[BigV]

You guys are great! Bri, they really know their stuff, but only SteveDallas hinted at my main contribution: style. I am sometimes asked if I dress in the dark, my fashion sense is so retarded. But I am (a little more) in tune with the vibe I get from my kids. They asked for iPods. Even my "pre-teen" (he boasts, now that he's in double digits :snicker: ). I immediately made the mistake of talking technology with them about capacity, software, compression, bit rates, file sizes...you can imagine the result. :yawn:

*Best* deal? Entirely subjective, and only partly based on specs and capacity and price. No wonder I killed the conversation. There are two questions here. The technical one: what is the best player? And the emotional one: What do I want to feel like when I have this thing.

The emotional question has to be answered first, and the good news is you get to contribute. Does he want to be seen wearing those iconic white headphones? Does he want to carry around a lot of music, thousands of songs, or will mere hundreds suffice? Does he have a computer already? What's your budget? What's your opinion on copyright wrt music file sharing? How strenuously do you wish to impose that view on your son? Is the music more important than everything else, or does the gadget matter in some way? Is he able to ...

timeout. I can see I've blended the two thoughts. What I hoped to convey is that the questions are what do you want to accomplish, and then track down the hardware that helps your achieve that goal. That's the way to get to the *best choice*.

I'll save my wind for another argument.