Electronic goodies in the UK tend to be pretty expensive, and since Gerrod was coming from the US, I thought it would be a good time to invest in a new MP3 player. I have had several different audio devices in the past, including a mini-disc player and an IPod, both which i have used for quite some time. I had wanted to new mp3 player for sometime and had the following constraints:

• Must have a replacable battery – As much as I have enjoyed my Ipod in the past, I disliked the fact that I couldn’t take it with me on long haul flights or long journeys without being too far from a powerpoint, or forking out additional money to be able to feed in more power.
• Must have solid state memory – The capacity of microdrives these days is astounding but the moving parts still make it a liability when using it during simple exercise.
• Must have at least 1GB of space – Solid state memory is getting bigger and 1GB is enough to have several albums and be reasonable as a way of transferring files as well.

After a bit of research I decided to go for the Creative Zen Nano Plus (it’s the bottom item in the picture below) which matched all of my requirements and had additional features like:

• FM Radio Tuner
• Recordable line in and from radio
• Protective case and armband carrier
• Simple drag and drop to load/unload music

Some of the things that it does not have but are not that much of a deal to me include:

• No playlist facilities
• No physical hold (there is a hold but you need to access it via a menu)