Dec 19, 2006 10:46 AM
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With the launch of Zune( from Microsoft) the world will again be divided between MS and Apple. With so many options available, its very difficult for a humble human being to decide which MP3 player he needs. Based on the chain of thoughts that I went thru when uying my second MP3 player, I have listed down a few points that may help you decide what may suit you.
Deciding upon the capacity: The Calculation. Lets assume the MP3 encoding is at 128kbps(near CD quality) 128 kbps= 128/8=16 Killo bytes per sec. Lets assume that you want to hear 2 hrs of music every day.And you dont want the same song to repeat until next week, therefore you need 25= 10 hrs of music which is 106060 sec of music @16kBps you need 16106060/1020~=500 MB of storage.
Do you like to listen to FM:If so, and you have a budget constraint you can go in for a 256 or 128 MB player as well. But make sure that ur player has FM tuner.
Do you need to carry work files and/or photos: Work file data may range from few KBs to 100 Mb. Photos again are~1.5MB per photo so 100 photos will mean 150 MB o space. and with 500 MB of music, you may well decide for a 1GB player.
Battery and Battery Life: If your player comes with an internal battery, there will be some downtime by the time battery charges. On the other hand if it uses AAA/AA type battery, you can buy a set of NiMH battries and recharge them at will. Dont buy anything that gives u less than 10 hrs of playback.
Flash based of Hard disk based: Flash based players come in sizes upto 2 GB. If you need bigger capacity players, u'll need hard disk based players. Flash based players are lighter, consume less power. But have a limited life of approx 2 yrs(2 hrs of usage each day).YES no one tells u that, but the flash memory has a life of 1000 read/write cycles, after that it dies off. On the other hand, Hdd based players have much longer life, but are slightly bulkier and consume more battery. Also hdd players generally come with integrated battery.
Do you need video: Not every video player will play all the video formats, you may need to re-encode your video collections to suit your player. Moreover, will you be interested in viewing videos on a 2.5 cm screen? video based players are slightly more expensive.so decide wisely.
Sound Quality: If the general use of ur player is going to be listening to music while travelling to work, audio quality should not be a major issue.as it will anyway get mixed with traffic noise.
On screen display: Prefer a player with OSD. With hundred's of songs stored, you may sometime want to go to a perticular song. Also there is hardly any cost difference bet a no display and an OSD player.though size of a player without display may be more compact.
A word of advice: When listening to music on traffic, always keep the volume one notch lesser than the noice of traffic, so that you can hear the honking of vehicles behind you.(its for your own safety). Also prolonged exposure to loud music may lead to permanent deafness.
