I have finally entered the 21st century. I blew some of my FreeNameAStar.com money on an MP3 player. Almost everyone told me to buy an iPod, but as far as price goes they are too much. I researched MP3 players at AnyThingButIpod.com and I read the requirements for an MP3 book reader at Audible.com and I began to search the discount sites and eBay. Price was my main criterion and storage was the second. It was also an absolute must that the MP3 player be able restart at the point it left off when I turn it off. MP3 books are long and you don’t want to listen to 45 minutes of previously heard novel to get to where you left off.
There are several players that meet these requirements, but I found that I could buy an INOi hard disk player quite reasonably. It has a 20 gig disk drive that can be used to hold backups and software for my PC’s as well as play MP3 and WMF files. It has very rudimentary controls, but it starts up where it left off when you restart it. I am not sure, but it should hold about 500 hours of books or 250 hours of music. I have it loaded up with some stuff that Ward gave me. and some music that I ripped from CDs.
The positives: The INOi is simple to use. The volume is loud when I need it. It works for 13 hours and charges from my USB port. I can use it to store data as well as sound. It was very cheap and about half the cost of a 20gb iPod. It’s not much more than the price of a 20gb 1.5 inch drive alone. It does not mess with my mp3 files or try to convert them like Apple products.
The negatives: I can’t figure out how to fast forward through a file. I have not found a bookmark function. It does not play AA, FLAC, OGG VORBIS, or WAV files. These files are not a requirement as there are converters around, but some of these compress better and it would be nice to fit more stuff on the drive. There are sporadic reports of failures on the reviews, but all MP3 players are fragile and do not survive a drop to hard floor. I just have to be careful with it. INOi is an “off” brand as far as I can tell. It may be the manufacturer of many “name” brand items, but I am not familiar with INOi, so there is no brand trust.
One negative is that I found that I cannot work writing a program and listen to a story at the same time. I keep concentrating on the code and missing things and since there is no fast forward or reverse, I find that I can’t follow the plot. I have a half a dozen blues albums on the thing so I’ll try listening to those next.
One Comment
my Mp3 player is a Phillips Rush and I wish I knew more about Mp3 players when I bought the Rush April 2005. It’s not a bad player that comes with voice so I can dictate ideas that come to mind, it’s got FM radio but the Walmart staff claimed it has AM. Not. it came with a 64mb internal hard drive. It uses an SD media card slot so running out of storage is never a problem and with my 9-1 memory card reader on my Xp computer I can listen to “The Clash” from my PC. Mostly all Mp3 players have a USB port.
I nver have to worry about dropping my Phillips Rush because it comes with this little look hook device and I rigged up a neck strap for it so it hangs around my neck and I just dip it into my t-shirt pocket. I really made sure any Mp3 player i would buy would have that neck feature.And AM radio.
I hadn’t thought about returning to the lst spot where I left off.
I don’t know if you’ve seen this yet but just announced last night (I think) Amazon is getting into the online music busniess. They have over 2.5 million albums and mp3’s you can use anywhere for 99 cents/track.
Also now that your into the wonderfull wold of Mp3’s may I direct your attention to Arez. it’s a p2p site but one of the better ones out there. I only take music that I onced actually owned. I would never scoop up something an artists worked hard on. I have my ethics you know. I’m sure you can get Mp3 books as well. You can get almost any movie out there. A co worker brings his little lap top with him to work all the time and runs a movie he downloaded from Ares. The movie played flawlessly ion his Sony laptop.
The only thing wrong with Ares, is that almost every song has these pops and cracks in them. There is a program called DivX that lets you rense these annoyances out. I tried using it on my (now crashed w98 computer)w98 computer before it crashed but I didn;t have enough memory to support it. Works best with Xp I hear.