rblog

It's been a very long road to music nirvana, but I have arrived (kinda). As I have already blogged, I have been trying the subscription music services for much of the year and have now been quite happy with Yahoo Music Unlimited. But there was a key ingredient that was missing - the portable music player. I wanted a Flash based player that worked with Yahoo - and there just wasn't any.

Then on October 4th, Sandisk announced the m200 series. Four models: 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB. I was hoping to buy the 2GB version for my birthday, but it was nowhere to be found. Finally, in November, the m250 (the 2GB version) was available in Circuit City, so on 11/20, I bought it.

But there was some bad news - I had about 400 songs on Yahoo - and only 350 would fit on the player. And it became clear to me that I really wanted the m260 (ok, what I really want is to be able to add my own SD card, but that doesn't exist in a subscription-compatible player). But the m260 was nowhere to be found. And with Sandisk selling 4GB of Flash memory for $319, I couldn't see how they would ever see a 4GB player for only $199.

However, in December it appeared at Circuit City, first in the East Coast and then three days later in California. So, on December 18th, with just two days remaining on my 30 day return policy on the m250, I returned the m250 and bought the m260.

True happiness arrived last week, when Circuit City cut the price on the m260 to $159 and I was able to use their 30 day price guarantee to reduce my cost to $155.

The m260 is great, no licensing problems, holds all my songs, and is great for the gym and for runs. In fact, I find that I am getting much better workouts due to the player and would recommend it to anyone who works out. (Yes, I realize that everyone else was already using music for their workouts.)

Now, the next step is a set of wireless headphones for the office. I got some for Xmas, but they are quite bulky (and require a mini-jack adapter).