Buy Now...

I've been gradually moving my CD, and more recently my vinyl music collection onto my computer over the years. I think I have just about everything on there now taking about 10Gbytes of disk space, I *really* need to make a copy after all that hard work. I use this archive both on that machine and when I'm busy else where in the house. I should stress I guess that I do not share this music on the Internet, and nore do I download it from the Internet. To be honest I think the whole music sharing thing is over played, and as usual being used as an excuse to restrict peoples reasonable use of music.

OK - I have this huge collection of music, and I want it on the move. MP3 (or WMA) are an ideal choice for this. After looking at the various solid-state MP3 players around with a measely 32 or 64Mbyes of memory, which is enough for one CDs worth of compressed music, I was unimpressed. There are two real alternatives at the moment. The 'Jukebox' products that come with enough disk space to hold my entire collection or MP3 capable CD players, with enough space to hold about 100 or so tracks or 10 CDs worth of data.

See also: Media players

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The jukebox products are good, but expensive - and would you really pay £300 for a fragile hardisk based machine? Disks may be more robust than they were a while back, but there is a big difference in my opinion between putting one in a laptop and one in a machine you take jogging. The solid state ones to my mind are far too limited - unless you spend a fortune on the highest density media. In a few years time they'll be great!

This left CD players. Yep - they have some moving parts but a) they're cheap, the Expanium one I bought a year ago is about £70 now. b) media costs about 50p for 650 Mbytes and you can make as many mixes as you want for different moods c) they are based on proven technology, A decade has gone into making CD players work well on the move with anti jog technology. So - decision made I looked around and brought the Phillips Expanium 300. It seemed a good compromise on features versus price. It doesn't play Windows Media Format, but then I have no desire to encode my music in a proprietrary format.

I've thoroughly enjoyed having this machine. I've bought a set of speakers and when I'm working I plug into these and the sound is great. Only downside I had is that I did drop it once onto a hard surface and it now has a problem playing some tracks. My fault I guess, but a portable machine should be able to take these knocks. On the bright side - if I'd spent £300 on a disk based Juke Box and dropped it I'd be more than a little annoyed - if I want to £70 will replace this one.

So - summary of a years use some pros...

1. Great battery life - especially when using compressed MP3 music.
2. 650Mbyes can hold most of my current favourite tracks (and most of the all time favourites!)
3. Easy to build new collections from my PC - no cradles, cables or anything else to clatter up my desk.
4. Simple proven technology
5. Inexpensive - necessary for a machine that's going to be subjected to a rough life.
6. Lighter than the HD juke boxes I think

and some cons

1. This device has no textual display - so you don't know what track out of the 100 you're listenning to, and can't move to a track you want unless you know it's position.
2. Damaged, but not to the point of unusability when I dropped it.
3. Not good at playing audio CDs while running. The thump-thump-thump causes the head to skip. Plays MP3s much better bacuse the buffer memory is enough to cope with the skips.
4. Bigger than solid state device

So on the whole - from my point of view this is the perfect 'Music on the Move' device. Solid state needs an order of magnitude more memory, and HD juke boxes need to be a lot cheaper - and need to convince me the heads aren't going to crash - basically I don't trust that technology in a portable device! When/if I replace this device it will be with another MP3 CD player.