Reuters Article Offers The Mainstream A Nice Look At The iPod

One of the things we are always excited about is when the mainstream press offers a positive look at Appleis product line. That sort of exposure is one of the best ways for Apple to reach outside of its core audience of Mac users and bring in new users to the Mac platform. Observer M. Poirier tipped us off to a Reuters report that does just that. The article, titled "PluggedIn: Appleis Music Player Wins Following," not only offers a positive look at the iPod itself, it directly compares it to several other MP3 players on the market. From the article:

Two years ago, software designer Ian McFarland bought a Sony Vaio Music Clip, but after finding it slow to download music and ``no fun to use,ii he returned it. He then tried a CD MP3 player, but rejected it as too iiclunkyii and listened to music on his laptop, until one day in a store, he found the iPod. In December, McFarland decided to buy Apple Computer Inc.is iPod MP3 player, which he now takes with him everywhere. Among the reasons: In contrast to the one-hour capacity of Music Clip, McFarland estimates his iPod holds up to 20 hours of music, just over 600 songs, leaving him with 1.3 Gigabytes of storage space free.

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IPod [sic] buyers are willing to pay a premium for a small form factor and large storage capacity, analysts said. There is no other digital audio MP3 player available that holds as much music and is as small as the iPod.

Flash memory-based MP3 players are small, but donit hold many songs, while other hard drive-based players tend to be much bigger.

For example, the Rio Sonicblue 800, which sells for $225 to $300, is slightly smaller but has only 128-Megabyte flash memory and holds only four hours of music. Both the Rio Sonicblue 800 and the iPod feature batteries that last 10 hours.

Meanwhile, the 6-Gigabyte Nomad Jukebox from Creative Technology Ltd., priced from $200 to $300, has more storage, but weighs more than twice as much as the 6.5-ounce iPod and is about four times as big, according to Stan Ng, product line manager for the iPod. The Nomadis battery lasts about four hours.

There is more in the full article, and all of it is good. Thanks to M. Poirier for the tip.