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Now some Apple followers might not even know about this product yet but I'm guessing most of you do so in essence I'm just covering a mundane topic no one is interested in except me. I just heard about this new product and supposed new category of product. I am not an Apple supporter, especially the iPod, but Apples new wave of products including the iPhone and this, the iPod Touch have got me thinking about purchasing one. When looking for the iPod Touch it was hard to know which picture was correct as I had never seen it so, I had to go to the source, the Apple Store.

The Apple iPod Touch looks much like an Apple iPhone plus the new earbuds. It comes in 8GB and 16GB each priced at $329 and $449 respectively. Both of them ship by September 28 2007 and both come equipped with the same things except the hard drive space. This includes: a 3.5inch widescreen multi-touch display(which I will touch on later in the article), Wi-Fi, Safari, YouTube, WiFi Music Store, and with an 8mm thin casing. The WiFi Music Store is Apple's new music store to support the Apple iPod Touch. As well that music store will be able to work with the Apple iPhone by letting owners of the supposed revolutionary phone create there own ringtones using songs bought from the store, although there is one catch. The songs cost an extra 99 cents for the service.

Apple has not only introduced a new category into the digital device market but it also has revamped its line-up of products. The iPod Nano is now in my opinion, an ugly looking player. I'd easily rather buy a Creative Zen V. As well, the iPod Video has become the iPod classic and has retained most of its shape but has added an 80GB version and a whopping 160GB version and to make things better, they slashed there prices. A little touch they added is you can now laser engrave your iPod to make it more personal.

The multi-touch screen is an exact replica of the iPhone multi-touch screen. I learned so many new features of the screen when looking at the iPod Touch Guided Tour such as "pinching" which lets you resize an image and when you rotate the Touch, the screen rotates too. As well it lets you glide through album covers and tap the one of your choosing. It does all this by recognizing your finger movements using electrical fields on the screen.

Archos has a line of Portable Video Players that end in 04 and the newest addition to that lineup is the Archos 704 wifi. It's predecessor the Archos 604 wifi with a 30GB hard drive and 4.3 inch touch screen was the first of it's kind in the fall of last year and acted liked a media capable PDA unlike the wifi capable media players today that focus on using that technology for acquiring music. Archos used it for better things; for accessing e-mail and using a browser. The reason though this Portable Video Player (PVP) didn't fair so well, was because it was slow and choppy. This version however sports double the resolution of the 604 giving it a 7 inch touchscreen and provides up to more than double hard drive (80GB); also being available in a 40GB version. With add-ons it's even more lucrative because it will be able to put shows from your DVR/PVR/TiVo onto it as well as take videos from your PC, with the PC part being free. Now I'm excited about buying this but I'm not going to rush into it as the price tag is a throw off, $550. It is simply a stripped down Mercedes and to get all the extras you'd expect in a Mercedes you'd need to spend hundreds in upgrades.

Now as I was doing research on this product I learned that Archos had brought in a new version of the 604 wifi called the 605 wifi. The main differences I saw that were huge was battery life and weight. The 605 has a 17hr music and 5.5hr video battery life compared to the 704's 25hr music and 5.5hr video battery life. The other difference is the weight with the 605 weighing in at 260g and the 704 weighing in at a whopping 630g. When you put the two side by side you'll easily notice the difference in size and another difference is the startup time time is much more time consuming for the 704. As well the screen brightness, although it might be changeable, is far brighter and clearer on the 605. For more information on both of these wonderful and exciting products visit Archos.

I am a fan of San Disk mp3 players especially the Sansa line and the Sansa Connect is no exception. I feel that San Disk is the Virgin Mobile Canada of the mp3 industry, meaning they are great but not recognized for that greatness.

The Sansa Connect is the first wirelessly equipped mp3 player from San Disk's audio line and is one of the first to jump on the WiFi technology. They have partnered with Yahoo! to produce this flash-based mp3 player which allows you to share and keep connected with music, friends, and new entertainment streams wherever you go. It is like the Zune in that you can share music but much better as there are less limitation. Yahoo connects owners of this mp3 player who have a Yahoo subscription with a Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription which enables them to download songs and receive recommendations from friends. On top of all this you have the opportunity to listen to internet radio via Yahoo which mean almost no ads and it provides a wide variety of stations and genres. It���s basically like getting Sirius or XM Satellite Radio for FREE!
It comes with a very sleek design that of an iPod Nano coupled with a 2.2 inch colour screen with advanced navigation features including a scoll wheel with grooves and an easy to use interface. It works extremely well with Microsoft Windows Media Player, thus it supports Microsoft PlayForSure. An added bonus to this player than no iPod on the market has is a microSD card slot for additional capacity. Hopefully you���ll buy a San Disk microSD card.

���The Sansa Connect is a great MP3 player, especially for folks looking for a subscription-based, iTunes-free experience..���


A drawback to this player is it doesn���t play back videos unlike its older cousin the San Disk Sansa but as I mentioned and will continue to add more it comes with many other features including design, weight, colour display, built-in speaker, separate volume controls, lively and colourful displays. Another amazing feature is that it doesn���t work solely with Yahoo music, it can play home downloaded songs and supports a wide variety of file formats unlike the iPod which is a huge advantage over the iPod collection. Unfortunately the San Disk Sansa Connect is not available in Canada but is in the U.S. and retails for around $200-$250.