Seems like everyone and their mother has an IPod except for me. I don't know what happened, I must have simply missed the IPod revolution or something, and now I'm the only loser who is not on the IPod train.
It's weird because back in the day, when people still used "Walkmans" and "Discmans", I was one of the first people to own a MP3 player - the RIO 500. It was pretty cool for its time: had a backlit display, ran on 1 AA battery, had 64 MB of built in memory that could be expanded to more via a SmartMedia card. Eventually I outgrew it and gave it to my sister.
Now, ironically it is my sister who has an IPod while I do not. Although I did buy it for her so it's not as insulting. The real sign that I'm an outcast was when one of my bosses was talking about him and his wife getting IPods. I mean these are people in their 60's, and their other hobbies include going model train conventions, gardening, and breeding fish in their backyard.
I'm not saying I'm technologically inept or whatever. In my car I have my PDA set up with a special mounting bracket attached to the dash so I can play both music and videos, or use GPS guidance if I really need it. I claim this setup as my original idea unless someone else can prove they thought of it first.
I guess this IPod thing is not really about technology. There's devices out there with more features, smaller, with more memory, and cheaper to boot, but obviously none of them are nearly as popular. I'm not sure I fully understand all the rage about IPods, nor will I ever. To be honest, something about this whole IPod trend scares me a little, I don't know why but I'm a little afraid of getting sucked in.
Anyways, I originally started writing this blog to talk about my newest electronic purchase, the Apple AirPort Express.
When I first saw an article introducing this thing a while back, I had no idea what it was or what it did. Basically just looked like a little white block about the size of a bar of soap, that you plug into the wall and hook up cables to. Definitely didn't think I would end up paying 120 bucks to buy one.
But I eventually figured out what it did, bought one to use at my house, and I must say I love that thing. I might even get a second one eventually, but that might be going a little overboard at this point.
Basically, for those of you who do not know what the AirPort Express does, it is kind of like a wireless router that you can hook up speakers and a printer to, and lets you output to them from any computer on the network. It's almost perfect for my setup because I want to be able to use my laptop in different rooms, upstairs and downstairs, without having to always be connecting and disconnecting wires to it.
The one thing I don't really like so far is that I have to use ITunes to play music on the speakers. I know there are lots of ITunes lovers out there who will think I'm crazy, but I have always loved my old Winamp player for its simplicity and used it ever since I downloaded my first MP3. I haven't even upgraded to newer versions of Winamp since about my 2nd year of college either, because I want to keep it as simple as possible.
Maybe ITunes will grow on me though. So far I don't like how it takes longer to load up on my computer (which is a pretty new computer too). Also haven't gotten used to the interfaces, i.e. keyboard shortcuts, volume control, etc. Maybe there are upgrades to ITunes available, like alternate skins that might make it a little better. If any of you out there know where I can get that stuff let me know. I don't know if I will ever like it better than my good old Winamp 2.7 with Sony player skin, but if ITunes lets me play my music from across the room, then I'll deal with it.
So yeah, to summarize this entry, I didn't buy an IPod, but I did buy a related Apple product and I started using ITunes. Maybe soon I will cave in and buy an IPod as well, who knows.
