Before we get to the exciting Listen To This finale, we have one more stop to make on the road to High Fidelity.  Tonight, I want to take a quick look at the battery life and memory capacities of these players.  Obviously, these are pretty important stats.  Without good memory capacity, you will find yourself listening to the same song time and again.  Without battery life…well, you are going to be one frustrated listener.  So, let’s take a closer look.

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This is going to be another short entry to the series.  One of the avenues I wanted to explore was wireless connectivity.  This is an area which really is a sign of things to come.  Down the road, I think these technologies will really come much more to the forefront with things like wireless connections to an online marketplace, wireless sync, and wireless audio.  For now, however, these technologies have gained a pretty minimal foothold into the media player market.  In fact, only one of the players involved in the series (the Zune) offers a wireless connection.  Two of the players (Sony Walkman Video and Samsung YP-P2) offer Bluetooth audio connections.   The other three do not offer any kind of wireless connection.  And even those which do offer such connectivity, leave much to be desired in the implementation.

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This is going to be a pretty short entry to the series.  Every one of these players is able to store and display photos.  But let’s be honest, that is really not the main draw of any of them.  No one buys an iPod or a Zune or any of the others for photos.  You can get a cheap $10 digital picture frame to carry on your keychain if that is all you want.  Still, the fact that these do display your photos is a nice added benefit.  So, let’s see how they do.

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There is really no easy way to say this, so I am just going to come right out and say it.  Honestly, I could not recommend watching video on any of these devices.  Their screens are all too small to really make it worthwhile.  If you plan to watch videos, then I suggest you look at the iPod Touch for a nice portable device, or even the Zune 120, which has a very nice screen as well.  For something a bit less portable, the Archos 7 is a fantastic option.

So there, I got that out of my system and I do feel better.  Now, forget I said it.  What we are going to look at tonight is how each of these compares to the others, and which offers the best of the bunch for watching video.  Really, this is going to be one of the shorter entries into the Listen To This series.  There is not a whole lot to it.  Let’s get started.

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I think we all have that one band which we could listen to all day, every day, and never get tired of it.  For me, that would be the Beatles…or maybe Led Zeppelin.  Certainly not Abba (though my wife would disagree.)  For listeners like us, Sandisk has come up with an extremely creative music experience; the slotMusic Player.  It is a complete package for the music lover in all of us.  So, I was excited to give this one a try and listen to the sounds of my favorute bands.  Unfortunately, Sandisk sent me the Abba version instead.  Now, like I said, Abba is not my favorite band.  Looks like my Dancing Queen wife is going to be getting an early Christmas present to help feed her Abba-diction when this review is done.

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