Yeah, the Rio was my first MP3 player. I bought the memory card shortly after buying the Rio. With the memory card, its memory was in two separate spaces, and you had to upload songs to either built-in memory or card memory. (So to completely load it required two operations.)

The most annoying thing was the battery latch wasn't very good, and was always popping open.

With the memory card, its memory was in two separate spaces, and you had to upload songs to either built-in memory or card memory. (So to completely load it required two operations.)

Annoyingly, this is how my digital camera works too. If there's an SD card, it will write to that, but if not it will write to the onboard memory (which is teeny). The problem is that if I accidentally take a picture without an SD card, I can't get it off the camera because my computer has decided it will only recognize the card reader and not the camera itself.

Which is kind of a random tangent, but there you go.

Hmmm... some people are complaining that the new Shuffle has a proprietary headphone jack. Apple reveals new, super-tiny iPod Shuffle with huge design flaw

ION, USB finger

[Jerry] lost his finger in an accident and has since added a prosthetic USB flash drive in its place. It’s making the best of a bad situation; there’s nothing wrong with a little voluntary cyborgization. At least it’s not as invasive as some of the implants we’ve seen before.

Freaky!

some people are complaining that the new Shuffle has a proprietary headphone jack.

That does seem foolish. Why not have the controls in the cord, but put a standard female headphone jack at the other end of the cord, instead of earbuds?

Apple has been all about the proprietary mini-sized ports these days.

If the controls are in the headphone cord, it kind of makes sense, I guess.

I fucking hate the controls on my nano, so it's kind of appealing to move them off the player so I can put the damn thing in my pocket without it being a problem. Or clipping it so it's not an issue in the first place.

I think if I were going to buy a teeny little MP3 player it would be the Sansa Clip. It's bigger than a Shuffle, but it has a little text-only display so you can choose what to listen to. And the controls are a rip-offhomage to the iPod click-wheel, so it's pretty intuitive to use.

(I've also heard that the Sansa players have much better sound quality than iPods, but my hearing is shite so I wouldn't know.)

I bought a Sansa View, but the earbuds are really ill-fitting. I'm going to have to make another stop at Best Buy to see what I can find there.

So I'm looking to get some new home theater speakers, as the ones that came with my super crappy, now defunct DVD player/5.1 system are also, unsurprisingly, crap.

Any suggestions at the lower end of the price ranges? What's the most bang I can get for my buck, if I'm looking to spend under $100 for six speakers? Or am I really better off adjusting my price range up?

I think if I were going to buy a teeny little MP3 player it would be the Sansa Clip.

My wife is getting a Sansa Clip. My son has a Sansa Fuze and it is a nifty little player. I wish the clip had a MicroSD slot like the Fuze does, but you can't have everything.

I'm getting my wife's from B&H where it looks like the Clips are discounted a bit. The 2GB are $40 and the 4GB are $50.