MP3 basics

If you march to the beat of a different drummer, and resist the iPod call, where do you start?

First with capacity.  In order to have some kind of selection you want to load as many of your “fave toons” as possible. Stick with 1 GB or more. You’ll get about 250 selections, which translates to over ten hours of music.

Make sure the player is WMA/DRM compatible, which means you will be able to download music from internet sources. Look for a wide selection of these sources as well. iPods only click with iTunes and eMusic.

By the way if you have a Mac at home, iPod is your option. iPods offer a long battery life, up to 8 GBs and they are just too cool to look at. But the price tag can scare you away, so play the field, or at least shop the field before you commit!