Index & Notes

3 generations of MP3 players

It turns out that size does matter. I use the old joke because a recent episode of Corner Gas got laughs out of the men in town competing for how small a cell phone they could buy. When the first MP3 players came out nearly 10 years back, we thought the size of a pack of cigarettes was small enough to be killer. But as I went from the $400, 64MB Samsung Yepp at left, through a couple of Lexar Jumpdrive-based machines in the middle, I kept having problems that the designers had tossed in the belt clip as an afterthought. The players tended to bounce off it when you ran and get damaged - or in the case of the Lexars, destroyed.

© Roy Brander, P.Eng 2007