The Apple doesn't fall far from the tree...

For most of my life I have been anti-Apple computers. (crApple & Macintrash are what my dad and I referred to them as). With the explosion of the iPod popularity, Craig and I fell prey to the media and each bought an iPod Mini a year and a half ago. We were tickled pink with our new toys for about a year (coincidently until the warranty expired)...

For about the last 9 months, Craig's iPod has had trouble staying on. Finally, his crapped out completely a couple of months ago. I used my iPod a fraction of the amount that he used his, but a month after his died, mine refused to turn on. We tried all their ridiculous trouble shooting, resetting whatnot that the Apple site recommends. Our replacement warranty had expired about a month before. (Conspiracy theorists: planned? I am starting to wonder).

Since our warranty was already up and neither of us were willing to pay close to $100 (each) to send them to Apple for repairs - you can buy a new non-Apple mp3 player for as much. Instead we found a battery replacement site and ordered 2 replacement kits for $9.99 each, thinking probably our batteries had died - a very common flaw of the iPod. Our kits arrived and I excitedly hacked into my pod and replaced the battery. I waited for several hours for the battery to charge. And with great hopes, I tried to reset the pod. NOTHING! I tried again. And again. And again. And every time I walked past it sitting dead on the desk. I opened it up again to make sure I had all the connectors connected. I noticed a little burned section of the motherboard. Nice.

We opened up Craig's pod to see if he had the same problem. Nope, his looked fine, probably just needed a new battery. We replaced the battery and... Still a dead pod. So after having these things for less than 2 years, they both died beyond repair. My sister has gone thru 2 or 3 iPods within the last 4 years. I now vow never to purchase another Apple product as long as I live. I am so disgusted, I can't even put it into words.

That said, we saved up and went a-hunting for new mp3 players. Our criteria:
Not an iPod of any kind.
No moving parts, i.e. a flash drive rather than a conventional hard drive.
Close to the same "size" as our iPods; 4 GB of storage.

Off to Best Buy we head. We ask the very helpful guy (really, I know, unheard of) in the department what his thoughts were on what we could get with our criteria. He explained several options which looked good. We browse for a bit longer. Home we go without purchasing so Craig can look up reviews on Cnet.com. I nap for several hours while he reads reviews. Back to Best Buy we go.

To make this long post end soon, I choose an iriver clix and Craig choose a Sandisk Sansa as our new music to go players. Read the reviews on Cnet, they both rate 8.0 out of 10 or above. The only drawback is that they are 2 GB only rather than the 4 GB we had; however, I never filled my whole 4 GB up anyway.

Here is a picture of mine. It measures 2.7" by 1.8" (more than 1/2 as big as my crApple iPod), weighs 2.5 ounces, plays flash games, displays pictures, plays small videos, has an optional cradle to use for line-in recording (great for digitizing our tapes and childhood vinyl), has a voice recorder, and FM tuner (!), and much more.

I am pleased, so very pleased. Now I can mow the lawn again - couldn't do it without my music, then it was just a chore.

Woo hoo!