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I've reviewed probably a couple of hundred MP3 players over the years, but this post on choosing a player for the first time reminded me of the first one I actually used. This was a SmartDisk Rover, back in 2002 or so. It held 128MB of music - two to three albums, give or take - and had no display. It also had nothing that could, even charitably, be called a design.

Since then I've owned a few. One Creative MuVo NX, one Archos Gmini XS, one Creative Zen Xtra (my beloved 30GB iBrick), one original iPod Shuffle and a couple of dodgy no-name personal video players later, I'm now using an 80GB iPod Classic. This has over 600 times more storage than the Rover (enough to swallow every record I've ever purchased) plus a huge and swanky colour screen and a battery that'll outlast a transatlantic flight even when using it to watch TV shows. Also, as an added bonus, it's nowhere near as ugly.

And all those changes in six years. It's quite amazing, really.

I'm currently reviewing the Tangent Wi-Fi radio for work. It uses the Reciva system, so you can choose from thousands of stations by location and genre - so, obviously, given this huge choice I've found myself compelled to listen to right-wing crazies on American talk radio. This is always amusing, but today I came across a real gem: Rush Limbaugh speaking about High Definition video. So who won the HD war - was it the movie studios who supported Blu-Ray? Sony's PS3 gamble? The porn industry? Any other often suggested theory? Nope - it was Rush. A few snippets from his thoughts on HD:

• Women don't care about picture quality, as they just want to push the button and have the device work
• People "can thank" Rush for Blu-Ray winning the high def war
• Rush owns every single Blu-Ray disc (except for some "dancing" ones)

Must remember this for my next article on the subject. Bonus technology-related Limbaugh fact: he's also a noted Mac user (insert your own Think Different joke here).

16/1/08 13:14 - Steve Jobs expected to take the stage in just 364 days. Excitement building in San Francisco. Rumours suggest new computer hardware and software products to be announced - watch this space for updates.