Now, before you burst a vein pointing out that I’ve repeatedly said I’d never purchase an iPod, you’re absolutely right. I’m not thinking about the iPod nano now, nor will I ever in the future. I do think it’s impressive that Apple finally bothered to give a crap and add an FM tuner to one of its iPods (a feature which has been on the market for years now, but which Apple was apparently to cool to bother to acknowledge) but I still just can’t stomach these things. So, the iPod is out.

The Zune HD is intriguing. In fact, I can safely say I’d probably buy this device, if it supported Ogg Vorbis. I know there are many out there who consider this a dead or dying audio format, but the truth is that it’s still technologically a superior codec to MP3 and, most importantly, a lot of my music library is in vorbis! Yes, I could undertake the monumental task of re-digitizing my collection, but that would be a huge headache and not worth the effort, because there are many other players on the market which are just as sleek as the Zune HD that do support vorbis. So, Microsoft, I wanted to give you a try, really I did, but you’re missing that one last intangible, immeasurable quality of “chemistry.” Don’t fret though; you’re getting my money on Windows 7.

So, where does that leave me? Well, certainly visiting Anything but iPod a lot, for sure. I am intrigued by the Cowon i9. It seems seems slim and light, supports a lot of audio formats (including vorbis!) and looks kind of neat. I can’t tell whether it’s actually going to be released in this country though, or how much it might cost. There are those who swear by Samsung; the M1 and R1 look interesting, but it’s not clear whether the US will ever see the M1, and the R1 hasn’t even been released yet. This is going to be tricky.

There is an amazing assortment of digital music players on the market, and I have to confess that at times I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by all the choices. Chosing the right digital music player can be a bit of a process, and you probably don’t want to venture forth into this journey without a guide, or at the very least a sherpa. Anythingbutipod.com has helped a lot, and has a great compare feature, although I think there are some bugs in it. Anyway, for a while, I was intrigued by Microsoft’s oft-touted Zune–the wireless syncing feature seemed like a nice upgrade–but had to nix that idea after discovering it doesn’t even support Ogg Vorbis, my preffered audio compression format and the format in which the majority of my digital music library resides. Ultimately, I decided that it was pointless to find a new brand when I was so happy with iRiver. I’m very very close to settling on the iRiver LPlayer, pictured at right. It’s got all the features of my current player, with some added enhancements of course (auto FM tuning, wow–yes, I still want, and use a lot, the FM tuner on my player, to get all the NPR nuggets of knowledge that I can squeeze into the day), lots more size, and has very modest dimensions, something that is coming a bit of a de facto requirement for my electronic gadget purchases. The LPlayer also uses the nifty D-link navigation method – basically, you use the frame of the player to navigate menus and select options, which seems innovative to me. If it weren’t for all the new iRiver players that have been announced for CES 2009 this year… I would’ve gotten this player already.

In other news, I’ll be out of town for a while attending a wedding in the Domincan Republican. Oh yeah. This will be my first trip to a tropical island resort ever, and the first real vacation I’ve taken since I started working (that is to say, the first time that I’ve ever taken more than 2 consecutive days off of work for purely personal reasons). Needless to say, I am eagerly anticipating this trip. The camera is already charged, so pictures should be abound for this trip. And of course, while I’m enjoying the sun in tropical weathers, Seattle should be having its own personal time with temperatures in the upper 20s and snow showers. That’s fantastic.

Other random items of note: Charlie Wilson’s War is a very entertaining movie (although for some reason I keep referring to it as Charlie Gibson’s War…) and I was nearly speechless today when I was all set to pay $18 for a new version of Ryan Farish’s album Everlasting at the local CD store (yes, occassionaly I still buy CDs… mostly when Amazon doesn’t have an mp3 version available and I need to load up on my music before I set out on long international flights) and then I happened upon a used–yet pristine version–of the exact same album for $10. Sounds good to me!