Jericho: Gadgets

In one of our more serious we're-going-to-go-to-the-gym-a-bunch moments, my wife and I decided to buy some MP3 players. This was almost two years ago now. We couldn't afford the outrageously steep prices on the iPods of the day. So, we bought Rio S10s. We paid like $80 each. Compared to the $250 iPod, this was a bargain. The Rio came with 64MB memory, that's like 15 songs, two if they are from Yes. But, the coolest bit on the Rio was the fact that it has an SD Card slot. I smelled the air and foresaw the SD Card blooming in a couple of years. For once, I was actually right! At the time, SD cards were still expensive, a 512MB card was a $200 item, but I knew they would get better.

A while back, Steph and I updated our players with 256MB cards. We paid $45 each. At that point, the iPod Shuffle was hitting the market. At $99 for 512MB, I felt odd paying $45, but, I just couldn't cost justify dumping my investment in my player that still worked. I also sat down to fill my 300+MB of space and had trouble. I spent one afternoon ripping CDs to three different computers. Then, I couldn't make my work PC see my Mac or my PC laptop. So, I ended up dragging a bunch of music to my Mac via a 128MB flash drive. That was slow going. By the time I was done, I was so frustrated that I ended up adding maybe 50MB of music and calling it quits. I never went back and filled up my expansion.

Recently, I have been again desiring a serious MP3 player, and Steph and I have been flirting with going back to the gym that we pay way too much for every month. Not to mention that I would love some music on the bus when the kids go into screech mode, or on the plane with all the travel I have done recently and on our up-coming vacation in Dec. But, I already have an investment, don't I? So, Steph did the smart thing and bought me a 1GB SD card for my birthday. At $75, it's cheaper than a 1GB Shuffle and it has a display. When I think about it, we have spent $200+ on my player and over a $100 for Steph's player. However, the great thing is that we have been looking at cameras with SD slots, we'll be able to recycle our memory - can't do that with an HD based player - yet.

I have been slowly ripping all of my CDs to my machine at work. But, when I tried to hook up my Rio to that PC, it was a no go. They have locked down these machines so tight that even my flash drive is no longer recognized. But, for whatever reason, my USB card reader still works. *Sigh.* So much for consistency. I pulled out the gig card, shoved it in the reader and down loaded about 700 MB of selected groovy goodness. Of course, when I loaded the card back into the player, the player couldn't see the expansion card. *Double Sigh*

At home on the PC laptop, since I am nearly Macintosh free these days, I pulled everything off the card via the reader and erased the card. The Rio documentation recommended formatting the card and the internal memory together. So, I opened iTunes and connected the player with expansion card installed. No joy, iTunes can't see the player at all. I was used to using the player on iTunes on the Mac, Rio made plug-ins that allow iTunes to see it's player on the Mac but not the PC. For the PC, Rio made a separate application for loading up music. *Triple Sigh Mocha with extra whip.*

After an hour of loading iTunes updates, Rio drivers and Rio applications, I finally got the Rio Music Manager software to see the player and the card. I loaded up my music and, Ta Duh, I have 178 songs on my player with room to spare. At three to four minutes a song, I have lots of music. Yeah, it's not as cool as an iPod, but when the 100GB SD cards hit the market, who will be laughing?

As if all of that wasn't enough, Steph and I just bought new phones. When my old Nokia finally hit the skids, I jumped on eBay and bought a Treo 180 for $100. I have long loved Palm Pilots and the Treo 180 was a cool machine - albeit out of date by the time I got one. But, considering new phones were about this price, getting a Treo new in the box for the same price was a bonus. My only complaint was that the battery life was exceptionally short. Having to recharge my phone every couple of days seemed excessive when compared to my Nokia that got charged once a week if it needed it or not.

T-Mobile wasn't terribly compatible with the Treo 180, they put up with anything higher, but not the 180. So, several of the cooler features of the 180 were unusable. After a year of what seemed to be ever shortening battery life, I was fed up. Steph was tired of hearing me bitch as well. I have been wanting a Treo 600 or 650, but those are still out of my range. So, Steph and I went to the T-Mobile store and looked for new phones. When I bought my Treo, Steph was jealous and bought herself a tiny(!) Samsung - she swears she's not a gadget head - Ha! She has loved this phone for quite a while. She really loved the fact that when her car charger fried the thing, T-Mobile's warranty kicked in and she got a refirb replacement! So, we looked at the Samsungs, and we found the t309. Since we are such long standing customers and we have a family plan, we were able to get a much better price on the phones that advertised on the link above.

I am just not used to such a tiny phone, but I am having a blast with it! They added minutes to all of their family plans, so we were actually able to down grade our plan and add WAP service (aka T-Zones) and picture messaging to my phone - all told we are paying about $2 more a month. Not having to charge my phone every other day or losing a call when the battery runs out from half full is wonderful. Look forward to photo blogging and entries from my phone as we go along. You might even see some tests here fairly soon.

I am such a gadget fiend!