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What was your first portable MP3 player?

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boxlunch

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I'm sitting here admiring the form and function of my third iPod - my new second gen Nano. Apple has consistently combined amazing ergonomic and stunning physical design with solid applications and usability. Owning iPods definitely made it very easy for me to switch from being a PC user to a Mac as well :)

My admiration of the iPod is due in part to the other, lesser MP3 players I used before buying my first iPod in late 2003. So this got me wondering about all of you: Was your first portable MP3 player an iPod, or did you need to suffer through some bad designs like I did?

My first MP3 player, early 2001, was a Diamond Rio 800. 64Mb of memory, mediocre battery life. Fortuantely I didn't pay for this one, my wife won it at a radio station. Lasted about a year before the battery stopped recharging.

My next (non)mp3 was a Sony Net-MD, in mid 2002. This lasted about a week, since at this time it didn't have support for mp3s, so I had to make a copy of my library to Sony's format. Aside from this, the Net-MB sounded like crap, so I exchanged it for a Rio Volt (the black cd-mp3 player with built-in FM tuner). This lasted a good while, until I dropped some big bucks on my first iPod, a 20Gb 3rd generation (they were close to $600 CDN at the time, ugh!).

And the rest is history! Bright colour screen and 24 hour battery life on the current Nano is simply amazing, not to mention the ever-decreasing price of new models (my wife has a first gen Nano in black as well). So please share the tale of your road to iPod happiness!
 

Blackhair

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My first MP3 player was an RCA Lyra. 1 AAA battery which gave it about 6 hours or so of power (not too bad), with an SD slot for memory (I had a 512 MB card). Not too bad for a first MP3 player, considering the fact that it was a present. But once I got my hands on a friend's iPod, I was so taken with; a. the ease of use and finding songs. b. menus and playlists. and c. the battery life (no more buying packs of AAA batteries), that I had to get one. So now I've had my 2nd Gen, 2GB Nano for nearly 6 months, and I still love it! (6 months after getting my RCA Lyra, it was collecting dust on my shelf)
 

miniMAMF

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My first was some no-name brand 32mb flash player that I got as a gift in 2002. I did use it for quite a while until the battery slot kept opening. Then I used tape to keep it shut. Some time later, I gave it away after I picked up a Sony MD player. After a week, I returned it due to Sony's need to transcode all my mp3's. Then I actually went back to a tape player for a while (belive it or not!).

Then I tried an iRiver CD/MP3/WMA player. It sounded great, but I eventually returned it as well because the remote control drove me nuts and it was too big and awkward to carry around.

Finally I got the 1st gen iPod Mini, and never looked back. Gave that one to my wife after I got a 5.5G 30GB black.
 

Code Monkey

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I was late to the game:

It took iTunes and smartlists to convince me that I needed a player in the first place. I *almost* bought a Creative Nomad a couple of years earlier but couldn't bring myself to pay $400 for a music player (and now I'm on my fifth iPod for the household, yeesh). But, once I was hooked on iTunes music management I wound up getting a 1G iPod mini in blue.
 

bfcoughlin

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My kids had mp3 players, and I was impressed by how small they were. I decided I wanted one for the gym. The weekend I went out to buy one, they had just released the 1G shuffle. I took one look at the picture in the flyer, and I loved it, so that's what I bought. The sleek, minimalist design combined with its near weightlessness was exactly what I'd had in mind. Since I was only using it at the gym, not having a screen was no big deal, and I liked the idea of not knowing what song would be next.

Then I found out that one could listen to audiobooks on an iPod, so I bought a mini half-price through audible. I was quite content with my shuffle at the gym and my mini on my commute with an FM transmitter. I used it for nearly two years.

In November, I was wandering through BestBuy and saw the 2G nano. I'm not given to impulse buying, but, oh, was that thing gorgeous! So I saved up, intending to buy a blue one--but when I read about the productRed versions, I knew that's what I wanted. So I gave the shuffle to my son and the mini to my husband, and got an 8GB nano that does goes to the gym AND to work.
 

