The Incredible State of Almost

Slashdot has had a couple recent articles about digital music/media players. There's quite a selection, however none manage to have the set features I'd like all in the same package. Somehow they all seem to manage to miss one thing - and I don't think I'm asking for that much when everything I do desire is in multiple players, just never all in the same player.

• I desire a digital music player that plays .ogg as well as .mp3 files. If it can also play other formats, that's a bonus. If not, it's not a deal-breaker.



• I desire a digital music player that does not demand I use Windows™ to use it or set it up.



• I desire a digital music player that has its own FM transmitter since I'd be using it in the car and don't care to mess with annoying tape adapters or fiddle with the wiring. And while an FM transmission might not be ideal for fidelity, remember this would be in a car where there's wind, road, and engine noise. Any loss of fidelity from FM wouldn't be noticed.

I don't need an FM receiver. I don't need a huge amount of space on the thing - four hours of music capacity would suffice, eight would be nice. More than twelve is almost certainly overkill. I certainly don't need it gold plated. I don't need a fancy display - I merely need to know that's on or off and if its transmitting, on what frequency. I don't need to record voice or radio. I don't even need much in the way to choose what it plays, really. It'd be nice, but while driving? Three main controls are all I really ask: ON/OFF, PREVIOUS and NEXT. Anything else is bonus.

It's easy to find stuff with many of the things I don't really care that much about. Nothing wrong with that, I could always choose simply not to use the "extras" or might eventually find them useful. But for now, I have yet to find anything with the three things I desire all in the same package.

Performance hit

In the Spring and in the Fall there are times when I don't need to run the rear window defogger or the air conditioner in my car. If I drive mostly highway miles on a tank of gas then, I can get almost 40 mpg. Almost. Somehow I never quite seem to make it to 40 mpg. The last tank, however, did it. I got better than 42 mpg. While it was mostly highway miles, and at speeds of 55 and 65 mph, that's not likely the reason for the improvement. It was the gasoline.

No, really. It's not that it was a special brand, it was that I filled the tank in Wisconsin. Wisconsin, overall, uses straight gasoline. I had been filling the tank, naturally, in Minnesota. In Minnesota, almost all gasoline is 10% ethanol. It takes 1.4 gallons of ethanol do the work that 1 gallon of gasoline does. So by filling up in Wisconsin, I had more energy in the tank than I when I fill up in Minnesota.

Please note that I have not said that ethanol is bad idea. Or a good one. I'm just noting the difference in energy as it presented itself to me.