Pine MP3 CD Player

The Pine MP3 CD player was released by Pine (www.pineusa.com). It's one of the first discmans that can read mp3s off of a cd-r or cd-rw (and of course it reads normal audio CDs). Also, it can read ID3 tags, and supports bitrates from 32 up to 256. It's also the first MP3 CD player that has been well received by critics, getting good ratings in most places. (The first couple released by competitors either had buttons that didn't always work right, LCD readouts that didn't display anything, or they just stopped working after a few days.) The price is a little up there ($200 US) but can be balanced out since, many of us have thousands of mp3s, totaling up to thousands of dollars worth of albums and singles which we can listen to for free. The specs are over at http://www.pineusa.com/d'music/sm200c_spec.htm

I own one of these devices, and I have to say that there are better products out there. While it does have the wonderful ability to detect ID3 tags, a feature which all current CD/MP3 players lack (current date: 1.16.01), it has one glaring issue: 10 second antishock. This antishock is vastly inadequete. Casual walking will make the unit skip to the point of unusability. Most CD players currently on the market feature 40 second antishock, including most CD/MP3 players. I recommend you buy another product if you want a CD/MP3 player.

Update: The damn thing broke. Piece of shit.