VipFREAK

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We've come a very long way... My first Mp3 player used a Parallel cable to transfer content.

It was expensive, only had 32mb of space, and it had a ####ty plastic batt. cover but I loved that thing and how it sounded. No more ####ty ### CDs and dealing with skip protection.

Since then I don't know how many players I've had...

 
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misper666

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my first was an orange spv e100 phone. SD card slot & a basic version of windows media player. i think back then, when the 1gb SD card came out they wanted £400 for it :eek: (yes, just the card!). now SPV's come with free 512 card, i have a 2gb which is cheap today.
 

paranoidxe

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If a Sony Minidisc player counts thats my first one.

1st. 4th gen monochrome HP iPod for a week
2nd. exchanged 4th gen monochrome for 60gb video 5G
3rd. stolen 60gb, to hold me over bought a 4GB 1G Nano
4th. 4GB Nano wasn't enough, kept it and got a 80gb video 5.5G
5th. Decided to try out the shuffle I bought my GF for christmas, I gave her my nano for it, liked it so I became a owner of a 2G Silver Shuffle.
6th. Bought a Orange 2G Shuffle (4-14-07)
 
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My first was the original Creative Nomad. Not the Nomad II, or the Nomad Jukebox, but the original 1998 version, which had 32MB or internal memory, and an additional 32MB MMC card slot. It used a parallel port and Creative's useless software to transfer MP3 files (which of course was all anything supported back in the day).



This was likely the same unit internally that VipFREAK mentions above, since the Creative Nomad was just Creative's version of the YP-D40. Internally they were the same player.

Following that came about five or six years of transitions between several other players (most notably an IOmega HipZip and Creative Nomad Jukebox ZEN, among others), before settling on my first iPod, a 4G iPod photo, in October 2004.
 

Chanelly8908

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My first mp3 player was a creative zen micro. It had a radio and voice recording. It was cool for about half a year, then the ipod nano 1G came out. The nano had color, pictures held more songs, and was thinner. I didn't like the touch sensitive control and it was too hard to navigate so I got a nano.
 

Offspring

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First Generation Dell Digital Jukebox (a.k.a. Dell DJ)



I bought it back in October 2004, and I would still be using it today if the headphone jack didn't stop playing out of the left side one day last January. Picked up my 5.5 Gen iPod on January 28, and I've never looked back.
 

Miki01

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My first was Mp3 player was from Koss. I was the first one to have one in my whole grade (grade 8) and it only had a measly 64MB capacity! It had expandability UP TO 512MB through one SmartMedia (ancient) card. The problem is, they don't make 448MB cards :p So I could put in a 513 and lose the other 64...

Tilted sideways, it would be as large as a 5G from the top of the Menu button down :p
 

Sparkee

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My first player was an iRiver IFP-180T. It had 128MB of storage, an FM Tuner and voice recording. It had about a 20 hour battery life on a single AA.
B00017IX0Q.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_V46715880_AA280_.jpg
 

happygiant

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my first one was an RCA lyra 20gb that died shortly after purchase. RCA was cool and gave me a 40gb to replace it. that one died in less than a year, and they gave me a full refund. Not a good player, but a great response from RCA. then i got a tohsiba gigabeat F40 40gb. it was awesome, and then i found the Gigabeat S series which plays video and has an FM tuner, so i sold the f40 and bought the S30 30gb. about two weeks ago i downloaded the new itunes to check it out and was hooked. i bought a 30gb Video, and sold the other Gigabeat. now its ipod all the way. ha ha
 

boxlunch

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happygiant said:
...about two weeks ago i downloaded the new itunes to check it out and was hooked. i bought a 30gb Video, and sold the other Gigabeat. now its ipod all the way. ha ha
So true, the integration with iTunes is definitely keeping me from even considering another brand of player.
 

xboxman

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It was a 3rd gen 15gb iPod. It was the coolest thing in the world to me then, despite the fact that I only had like 400 songs and it could hold 5 times that...:p
 
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