[Speed Gibson,
Sunday November 18, 2007 at 6:36pm]
Does Price Matter?
I bought a portable MP3 player a few weeks ago, a house brand (Insignia) from Best Buy. It had a rechargeable, replaceable battery it said, 1 GB, FM radio and a few other features. I passed up any number of much cheaper units, thinking I had bought a quality unit.
Last week, though, one channel of the FM went out. But the MP3's still played fine, and I don't use the radio feature much. Yesterday, it locked up solid in the middle of playback and I find (now) that there is no reset button. Fine, I'll re-power it I thought, by "replacing" the battery. There are no directions on how to get the battery out however. Those come with the replacement battery only. So, I used brute force to literally crack it open. I can live with it duct-taped later.
The battery is NOT replaceable by us end users, requiring a jewelers tweezers to handle the smallest connector I've ever seen. I ripped out the battery to recycle that, pitched the rest of this piece of junk in the trash. This makes me 0 for 2 buying these devices, the first being a cheaper SanDisk that didn't make it two weeks.
I'd like to consider a real iPod, but this a semi-closed platform designed for music, video and subscription podcasts, not my personal recordings and old time radio MP3's. Plus, I've heard many complaints about iPod's going bad, too.
The perfect portable doesn't exist for me other than to spend $250 on another Pogo. Otherwise it seems that price doesn't matter so I think I may buy the $20 cheapie at Walgreens. Cheaper may be better in this case.
Last week, though, one channel of the FM went out. But the MP3's still played fine, and I don't use the radio feature much. Yesterday, it locked up solid in the middle of playback and I find (now) that there is no reset button. Fine, I'll re-power it I thought, by "replacing" the battery. There are no directions on how to get the battery out however. Those come with the replacement battery only. So, I used brute force to literally crack it open. I can live with it duct-taped later.
The battery is NOT replaceable by us end users, requiring a jewelers tweezers to handle the smallest connector I've ever seen. I ripped out the battery to recycle that, pitched the rest of this piece of junk in the trash. This makes me 0 for 2 buying these devices, the first being a cheaper SanDisk that didn't make it two weeks.
I'd like to consider a real iPod, but this a semi-closed platform designed for music, video and subscription podcasts, not my personal recordings and old time radio MP3's. Plus, I've heard many complaints about iPod's going bad, too.
The perfect portable doesn't exist for me other than to spend $250 on another Pogo. Otherwise it seems that price doesn't matter so I think I may buy the $20 cheapie at Walgreens. Cheaper may be better in this case.
I just took a look at Wal-mart online. $25 buys you a 1GB Nexstar MP3 player with FM radio. From an online merchant, I've seen MP3 players that don't come with memory, but if you provide your own microSD card, the MP3 player itself is under $10.