The Search is Finally Over.

As many of you know I have been seeking the holy grail of MP3 players. It started off innocently enough by following the rest of the sheeple and picking up an iPod. I was not impressed. After some more searching I found a player with all the functionality I wanted, the iRiver H320. Handy Buttons (no scroll wheel), FM tuner, recording mic built in, and an ability to delete music off the player without first attaching it to a computer. Unfortunately, the implementation of all those functions was terrible. To delete music you had to stop playing music, even if it was a different track, the FM tuner had poor reception, etc. I sold the H320 back from whence it came (eBay, bought and sold for the same amount as was the iPod Mini).

But now, now everything is different. I found what I was looking for. The Creative Labs Zen Vision (not to be confused with the Zen Vision:M)



Not only does it allow me to delete tracks on the fly (even as I play them), the FM tuner is solid, and it has a built in speaker which is handy cuz it plays movies on the 3.7-inch LCD. Now I can watch movies with anyone willing to scootch up next to me. The battery life is 120 hours which makes it perfect for those non-Jetblue flights. Obviously it displays digital images, and at 30 gigs has all the storage I imagine I’ll need.

Other features

• Compact Flash Slot so I can transfer photos from my camera straight to the Vision (I will require an adaptor).
• Personal Organizer that is actually handy to use
• An option to ‘remember’ music you want to buy. It will then remind you when you connect to the internet.

Some of the downsides
• Size, it is certainly larger than an iPod which could be an issue for some, though I imagine something with a smaller screen might make watching Battlestar Galactica movies harder.
• It doesn’t have a fiewire port which makes large amounts of data transfer slow.
• The software that comes with it has also has one buggy issue (it doesn’t let you move files to new directories easily).

Again of course, I bought it off eBay, for $285, which is about $115 off retail.

I’ve had it a week and so far I’m in love with it.

To complete this geek-out posting I went down to stand in line at CompUSA for there six hour March MADNESS!!! sale. There are fewer things that make you feel more like a nerd than spending half an hour in a line stretching down the block to buy a harddrive. But I did. Western Digital, 250G USB for $69.99 plus tax. Not to shabby