My MP3 player

I mentioned in my first post that I listen to audiobooks on a cheap MP3 player. I wanted to show it to you, because I'm an opponent of the modern trend of spending money like there's no tomorrow.

No. This won't do everything that an ipod does, but all you really need is an ability to listen to your files. Everything else is just a matter of status symbols.

This is the Panasonic SL-SX470. It cost me $29 at Wal Mart. I chose this one because it plays MP3s on CD and on CDRW. That's an important feature. An audiobook on CD might take up many disks. You can probably store War and Peace on a single disk in MP3 format. The CDRW capability is what really sells it. If you want to listen to an audio file that's not very large, you would waste a lot of space using a regular disk. Re-burn your same disk over and over if you like. Perfect for podcasts.

I'm not recommending that you run out and buy this model. I saw other ones that would do the same thing. I'm just saying that you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars to enjoy downloadable audio. Let's face it, when you factor in the cost of an ipod, you might as well just buy commercial audiobooks. Spending hundreds of dollars to listen to free content makes no sense.

Ciao,

Jeff