August 3, 2005 A Digital-Music System For Computer-Phobes By WALTER S. MOSSBERG
The concept of digital music is pretty straightforward: you either copy or "rip" music from your store-bought CDs onto a computer, therefore turning the songs into digital files, or you purchase or rent digital music at an online store such as Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store. Then, if you like, you can transfer these songs to a digital music player like Apple's iPod or one of its numerous competitors. But there are still plenty of folks who are intimidated by the idea of storing and playing music on a home computer, or using a portable music player that accepts the computer's digital tunes. These music-lovers are more at ease pulling a few discs from a tall stack of CDs, popping them into the stereo and sitting back with the remote control. [RCA's Rip & Go] This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested a product that attempts to introduce these low-tech consumers to digital music -- without ever involving a computer. The $179 RCA Rip & Go Digital Music Studio looks like a typical shelf stereo, complete with a main unit, two equally sized speakers, a five-disc CD player, AM/FM radio and remote control. But atop the main unit of this stereo, a small indented rectangle and USB port act as a docking base for a bare-bones 128MB portable MP3 music player that comes with the stereo. Once it's attached, you can copy songs from your CDs -- or even from the radio -- onto this player as the songs play on the stereo, by simply pressing Record. The player holds roughly 40 songs, according to RCA, a brand of France's Thomson. The Rip & Go also has a SecureDigital (SD) memory card slot -- another unusual feature for a stereo -- on its front side. If you have an SD card loaded with digital music, you can insert that card and play songs directly from it, which I did easily with the SD card that I keep in my Treo 650 smartphone. ... http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20050803.html Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _______________________________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
