Cool stuff

I am wowed by my flash-memory MP3 player, the IRiver 190T. It has enough memory (256 MB) to store 5 or 6 albums at CD quality and more at slightly lower quality. There are no moving parts so it doesn’t jog or skip and one AA battery (included!) will run it for 20 hours or so. It weighs just slightly more than the battery and will fit on a key chain. It has a surprisingly good FM radio and can also record FM radio or voice. Finally, you can set it up like a small hard drive so it can store any file, not just music – handy for carrying around backup power-point files (USB cable needed but included). The only thing I dislike is the ear buds – I hate ear buds, they just fall out of my ears! I recommend instead the Sony MDR-CD180s headphones which are a great value at less than $20 (Consumer Reports rates them higher than headphones costing 3 or 4 times as much) – you can buy better headphones but these are cheap enough to lose on an airplane – an important factor in my book. Here is a picture of the 190T (actual size is a little larger at 80 x 32 x 25 mm).