Today I actually got to touch and play with a real live iPod today, renewing my lust for them. It was set up in Future Shop right out there so people could touch and play with it, with only a security cord to keep it from walking off. It was hooked up to a couple of decent speakers and sounded good. I was impressed with the menu navigation and how quick it was to figure out how things worked. I’d still be a bit nervous going for a run with a $500-700 peice of hardware in my pocket, but it was damn good to actually find one that wasn’t either encased in carbonite a plastic case or only available to see behind the counter and not really condusive to playing around.
Another one I saw was from RCA and called a Lyra, very similar to this one, but it had a 1.5 hard disk that didn’t increase the overall size much at all. Now looking back I’m wondering if maybe it was mislabeled, as if they had a 1.5G hard disk I have no idea how they fit it in there. However, if the label was right, it was a sub-$300 player that was far smaller than an iPod and had more than the usual 128mb flash. Will have to re-check that out, just to see if I was crazy or not.