iPod best MP3 player, and it works with PCs

It’s sad but true ““ MP3 players have amounted to
piles of steaming dung for the four years they’ve seen the
light of day. OK, Mac users have had the iPod for about a year, but
let’s be honest, how many people own a Mac? So I set out to
find the one player to rule them all.

Like the bachelor picking out women for marriage, I have scoured
magazines and e-zines alike for the best darn Windows-compatible
MP3 player on the market “¦ and the verdict “¦ the Apple
iPod.

“Wait,” you say. “The iPod only works on
Macs.” First of all, that was never the case ““ programs
like XPlay have allowed the iPod to speak to PCs since the
beginning. But if you just have to have a Windows-branded iPod,
they are now available at Best Buy.

Everyone must now put an iPod at the top of his or her
Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanzaa list. Or simply put it on the top of
your credit card statement. It’s only $300-500 dollars.

So how did I come to the conclusion that the iPod is the best
tympanic membrane tickler this side of a Q-Tip? And speaking of
Q-Tips, I won’t settle for those crappy “cotton
swab” alternatives that skimp on cotton and hard drive
space.

We all want to walk around listening to music, but we
don’t want a Gimli (the dwarf from “Lord of the
Rings”) in our pocket. We want a compact, sturdy joy-box that
will last all day on batteries, be easy to operate, and never crash
““ kind of like a hobbit, but not that idiot one who always
got the fellowship into trouble.

Anyway, my criteria were size, utility, storage space, design,
battery life and, of course, sound. There are players out there
that are superior in one or another of these traits, but none
really even comes close to the iPod in terms of pure enjoyment.

Sound quality from the iPod is top notch, and after much
testing, I can confirm that the iPod has the most powerful
headphone amp of any portable player on the market. It’s a
veritable pocket-rocket.

If you want a player that is really small, you have to spend
$150-$200 on a “solid state” player that has only a
fraction of the storage space of hard disk-based players like the
iPod and Nomad Jukebox 3. The difference between a solid-state
player is that, in musical terms, solid state usually equals one
hour of music while hard disk allows the listener an entire
respectable music library.

If a Lilliputian player is absolutely necessary, the Creative
MuVo is your best bet. It’s small enough to fit on a key
chain and has interchangeable memory units. On the other hand, if
you need more than 20 gigabytes, which is the maximum capacity of
the iPod, you should go out and buy an external hard drive. But if
you can handle Gimli shoehorned in your pocket, you can pick up a
Nomad Jukebox 3 that packs a mean 40-gig hard drive. 

The player that comes closest to the iPod in terms of size and
capacity is the new Toshiba Mobilphile. It’s five-gigabyte
hard drive is identical to the one used in the iPod, but every
other aspect of the player is inferior. It transfers music 30
percent slower than the iPod, has worse sound, worse software, and
the navigation buttons look like they were engineered by LandRover
(infamous for ambiguous button placement/function).

Go out and get an iPod already. I’ve had one since August.
While it may not help you combat Orcs, it’ll go a long way to
conquering aural boredom.