Raise your hand if you have at least one iPod or other MP3 player? Two? Three? More?
I don’t know how this happens but it seems to happen a lot. Perhaps it’s our desire to have the latest and greatest, or maybe everyone in the family needs their own device, but somehow we end up with a lot more of these and other gadgets than we care to admit. In my household we have no less than four MP3 players; seems a bit ridiculous but that’s the reality.
So you have an iPod Video, an iPod Nano, perhaps a Rio Carbon and a Gizmo Wambang (ok, I made that one up) and you want to be able to listen to these devices in a family room when company comes over or in your office. Don’t fall into the trap of buying one of those cool looking docking stations you see in the electronics store. If you’re like me, you see these and are drawn to them, but if you’re strong, you say, “NO, I don’t need that”, and you walk away, only to make your way back to the same spot next time. While these are nifty little toys they’re not very practical because they’re manufacturer and, often times, model dependent. If you’re not careful you’ll find yourself in a situation where you go out and spend $300 bucks on a cool docking station and it works great, then the next year’s must-have player comes out and, guess what, it doesn’t work with the docking station.
In order to have a solution that works for all of my players, I bought an inexpensive set of desktop speakers, set them up in my kitchen, and can now plug them into whichever player I want.
It may not be as pretty a solution but it sure is more practical. It’s also guaranteed to work with any player whether it be today’s generation or the Gizmo Wambang that comes out 5 years from now.
~GT~