[Fiend]

I am a hoary old dinosaur when it comes to entertainment media. Not only to I get music CDs, I actually pay money for them. How appalling. So I have ended up with several hundred CDs, a few hundred books, and some games.

Now I want to strip down my physical possessions and start transferring some of this to digital storage (and keep purchasing that in the future).

Thus I would like some advice on the matter:

Books: Kindle - seems to be surprisingly functional, but with a small screen. Is it limited to the small screen size? Is it easy to get all sorts of books for it? What is the overall experience like?

Music: Iwotever - as much as I loathe the idea of giving Apple a single penny towards their pompous fashion-driven bollox, I am assuming that I-blah is the best portable digital music option. I had a look, the new Nano seems to be pretty cool. What sort of options are there for storing music on these? Are the lossless / high quality formats worthwhile? I'm used to CD quality in general.
What are the options for listening in a car with only a normal CD player? Again quality is an issue.
How easy would it be to transfer a fuckton of CDs? Are non-mainstream albums generally available for release?

Cheers in advance.

[Bubba]

Books: Kindle - seems to be surprisingly functional, but with a small screen. Is it limited to the small screen size? Is it easy to get all sorts of books for it? What is the overall experience like?

Yes, the screen size for the E-Ink Kindles is limited to what you will have seen. The Kindle Fire has a larger screen but it's not an E-Ink display so won't be as good for reading books.  If you have normal eyesight then you'll be able to read a decent sized page of text on it without either thinking the screen is too small,  nor too large.  Font size, etc is adjustable.

Yes, it's super easy to get books for it, legally or otherwise.

The overall experience is cozy. I was a Kindle nay-sayer for a while, I didn't like the whole grey monochrome vibe but really once you start using one it's just not a problem.  It'd be nice if it was a bit whiter than the grey, and it'd be nice if it had a colour E-Ink display but in general, for reading stuff it's great. 

The battery life is also amazing, so you could easily pre-charge it, go on a 3 week holiday and still have some charge left on return.

[dave]

shorty got a kindle for xmas, she seems to rate it. I pointed out that if you get stuck at the crag you can't rip the index out of a kindle and wipe your arse with it though.

[fried]

Is 'fuckton' in the dictionary? If not it should be.

[Fiend]

I am never short of arse-wiping material at the crag, although using damp pebbles is rarely the highlight of climbing at a coastal crag.

Are there good alternative readers to the Kindle?

Also, out of curiosity, how does the E-Ink thing work? It looks pretty impressive.

[SA Chris]

There are plenty of music storage options if you arent keen on apple. I went for the Luddite low tech cheap and cheerful option and have ripped loads of CDs as mp3 using windows media player to an external hard drive and we listen to it on assorted portable mp3 players ( in my case a Sansa clip). You can download from various online options like amazon etc.

[Johnny Brown]

What he said. I have a Sony which was much cheaper than an ipod, has far better battery life, an fm radio and 'just works' without requiring shit apple software.

Only advantage of an Ipod is all the accessories like an FM transmitter for your old car stereo. Personally I'd put £50 towards a stereo with a line in from ebay, which will still work out cheaper and give you much better sound.

[Fultonius]

If quality is key, don't get Irubbish. You'll want something that uses FLAC or OGG Vorbis.

In fact, depending on how many fuckalls you want to spend, you could get something nice like an Olive for storage/playing. http://www.olive.us

[chris j]

Books - I have a Sony reader which is much the same as an e-Ink Kindle without the 3G download thing. For the simple reason that I object to Amazon's attempt to tie you in to forever buying books from them in the same way as I object to Apple tieing you in to iTunes. The main difference is Sony takes in epub books where Kindle uses mobi. Both also work with pdfs, word docs, txt files etc. Despite saying it would just be for travelling and I'd never give up on paper books I read it as much at home as I do a normal book now.

Music - I use a sansa Clip when I'm running or in the gym. It's tiny, so cheap it's practically disposable and has surprisingly good sound quality (when paired with reasonable headphones). It's not as cool as a Nano or something like that but it just works. I purchase music from 7digital, other online music stores are available etc...

