New Toy

Having made a little cash recently, it occurred to me, I could get a new MP3 player. It would revolutionize my workout--nay, my life! I would lift weights while listening to audio books, I'd be more likely to take long walks! All I was sure of was that I wanted to my player to "clip" as opposed to needing a carrier of some sort. (We had a little episode earlier this year, where Paul's brand new Christmas nano tragically fell into the treadmill at the gym, never to be seen again). As a Mac-user, I looked at iPods, but the nano was more than I wanted to spend, and the shuffle has all it's controls attached the earbuds--so if you lose or break the earbuds, it is a fifty-dollar tie-clip, until you spend an additional $30 on new earbuds. "Extra" money like this upsets me. Then I read this article comparing the iPod shuffle to the Sansa Clip.

I ordered the Clip. I waited with bated breath for a few days before realizing that ONTRAC, the shipping company, had somehow misplaced it. No worries, Amazon sent me another. Today it arrived. It's cute. It's red (okay, really more of a maroon). I'm excited.

Assimilation of the new technology has not been without hiccup.

First I had to extricate the clip from its molded plastic prison.
Then there was panic after I inserted the mini sized software disc into the disc drive of my laptop. DON'T DO THIS. After an unsuccessful attempt to nudge it out with a business card, I resorted to shaking my computer. It worked, but it wasn't fun.



Finally, after reading some online forums where people claim to have had luck with just plugging it in, I decided to test it. I downloaded my friend Jeff's weekly podcast into the podcast folder. And dragged two audiobooks out of iTunes into the Audio Books folder. The podcast read fine, but the Clip didn't recognize the audiobooks--which are in aa format. I haven't tried music yet. I'm pretty sure I need to translate my Itunes from MP4s to MP3s, and probably do something similar to the books. But for the moment, I have a podcast, and the Clip has an FM radio, so I'm sure that will get me to the grocery store and back and I can do more research tomorrow.