Vizzini says, "In all other ways, inconceivable"

[trekds947]

Hi all,

If you're like me, you pulled out your stash of 45s, LPs and EPs and made some of your first mikxtapes on 8-Tracks and then later on 60 minute Maxell UD-XL cassettes and so forth. *But* did you ever conceive that 25 years later, you would be making mixtapes on CD or even, using a computer to do so. Even moreso, did you, in your (Moody Blues) wildest dreams believe you'd have your music stored on your computer?

If someone told you that in the size of that Elvis Costello casette case would be a music player that would hold your entire music collection, what would you have thought?

[Panorama]

It's pretty great. I love having instant access to all my music.

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"Photography with a Vision"
http://www.cooganphoto.com

[deethelurker]

I don't have an mp3 player (I'm still waiting for their prices to go down) but I do have plenty of mp3s on my HD and I've made dozens of mix CDs since acquiring this computer back in 2003. And being able to make a mix CD for my own listening pleasure while driving around or studying or during a rare private moment at work is pure heaven. I don't know how I ever got on without the ability to create those mix CDs that save me from having to rely on our dismally poor quality local radio stations, or from being stuck with only a limited range of artists to listen to.

This is actually an extension of what I used to do with cassette tapes (I was too young for 8-tracks). I used to spend hours at the tape decks with a huge stack of cassettes I wanted to put onto my latest mix tape, and then I would either listen to them on my Walkman (remember those?), or later on when I was first driving I would play them on the car's tape deck. Now that I have a vehicle that plays CDs, cassettes are kinda... obsolete? No. Just... I don't have a purpose for them at the moment. And as much as I used to love them, I also used to be frustrated at them, like when the cushion material would fall off or when the tape would get tangled. With CDs I don't feel that frustration, though there are the times when I have to clean them with a cloth.

Um, but to answer your "in your wildest dreams did you believe you'd have music stored on your computer?", no, I didn't. Even I didn't. Certainly not when I got my first (and used) computer back in 1993, nor even when I received a new-at-the-time computer in 1997 as a senior in HS, and that latter one actually had speakers and the ability to go online. How can you begin to anticipate something like a computer file that is a song? Even that would've been mindboggling to me. So a portable system that would've played thousands of those same files the way a Walkman played cassettes would've rendered a "You're pulling my leg, aren't you?" from me. The fact that now such a thing seems commonplace is a sign of how adaptable we are as humans, a good thing in our highly technological world.