Adventures in Digital Music
Given the skyrocketing price of gasoline, I traded my Isuzu Rodeo for a Toyota Corolla. My favorite music is on CD in mp3 form, which won't jibe with the factory CD player in my new Corolla, so an upgrade is a must for me. This is leading to a familiar cascade of technology.
I've been quite happy with Yahoo's Y! Unlimited subscription music service. It supports transfer to portable devices. That left me thinking that if I had a portable device and a car stereo with an aux input, I could listen to music from Y! Unlimited in my car.
Enter Creative Zen Micro.
I picked it up last night at Best Buy. Overall, I have to say I'm quite pleased with this little device. It offers a nice user experience. As a developer of software, I've found that I have a lower frustration tolerance for bad user interfaces than the average person. The only possible regret I might have is not going for something with a bigger hard drive. I got a 5 gig player.
To get the Zen Micro to work with Y! Unlimited, I had to do a firmware upgrade which amounted to fairly painless download and installation from Creative's site. While downloading music I've run into a what appear to be a few glitches with the DRM, but I'm not sure if the problem is at the Yahoo end or the Creative end of the transfer. For the time being, I have been focusing on downloading entire CDs.
The last piece of the puzzle is the new car stereo. Given the phenomenal success of the iPod, I am really surprised by how few car stereo manufacturers have front-side auxilliary inputs. Should be a "Duh!" by now, no?
Pioneer got it. Another little company whose name I can't remember got it. Sony supports aux audio through the rear. This doesn't seem to make sense to me for an in-dash player. I don't want to run an adapter from the rear to some spot under my dash. At this point, I'm still surveying my options.
I've been quite happy with Yahoo's Y! Unlimited subscription music service. It supports transfer to portable devices. That left me thinking that if I had a portable device and a car stereo with an aux input, I could listen to music from Y! Unlimited in my car.
Enter Creative Zen Micro.
I picked it up last night at Best Buy. Overall, I have to say I'm quite pleased with this little device. It offers a nice user experience. As a developer of software, I've found that I have a lower frustration tolerance for bad user interfaces than the average person. The only possible regret I might have is not going for something with a bigger hard drive. I got a 5 gig player.
To get the Zen Micro to work with Y! Unlimited, I had to do a firmware upgrade which amounted to fairly painless download and installation from Creative's site. While downloading music I've run into a what appear to be a few glitches with the DRM, but I'm not sure if the problem is at the Yahoo end or the Creative end of the transfer. For the time being, I have been focusing on downloading entire CDs.
The last piece of the puzzle is the new car stereo. Given the phenomenal success of the iPod, I am really surprised by how few car stereo manufacturers have front-side auxilliary inputs. Should be a "Duh!" by now, no?
Pioneer got it. Another little company whose name I can't remember got it. Sony supports aux audio through the rear. This doesn't seem to make sense to me for an in-dash player. I don't want to run an adapter from the rear to some spot under my dash. At this point, I'm still surveying my options.
posted by metamerist at
7:32 AM
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