Posted by FatKat on 12/22/06 19:11

bald-bloke wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking to buy the wife an mp3 player for christmas. Being an old
> fogey (me, not the wife) who has difficulty operating a video recorder
> these days, I have no idea what is on the market. Perhaps someone can
> point me in the right direction, please?

Might I suggest that you just get a CD player that plays MP3-encoded
CD's? This option fails on some of your counts but overall remains a
value. To begin with, they're simple to use, require no real extra
software. All you need is a PC with a CD burner.
>
> It must be very rugged/robust as it is very likely to get dropped,
> bashed or sat on. (Nokia used to do a mobile phone in a rubberised
> case that bounced when it was dropped - nice feature that)

I bought a used CD player on e*bay about a year and a half ago, and it
still works fine. Though I haven't dropped it, I do jog with it, which
can be punishing for all but flash-based MP3 players. And if it does
finally die, they're cheap enough to replace easily. As a rule, I've
gotten more life out of my CD players than the cassette players I had
until the early 90's.
>
> Simple to operate. (Bells and whistles are fine and well but my wife
> just wants to listen to classical music - not spend 20 minutes
> configuring menus). No need for any features other than listening to
> music so video playback is a definite no-no.

Again, the CD player wins. As I said, getting it to run is simple,
requires no software. You just copy/paste onto the blank CD in file
manager, and hit "burn these files to disk. (though if you've already
got Roxio or Nero or something like that on your machine, it will
probably try to intervene anyway - the point is that you don't need
that extra software.) Once you've got your files burnt to a disk, just
insert into your player, and you're good to go - no need for any
menu-configuring - though this will lock you into a fixed order for
playing the files. In any event, you should probably burn your music
onto CD-R's for archiving purposes anyway. Otherwise, you'll end up
like those guys who post on UseNet about how they lost their music
collection when their iPod died.
>
> It must have a good battery life. Correction: an excellent battery
> life. An internal-rechargeable battery would be nice.

CD's use old fashioned AA's. They won't last long, but you'll be
spared the cost of having to mail the player back to the manufacturer
when battery does die.
>
> 512mb to 1gb should be plenty of memory capacity.

CD-R's hold 700mb each - meaning that two CD's will easily be enough
for you.
>
> Physical size? - Smaller the better.

The CD player does fail on that account - no arguments.
>
> Appearance is not important. Nor, within reason, is price.

The CD player satisfies the first, fails the second. You can easily
get a CD/MP3 player for under $50.

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