Look out iPodders…

As many of you all know I am really, really against iPods.

It’s nothing personal. I just think they are over-priced and under-featured. And to top it all off, people with iPods ask you… “What is that? Why didn’t you buy an iPod?” As if you’re a moron for considering anything else. And if you ask one of those same people if they know what the options are… they say no. I can’t do that. Any purchase I make of electronic equipment has to be researched, considered, pondered, thought about, researched again, compared, priced, spec’d, and preferably tested hands-on before I’ll buy it. Do I get “buyer’s remorse” every now and again? Sure. But very rarely. I usually know ahead of time what the product will and won’t do and am comfortable with any limitations (they all have limitations).

So anyway, one of the few things that I give credit to Apple for is the iPod Nano. They were the first to come out with a really large capacity flash-based music player. Of course, I wouldn’t go buy one as the price was astronomical and it wouldnt fit all (or even a significant portion) of my music, and that doesn’t even begin to bring up my hatred of iTunes software. But I can understand why people liked the slim and lightweight design, coupled with the traditional “cool” iPod look. They had the market corned for quite some time now.

But now…..

Check out SanDisk’s e200 series of players. Not *quite* as thin as a nano, but its right there. It’s got a larger screen. In COLOR. It is cool looking, but in a totally different way. The top of the line e280 has 8GB of storage for the same price as the 4GB of storage for the top Nano, and most impressively: you can expand the memory using mini-SD cards. It has an FM tuner (something Apple doesn’t have on any of its products). The battery is user-replaceable… huge bonus. It will also do voice recording and record from the built-in FM radio.

So to show my dedication to informing both of my readers, I have actually ordered the smallest one which is 2GB. The Sandisk e250 costs only $120 at Amazon.com, compared to $180 for the iPod Nano at Amazon.com (as of this writing). After I do a complete review, including the software, I’ll take that down to my brother (let’s see if he’s paying attention to my blog) and swap players with him. Taking his 1GB Creative player. So I’ll have this player for about a week and a half. If you have a question you’d like to see answered, post here or in the review posting and I’ll try and answer.