give me an 'M', give me a 'P', give me an 'MP3' (FORUM: MiniDisc VS MP3)

Member Name: eleanorofnaboo

Product:	FORUM: MiniDisc VS MP3
Date:	03/11/01 (295 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: wee & cute, light

Disadvantages: not much space but see op about that

I would join this debate in the corner of the MP3 player. This is because I have a nice little MP3 player which cost be about £70 two years ago. I love my MP3 player and apart from my family I don't know another person who owns one (and who says that the Highlands are behind the times!!).

It is a very basic player and only holds 32mb, which for me is usually about nine or ten songs - it all depends on the compression of the song and obviously the length of it. (My sister has the same one and she gets about six songs!). Flash media cards have come down in price lately, which is handy as you can get a media card for about twenty quid and (in the case of the cards we have) each one takes another nine/ten songs. The cards are nice and small so they fit easily into your purse without taking up valuable credit card space!!

I know that all you MD people are busy saying "well you get two full albums on a minidisk and they cost a tenner for five" (something like that anyway!!), but you have to sit and record those and to be honest I can't be bothered with that - it is like being a teenager again and copying tapes from your friends quickly so you can give them back tomorrow. Also, if you don’t want the whole of a CD – and lets face it – who listens to every track on a CD anyway – then you would have to sit by the machine and swap CD’s etc. When you go out and you want to take more than one disk with you, they are quite big (not as big as a cassette, but much bulkier than a flash media card) and to take a few would take up space in your pocket or bag.

I have about 500 MP3's [erm - all legal ;)] on my computer and all I have to do is "drag & drop" the files and it takes about two minutes to copy to the player. Much better when you are in a hurry! The worst bit is actually making a decision on which songs you want to listen to!

I suppose the whole issue depends on what you
use it for. I mainly listen to mine while walking to work (no moving parts so it doesn’t jump etc when moving!) or driving to my mum's, in which case ten songs in ample as each journey only takes about twenty minutes, on longer journeys I just listen to the same songs over and over, or swap memory cards.

A good way to get round it all would be to get both and have the best of both worlds but if you are infact not rich enough for such frivolous behaviour then I would recommend that you go for an MP3 player, at least you can download music for free, and for those good citizens worried about law breaking, there is plenty of free & legal stuff – Roadrunner Records for example give out free MP3’s from forthcoming albums and I am sure plenty of others do too.

Summary: