snake/BlackRatSnake1m1.jpg" alt=" - " />

<small>[ 01-24-2006, 10:21 PM: Message edited by: treebeau ]</small>

[barfle]

Originally posted by Haggis:
that other weirdo,,,,,,,can’t recall his name..

barfle?

I picked up a 1GB MP3 player on eBay for about $50 plus $15 shipping. They are there by the ton.

The unit is mostly a USB memory stick, about half an inch thick, an inch wide, and four inches long, with a learnable but not particularly intuitive user interface. My computer simply sees it as a USB memory stick. I just copied my music files to the drive. You can have folders to help you navigate around your music collection, but only one level deep, it appears.

I made the mp3 files using Windows Media Player. If you have a reasonably up-to-date player, it has a setting where you can "rip" the music on your CD to the hard drive. There are several different settings you can use. Since I'm using those tiny headphones for my public transit commute, I was more concerned about storage space than high fidelity, and I selected WMA files at 40-75kbps. I have about 400 songs on the player, with room for more.

The jack for the headphones looks like it will also accept powered computer speakers (which I have found to be good, but don't call them high fidelity) so that ought to get you where you want to go. On my last trip to California, our rental car (a Saturn) had an auxiliary jack in the radio, and it played through there just fine.

[DavidS]

Now you know why I get an anxiety attack when I have to go to a part of the world that doesn't have an on-air classical music station.

[OperaTenor]

The rector at our church had an Ipod set up with decent computer speakers set up on the patio of the church, playing music to promote a concert at the church that afternoon. It was the first time I'd heard or taken a close look at an Ipod. It played without stop, or any attention, for three hours.

Don't have any idea how much they cost.

(Great! The thought of me being lumped with Henry Rhenals is enough to send me running screaming from the BBB....... )

[piqaboo]

originally posted by treebeau:
A friend of mine got an Ipod for Christmas. I didn't even know what they were for,...

Do not, repeat, DO NOT, let your son hear you say that. You will lose serious cool-dad points. Do let your son ramble on about how cool they are. As Selma says, take notes. Its no harder than posting pix on the bbb, just different. <tho I can do neither! >

[Haggis@wk]

(Great! The thought of me being lumped with Henry Rhenals is enough to send me running screaming from the BBB....... )"

I don't know why I do it, it's just too easy to hook him and reel him in.

Thanks for the input. I hadn't even thought about using my laptop which I'll be taking so I can post annoying pictures while I'm there. The MP3 players probably will meet my limited needs, especially the price, since I'm trying to convince
the MRHYN that I ABSOLUTELY need to by a Cannon powershot 2S IS camera.

[OperaTenor]

"I don't know why I do it, it's just too easy to hook him and reel him in. "

I don't know why I continue to let him think he got the upper hand............