I finally did it. I broke down and bought an iPod. I like it.

I remember when the first mp3 players came out, way back in 1999. I paid $250 for a 256mb Diamond Rio on Ebay. When that one crapped out I bought another one, this time a 512mb. Sometimes I wish I still had those Rios, they were kinda cool.

Anyway. Then I had POS portable CD player that also played mp3s off disks. That sucked… I found that I had to swap out CDs a lot.

And then the first iPods appeared, along with the Creative Zens. After trying iTunes and reading the specs on the iPod I chose my Zen, which served me well for a good 5 years (I still use it, although not for music).

And then I bought an iRiver Clix. The Clix was, and still is, a badass PMP. The only downfall is the small sizes: 2gb and 4gb. I still use that little sucker too, when I get a wild hair and decide to try one of those music rental sites, like the new Napster or Urge.

And then I saw the 80gb iPod video. I was sold on the capacity. I had to have one. I could put my entire music collection on it and still have 20gb left over for my podcasts and Internet TV shows. So last week I bought one.

I still hate the big fat bloated pig that is iTunes. And I’m not crazy about the iPod’s clicky scroll wheel. I love the simplicity of my Clix. When I want to transfer files onto my Clix all I have to do is drag and drop in Windows Explorer. And the Clix’ interface is superior to iPod’s. I love clicking on the edges of the screen. To me, it’s much more intuitive than Apple’s device.

So what’s next? I was thinking about a Creative Zen Vision-type media player. I like the big screen and multiple video outputs.

Geek out.