Let us consider 3 types (‘families’ or ‘classes’ if you like) of headphones:

Standard arc headphones are not very popular these days. They are relatively gigantic, at least when compared with today’s gadgets. Pros: Often come with a thick single wire that connects to one side only (this minimises wear). Cons: Large and unfashionable, susceptibility to outside noise.

In-ear: Often cheaply made. My last set lasted only 4 days, but it had a nice mechanism for isolating noise. Many headphones these days penetrate the ears, yet research has shown that this is damaging to the ear. When I searched for a headphones replacement 5 days ago I saw an odd in-ear set which would penetrate nearly 1 inch inside the ears. My knees could bend seeing the scary otoscope-like design.

Large headphones: my favourite type, but only suitable indoors for obvious reasons.

The bottom line: unless you foresee yourself an old person who is unable to listen to people at the table, care less about noise reduction. We are yet to discover the damaging effects on a generation of Walkmans, Discmans, Minidisks, MP3 players, etc.

The BBC takes a glimpse at Sony’s new portable MP3 players, which somehow imitate the iPod shuffle.

Unlike hard disk-based players, (Sony’s) flash devices hold fewer songs, using solid state memory rather than a disk.

The Sony line-up includes MP3 players which hold a similar number of songs to the iPod shuffle – about 250 – but the players have much longer battery life.

The home of the Walkman finally realised the importance of this entertainment niche.

A heated thread in Slashdot discusses why (or why not) the iPod is a better music player than a Palm. Here is a snippet:

Many people don’t need PDA functions, and even for those of us who do the standalones have advantages:

• Price – a 4GB SD card will cost much more than a flash based 4GB MP3 player.
• Size – iPod minis and shuffles are smaller than any PDA on the market and even the biggest current iPod Photos compare favourably on pocket real estate.
• Capacity – 60GB SD card or even CF microdrive? I don’t think so. Fair enough, most people don’t need the full 60, but even the sensible 20GB capacity doesn’t have any real competition from publically available cards, and plenty of people like to have their whole music collection with them to choose whatever they feel like hearing.
• Ease of use – iPods are set out (extremely nicely) to play and organise music. PDAs are not, and as such have loading times, fiddly small buttons and touchscreens that are hard to use one handed.
• Battery life – big fat backlit colour touchscreen or small, clear, functional monochrome display.

Cited by: PalmAddict

Plenty of free music is distributed over the Internet by artists who wish to promote themselves and share their work. UNIX/Linux users can use wget to mass-download that music without any manual intervention. This means that hundreds of songs can potentially be downloaded to your hard-drive automatically and on a daily basis. This method (which personally I consider unethical) is exposed in Jeff Veen’s item where you can pick up the simple instructions.

Sample files are located on this domain although they do not reflect on personal preference.

Also see the newer item which expands on this method and gives a clearer background.

Questions:

• Which MP3 players are available for the Palm platform?
• Which one is best to choose? (a question I will not answer)

Objective Answer:

• AeroPlayer (left in image below) – Cons: No auto-sync with iTunes. Pros: Use of Ogg files instead of MP3 files makes the application 100% free! (hint: don’t tell anyone)
• PocketTunes (middle) – Cons: Pricy; Windows is recommended. Pros: High-resolution support; Large variety of options.
• RealPlayer (right) – Cons: Forces installation of additional (unnecessary) software upon PRC installation; Rather simple. Pros: Reliable; Easy to use.

Cited by: PalmAddict