"It wasn't pretty, but it got the job done. The mobiBLU b153 had voice recording, a customizable equalizer, an FM radio and more. It was cheap at the time, too: 2 GB for only $120. The kicker, though, was its 153 hours of battery life."
"Eight D-cell batteries guaranteed three hours of use on or off the basketball courts!"
"You kids and your flash players with USB ports and SD slots … this is the great granddaddy of all of your new small players, the original 32-MB Diamond Rio. Connected through the parallel port, ran on one AA, and if you had the money for some flash, could be expanded with SmartMedia.Who cares about the 17th anniversary of the iPod? We should be more concerned about the 10th anniversary of the first portable MP3 player to see any success at all.”
"Seriously, the thing was the size of a brick. Owned one before my Zune. Loved the thing. Still miss the Rio DJ feature."
"It's like a self-loading iPod and I'm not paying $1/song. I have a home cradle to listen through my surround system, and set it to record overnight. Next day, I put it in my car cradle, and listen to live tunes w/o ads; buh-bye FM. At work, I listen to saved music on 15 hrs battery. I edit the stuff recorded the night before, lock in the good and skip the bad. Cap: ~850 songs. When I hear something good on live broadcast, I hit REC and it's mine!"
"Even though most people are calling it a doomed format, I love my Sansa slotMusic player, shown here with an optional cover that lets me carry up to three additional micro SD or slotMusic cards. I enjoy being able to create custom playlists that I can listen to by simply plugging in a card and pressing 'Play,' rather than having to mess with menus or even look at a screen."
"Supported media: DVD-ROM, DVD-Video, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, CD-ROM, CD-ROM XA, Photo CD, CD Text, Video CD, CD-DA, CD Extra, CD-R, CD-RW. Additional media: Memory Stick Reader/Writer (Purple Stick). Write methods: Track-at-once, Disk-at-once, Session-at-once, Fixed packet writing. Write speed: CD-R Write: 4X, 8X, 8~24X Z-CLV max.; CD-RW Write: 4X, 8X, 10X max. Memory Stick: 1.5MB/s."
"It might be missing a few dials and buttons, but it's been with me for a long time (through art school and my many travels) and still works.... (Sony really missed the bus on the MP3 player, IMO.)"
"I used to carry this (soundwagon) around with me so I could drop it on a record in weird, dusty old record shops that didn't let you listen to the goods. I'm sure it's the worst ever for a record ... but it works."
My first CD player, chosen and loved for its versatility. Found this pic on eBay, but you get the idea...."
"The Xclef is a dream for those of us who know how to build our own systems. I put my own 100-GB drive in there (standard laptop-sized drive), and can swap it out if I want. I can offload it and load onto it from Mac and PC, and the built-in equalizer sounds so much better than anything else I've heard. I wish they didn't stop making this because it truly is an amazing player."
"The coolest MP3 player at the time, better sound quality then the iPod, etc...."
