A wee MP3 player in the shape of a nut, Nextar’s Peanut is extremely cheap, extremely basic, and a bit odd.
Powered by a single AAA battery, this 1 or 2GB nugget comes in pink, red, blue, white or black. It plays MP3 and WMA files, has a small LCD display, and offers basic old-school controls. Hunting through menus reveals equalizer settings, a file browser, and a voice recorder. It comes with a USB cable and free (not very good) earbuds.
It works O.K., but won’t serve any duty greater than stocking stuffer or emergency backup. Two caveats: it doesn’t show up as a removable drive on a Mac, and faint radio noise occasionally muddied the audio output. Also, Win98 and Mac drivers come on a mini-CD that won’t work in slot-loaded drives, and are not offered for download at the product page.
The Peanut is $20 or $30, depending on capacity, at Staples and other main-street stores.
…Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t.
Circuit City has brand new Sansa Express for $25 that has 1G built in and take a microSD card for expansion.
http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/productDetail.do?oid=176654&om_keycode=4
I’ve got 3 refurbs I bought from Woot for $14 each with 8G expansions that I found for $18 each.
< $40 for a well rated 9G mp3 player with FM radio and voice recording.
Why buy ugly crap?
By that rationale, twice the price ($45-65) will get you a new iPod Shuffle.
This would have absolutely rocked my world in 1998.