dwenius

After nearly 4 years, I finally decided that

True, it had crazy battery life, 14 hours or more regularly. And thanks to a handy tip from the Intarweb, within days of acquiring it, I'd broken my warranty and upgraded it to have a whompin' 40GB drive inside, which at the time was as big as you could get in a 2-1/2" drive and twice as big as any mp3 player you could actually purchase. But let's face it. 40GB isn't enough to hold my music collection. Hell, it's not enough to hold just the live music collection, or just the electronica, never mind the rest. And 40 GB, even at very high VBR file sizes, takes a damned long time to rotate through. What this led to was me having access to a subset of my collection and still not ever getting around to some albums and songs, even with the marvelous "randomize playlist" features of the Notmad Explorer software by Red Chair software. Plus, the Zen was BIG. When I got mugged last Spring, and it ate some pavement, it got even bigger, because I had to wrap it in its leather case to keep it from falling apart. Not pocket friendly, and not that easy to travel with. So that's that, then, we'll be moving on.

I never really considered any of the iPod family. A cursory examination of iTunes reveals that they don't sell what I spend 95% of my time listening to, and when I was pondering choices, there were simultaneous headlines about iPod Nano screen failures and iPod mini battery life/replacement costs. Plus, I am now an aging parent who works for the phone company...I have no use for this so-called "style". So I went with Creative again, and got a white 6GB Zen Micro.

It's so little!

For comparison, the Zen Micro is shorter than an iPod Mini but slightly thicker. Replaceable batteries are $35 and you don't have to ship the thing anywhere; very handy. I like the touch screen UI just fine, although I have to lock the buttons to avoid randomly skipping ahead when I reach into my pocket for it. The screen is super legible, and the blue backlighting, which suffuses the edge of the device as well as illuminating the buttons, is pleasant to look at. A nice touch: when you plug it in to charge over USB, the backlight pulses, as though the device were breathing. Sound quality is fabulous; bass is sufficient without any EQ settings, although you can create a custom EQ to only boost the bottom end if you so prefer. The UI allows you to create playlists on the fly, which is handy; you can then change the play mode to randomize the list you just created.

I also took the opportunity to replace my ancient noise-canceling Aiwa headphones with a pair of Etymotic ER-6i in-ear isolator earphones. Here is how much they rock: with a brand new battery and the volume on my player at 21 out of 25, BART screeches in the tunnel would still occasionally drown out the music. With the Etymotics, I have the volume on 14 and the train is barely audible, howling in the distance. It took a few days to get used to having them in my ears; I had no idea how connected my jaws and feet were to my ear canal until I tried to-- wait for it-- walk and chew gum. But I'm listening at 33% less volume than two weeks ago, and I'm hearing all kinds of details that were lost in the previous portable music rig. They rock, and you can get them on Ebay for just under $100, shipped. That's a pile of money for headphones, but how much is your hearing worth?

The old, big, bulky Zen will get a new life in the car, once I rip all of