Modern Music To Go
by  Alan Zisman (c) 2003 First published in Vancouver Lifestyles Magazine ,  May 2003, Tech One column

Want to take your music with you wherever you go? Portable cassette tape players are so 1980s, portable CD players so 1990s. With built-in hard drives, MP3 jukeboxes let users take their entire music collections: literally hundreds of songs, everywhere they go.

Apple's iPod (with models to connect to Macs or Windows PCs) has been the fashion setter, combining small size and high price.

RCA-Thompson's Lyra Personal Jukebox is about twice the size and weisght of an iPod-- plan on carrying it in a purse or clipped to a belt, not in a shirt pocket. But it combines high capacity with relatively low price: $499 for the 20 GB model (vs $799 for the same-capacity iPod). It features rugged design with good sound and the best battery life in its class: about 17 hours of music on a charge. A big screen makes for an easy-to-read menu, and the included headphones and car kit let you play it anywhere.

First-generation USB connections makes it take hours to fill full of songs from your PC or Mac, but also makes it compatible with more computers than flashier higher-speed models.

The Lyra Personal Jukebox may well be the MP3 jukebox for the rest of us.

Buy from Amazon.com:

• Lyra Personal Jukebox 20 GB (US$249)