I've always had a portable music player of some sort since about Christmas of 1983 when I got my first Walkman. I've gone through times when I was a heavy user and times when I hardly ever used it at all, but I've always had one available.
When I started training for the marathon back in 2005, I started thinking that it might be nice to have listen to music while I was running. Everything I have is on CD now and I don't think I actually have a functional tape deck, so I figured that I'd take the plunge and get myself an MP3 player.
iPods were all the rage at the time, but they were prohibitively expensive, so they were off the list right away. There were all kinds of other models available at the time, but I didn't really know a whole lot about them.
Long story short, I opted for an 512mb iRiver 700 series, mostly because a couple of friends had iRivers and were reasonably happy with them. It was interesting because you could very easily drag-and-drop MP3s to and from the player, even though you had to use the iRiver manager program. The sound quality was lacking, but it was good enough. And it came with an armband.
I never really used it for running because I found it difficult to listen to music and run at the same time, but I did use it a lot for all of the air travel that I was doing at the time.
As you can well imagine, 512mb doesn't really hold a whole lot of music. It wasn't much of a chore to copy music back and forth from the player, but it did mean that I had to think about what I might want to listen to on a flight.
* fast forward to mid-2007 *
I was doing a LOT of travelling at this point and figured that I could use a player with a little more room on it, so I started some research.
Basically, I was looking for something with around 16gb that had decent audio quality. Lots of players now can do video as well, but I didn't really care about that. The idea of watching a movie or whatever on a 2-inch screen didn't really appeal to me. I also needed to be able to find some sort of strap or armband for it, since I was hoping to try using it for running (again, even though that didn't work in the past).
iPods had some down in price considerably since I last looked at players, but they were still at a premium compared to other units. I researched some other players, but the only other one that made any sort of impression was the SanDisk Sansa e200, which has all of the same functionality as an iPod, but is considerably cheaper.
I hummed and hawed for quite a while, trying to decide what to do. During this time, I decided that I wanted a player that did not use some sort of hard drive for storage. An hdd-based player probably doesn't have any skipping problems, but I didn't want to have to deal with that in a high-impact environment (such that running would provide). That eliminated all of the video iPods, leaving only the Nano and Shuffle. The shuffle doesn't have enough storage, so it was off the list. That left the Nano and Sansa.
Also during this time, a couple of friends who have iPods also started talking about the Nike+ kit they were using for their running. This obviously intrigued me and definitely had me leaning towards the Nano.
It was around this time that Apple was going crazy with the new iPhone. I have no interest in the iPhone whatsoever, but what is important is that shortly after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple announced that some new iPods were coming, including a new Nano. The new Nano looked very interesting to me, but without being able to actually see the thing, I still couldn't make up my mind. The smaller size was appealing, as was the better display. Sure, it was supposed to be able to play video, but I didn't care about that.
Eventually the new iPods were available for purchase and I headed over to Future Shop to take a look. There they had the new Classic, Nano, and Shuffle. Not only that, but they actually had power (a rarity), allowing me to play with the menu.
I immediately grabbed the Nano and the first thing that I really liked about it was the size and shape. It fit in my hand perfectly. I worked through the menu and I was pleasantly surprised with the interface and how good everything looked. I played with the cover flow stuff (there were a handful of albums on it) and was surprised by the performance of it (I had previously read that the cover flow stuff was pretty sluggish).
All in all, I was pretty happy with what I saw.
I continued to do some research into the Nike+ kit, and the more people told me, the more I liked it. The scales were finally tipped in favour of the Nano and I decided that that's what I would have.
Andrea and I had discussed getting a new MP3 player and we decided that it would be a Christmas gift for me, so I was going to have quite a wait. I tend to be pretty patient about that kind of stuff, so it wasn't going to be that big of a deal.
However, something about having it now totally resonated with me. I had been saving up some money anyway, so I went out and bought it, telling Andrea that it would be an early Christmas present and that she was not to get me anything substantial (to which she abided!). I also bought the official Apple Nano armband at the same time (which turned out to be perfect, since it has two "settings" - one for the plain Nano and one for the Nano and Nike+ sensor).
I ripped open the (minimal) packaging, hooked it up to my laptop, copied over some songs (sort of - iTunes started copying over my entire MP3 collection), and had a listen.
I've been happy ever since.
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