File Under: Sansa and Rhapsody sitting in a tree.

After many hours of research and shopping all over town, I finally purchased a personal media player. Not being one for popular trends I decided to step out of the iPod arena and purchased a Sansa e260; a 4 gig player with video capabilities for less than a 2 gig iPod Nano. It can also act as a USB flash drive so I can just dump the mp3's on there without other software. I have been happy so far, my only complaints being the need to use Winamp to create playlists and the overly sensitive thumb wheel. Also, the standard ear buds hurt so I picked up some nice Skull Candy ones, quite a common upgrade for all of these kinds of devices (a point of interest, NYU now recommends to its students to ditch the iconic iPod buds to avoid getting mugged).

With a player in hand, I wondered how I would fill it with music I didn't already have. My mother has been touting her enjoyment of the Rhapsody service. I checked it out, and found that they have an all u can eat buffet for a monthly subscription, with drag and drop to the player interface, including entire play lists. I decided to give it a try. I have now loaded my little Sansa with music that would have cost me a few hundred dollars on iTunes (first month was free with the purchase of my Sansa). I recommend the Widespread Panic play list.