iRiver LPlayer

iRiver LPlayer

You could say I've been around the block and settled down. I can't say that I'm the most experienced portable music player junkie around; I've had a long, sordid love affair with Apple's portable audio line. But before that, I never wanted to commit to one format, or one brand. I started with a Walkman, like most people my age, and progressed slowly to a Discman once I could afford to keep myself in new CDs. I jumped ship to Minidisc when the mp3 revolution hit its peak in the late nineties because I could make — and remake — all of my mixes with a handful of reusable, inexpensive, and durable discs. And I loved the geek features Minidisc players of old offered. Illuminated in-line remotes, swanky monochrome pixel-based screens that would scroll track info — you couldn't do that with most CD players. Then came the iPod. Ever since the first Windows-compatible iPod rolled off the production line, I have been wholly committed to Apple's music players. I owned every iPod they released, from the mechanical click wheel of G1 to the high-res color screened iPod Video.