In the car - get a stereo with a USB in socket. Then put your music on a cheap USB stick that you don't need to care about remembering to unplug and hide in case it gets the car broken into. No cables, no fuss, no ipod catapulting across the car while avoiding the sheep in the middle of the bend in the road at 60mph...

[SA Chris]

I think in a lot of newer car stereos there is also an aux socket in the back that you can run a line into and plug an MP3 player in in the glove compartment. I know it can be done on the standard stereo on our Focus.

[Fiend]

Thanks for the replies so far, useful stuff.

[tomtom]

Kindle and an iPod touch would work very well. Also allow you to play whatever games you like/check UKb etc.. (when near wifi) and do other shizzle...

Apple are a bit like the evil marked dominating overlord with the music side, but they do it really well and pretty simply.. (hence the popularity)

[lagerstarfish]

Daywalker Sharpe has a car stereo that communicates with his phone wirelessly - I believe he keeps his music in the phone and can charge it whilst driving and grooving on down to his next level beats

My daughter keeps/listens to her husic on her phone (headphones or plugged into stereo, she has strict instructions to never ever play music on her phone's speaker) - removing the need to carry 2 devices. Music stored on micro SD - presumably a huge music collection could be split onto several cards, possibly more hassle than it's worth?

Shirely someone makes a teeny tiny mp3 player that takes micro SD cards for when you need your own tunes during your Zumba class?

*disclaimer*

I only listen to Radio 4

[tomtom]

Daywalker Sharpe has a car stereo that communicates with his phone wirelessly - I believe he keeps his music in the phone and can charge it whilst driving and grooving on down to his next level beats

My daughter keeps/listens to her husic on her phone (headphones or plugged into stereo, she has strict instructions to never ever play music on her phone's speaker) - removing the need to carry 2 devices. Music stored on micro SD - presumably a huge music collection could be split onto several cards, possibly more hassle than it's worth?

Shirely someone makes a teeny tiny mp3 player that takes micro SD cards for when you need your own tunes during your McZumba class?

I too have such an in car audio device and it communicates with the phone via spectral semphore (aka bluetooth) - though once you have your audio in files, you can generally fill up a USB stick, SD card etc.. and pop that into many/most new car stereo's and play them..

[SA Chris]

Shirely someone makes a teeny tiny mp3 player that takes micro SD cards for when you need your own tunes during your Zumba class?

Sansa clip. You can also get but sd cards prefilled with music, although one having an odd combination of thrash metal, D&B, dumbstep and techno to meet Fiend's tastes is unlikely.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

Also, out of curiosity, how does the E-Ink thing work? It looks pretty impressive.

Magic and pixie dust or magnetic ink in microscopic glass balls, whichever is most believable. This is one of those technologies thats hard to believe that a)has been invented at all and b) doesn't cost a gazillion pounds to buy. 

I read about it years ago and thought it was incredible. They are working on a colour version too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink

[Plattsy]

+1 for the sansa clip. Simple and effective. Also if it's a bit quiet there is a volume option (normal or high) which makes a difference and depending on the region of manufacture can easily be found or requires a little googling to find.

[chris j]

+1 for the sansa clip. Simple and effective. Also if it's a bit quiet there is a volume option (normal or high) which makes a difference and depending on the region of manufacture can easily be found or requires a little googling to find.

Is there? I never knew that, always thought it was a bit quiet when plugged into external speakers (EU inspired noise limit I think) but thought I'd have to do something complicated with rooting to a different OS to get rid of the limit, which seemed just a bit too much effort.

[SA Chris]

Mine is "Home" button scroll down (or up) to Settings > System Settings > Volume > Normal / High.

[chris j]

I googled, it is stupidly easy, I just have to reset to factory settings and then pick a region outside Europe and I get the volume option. Now the question is, while I'm travelling and away from my music source, if I reset to factory settings will it wipe the content? Odds on the answer's yes so I'll leave it till I'm home...

[Plattsy]

Can't see why you'd need to reset again. Could always do a trial run at home.

[chris j]

I'm away at work at the moment. Would be good to have more volume with the Clip wired into speakers in the gym on the boat (lots of engine noise). Just don't want to risk losing all my tunes and having a music-free trip home...