On Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 05:31:04PM +0200, Nadav Har'El wrote: > You can get one of those cheap no-name MP3 players that go for around 250 > shekels for the capacity you list (but check the stores and Internet sites > for up-to-date prices). They have everything you asked for, and much more > (including a built-in radio and an ability to record from the radio or from > the builtin mic), except one thing: all these cheap MP3 players use a AAA > battery, violating your rule #4. > > But why do you insist on a AA battery? You can actually buy for around 60 > shekels or a charger plus 4 rechargable AAA batteries, and each of those > batteries lasts for around 10 hours of music playing for just one battery. > Since a 256 MB player only holds about 4 hours of music, 10 hours is not bad. > Especially when I consider that the first CD player I bought (around 1989) > required 4 AA batteries, and could play just around 2 hours for one charge > of the four batteries...
It depends upon what you want to listen to and how it is encoded. If you are listenting to music in a quiet place then a 192k bits per second (24.5k bytes per second) and you get three hours in 256 meg. Most likely you assumed 128kbps MP3s, which are 2/3 the size. They would last four and a half hours. If the player takes AAC (MPEG-4) audio encoded files, 96k would do, bringing it up to 6 hours. Since what I really want to listen to is audiobooks, a 16kbps AAC file would do nicely, which would go 36 hours. Since you can buybulk packs of 12 Everyready energizer AA batteries at Office Depot for about the price of an 8 pack of the same batteries in AAA, it quickly becomes a noticable difference. The best AAA rechargable battery holds 800 mah, the equivalent AA battery holds 2200mah or more, about three times. The only problem I see with those numbersis that AFIK, the only "cheap" MP3 player that plays AAC files is the Apple iPOD shuffle which is ridiculously priced. In the U.S. a 512meg one sells for a competitive $69, here it is about twice that, yet they are only taxed VAT. My first CD portable player used four "D" batteries. In fact the battery cases were so rare that it took me six months to get one, and I carried it around in a camera case with the batteries in seperate holders, wired together. People laughed when they saw my set up, but when it started to play........ (take off on an old piano joke). :-) Geoff. -- Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel [EMAIL PROTECTED] N3OWJ/4X1GM IL Voice: (07)-7424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 Visit my 'blog at http://geoffstechno.livejournal.com/ ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
