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:: MAX BLACK ::

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --C.S. Lewis

"The Swiss pocket knife of conservative thought on the web..." - Eli Kardrakian

"Bookmark Max and dump your subscription to the newspaper; if you don't have a birdcage you really don't need it anyway..." - Shirley St. James

:: Monday, June 06, 2005 ::

Not an Ipod but...



...my wife wanted an MP3 player for her birthday so I went shopping. My first stop was the Apple section at my local Micro Center. I looked at the 30 gig, $299.00 Ipod, but in talking to the salesman, I discovered that the batteries in the Ipod were not replaceable (?!). The young salesman was less than enthusiastic so I asked him my favorite question*: "what are the tech guys buying?". He pointed me to the Lexar Jump Gear MP3. Admittedly, the Ipod is a handsome gadget, but I consider the non-replaceable battery an inexcusable design flaw. The Jump Gear MP3 pictured above has no such problem, requiring two, standard triple-A batteries and the media is a slick little removable Lexar Sport Jump drive. My wife has been cataloging her music on different drives to use for different purposes, such as "road trip music", "studio music" or "workout music". Actually, I just commandeered one of the drives to transport the image you see above from my studio desktop to my home computer - less hassle than copying it to disk. But here's the kicker; the Lexar Jump Gear retails for fifty-bucks! Add a $79.00, 512 meg Sport Jump Drive for 12 hours of listening and you're out of pocket an affordable 130 bucks. Because the price of flash memory is free-falling, I'll probably be able to buy a 1 gig sport drive for well under $50.00 long before the Jump Gear conks out. You really gotta wonder what Steve Jobs was thinking when he made this huge public relations blunder.

[like I really need 30 gigs of music anyway...]

Update: I just noticed the price on the Ipod is falling; given the class action lawsuit, dealers probably want to dump all the non-replaceable battery stock as fast as they can. A cheap Ipod might seem like a bargain now but you'll be sending it back to Apple - again and again - for costly battery replacements.

*Note: "my favorite question"; just another version of the question I use at my local wine shop, i.e., "what are you guys drinking". I always get a really fun - but inexpensive - bottle of wine by asking this question. They're eager to show you their latest find and liquor store salesmen generally don't spend big bucks on a bottle of wine. Try it.

Related: Libraries are getting into the digital music act.


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:: Max 11:17 AM [+] ::
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