Music in a Flash My friends used to tell me they never saw me without a cell phone attached to my ear. That changed when I got an iPod last Christmas. Well into the new year, the same friends hardly ever saw me with the cell phone anymore, because I always seemed to be wearing iPod earbuds. I had turned into something of an iPod junkie. Then that changed, too. One day while jogging in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, I dropped my beloved iPod. It hit the pavement with a series of ricocheting cracks and my 20 gigabytes of Beatles, Beach Boys, and Beethoven went silent. I learned the painful way about the fragility of hard disk-based digital music players. While they're built to handle jiggling and some light blows, hard disks do not matriculate from the school of hard knocks. After I mourned for an appropriate length of time, I grew giddy at the prospect of replacing my damaged iPod with a new iPod Shuffle. The Shuffle costs a fraction of what a regular iPod does, and it uses flash memory instead of a hard disk, which means it has no moving parts that break when I drop it. Is a flash-based player a good substitute for a hard-drive player like the iPod? Here's what I found. IPod Shuffle: A No-Brainer? Flash players were actually the first MP3 players, and were available a long time before Apple introduced the Shuffle this year. Flash devices have less room to store music (from 32MB to 2GB, compared to the capacity of large hard-drive players, which can hold up 60GB). Flash players are ultracompact, and they cost less than hard disk-based players (although not less per unit of storage--a 1GB Shuffle costs about $149 while a 6GB iPod Mini goes for just $100 more). Flash players also normally enjoy longer battery lives and--because they have no moving parts-- are basically shockproof. I am an iPod lover, so the Shuffle seemed a natural choice for my rough-and-tumble lifestyle. But with literally dozens of flash players available, I started to wonder if Apple's iPod Shuffle was really a no-brainer purchase. Available in two models--a $99 512MB model and the 1GB version--the Shuffle has the same sleek, white design of the original iPod, but it weighs less than an ounce and is about the size of a 5-stick pack of gum. So far, so good. But there's always a "gotcha." Unlike the higher-priced iPods, and even many other flash players, the iPod Shuffle does not have an LCD display. That means you have no visual track information or easy way to navigate through your tunes. Is that so bad? Not if you believe Apple's marketing, which spins the missing display as a plus, boasting that "random is the new order." Indeed, you can play the tracks you loaded--about 100 to 120 songs on the 512MB model and 200 to 240 on the 1GB version--in the order you moved them from your PC. Or you can set the Shuffle for random play, sort of the way you listen to music on the radio. What's more, using the iTunes software, you can create playlists of the tracks you want and then vary their playback as well. But if you want to jump to specific song, forget about it--there's no way to find it other than listening to the start of each track. The controls on the iPod Shuffle are, like its bigger siblings, appealingly simple, so there is no confusion about how to move to the next track, pause, or power off and on. However, the Shuffle does have a perplexing color-coded language of flashing lights to replace the signals you would see if there were a conventional LCD. You'll have to consult the included handy decoder card to decipher the flashing green, solid green, and alternating green and orange lights. Have Your Screen and See It, Too Flash players using display screens cut out the need to understand all of Apple's flashing-light mumbo jumbo. And these players from other manufacturers add a host of extra features but cost roughly the same as a Shuffle. For example, for just $30 more than the $99 Shuffle, the 512MB Creative MuVo Micro N200 includes an LCD display, plus an FM tuner with 32 preset station slots. It also comes with voice and FM recording, as well as in-line recording for connecting directly to any audio source. Although just as small as the Shuffle, the MuVo lacks the Shuffle's eye-pleasing, elegant design. But I'm not necessarily into flash over substance, no pun intended. Then there's the issue of the music itself. The iPod Shuffle supports various music formats--MP3, ACC,.wav, and Audible among them--but tracks are controlled by the iTunes software, which is predisposed to using the protected ACC format from the iTunes Music Store. Other flash players, such as Creative's MuVo, Samsung's YP-MT6Z, and iRiver's iFP-799 will play MP3 and Windows Media Player-based WMA files. And you can usually load these files directly from Windows Explorer or another file manager. That proves to be much more convenient, because you are not dependent on proprietary software to manage your music. Apple promises 12 hours of battery life from the Shuffle's rechargeable battery, but users have reported getting up to 15 hours. That seems okay, but other flash drives, such as the iRiver iFP-800 series trump the Shuffle with a whopping 40 hours on one charge, according to the vendor. The aforementioned MuVo supposedly plays for nearly 19 hours between charges. Sure, the Shuffle's batteries are rechargeable, while the iRiver uses AA batteries that you have to buy and replace. You recharge a Shuffle when the device is connected to your computer's USB port transferring music. But if you want to be cut free from your PC, you'll need an optional $29 USB power adapter to recharge the Shuffle. Hmm. Maybe I don't want a Shuffle after all. Other flash players offer better usability. Disk or Flash: Which Is for You? Having become disillusioned with the iPod Shuffle, I took one last look at a third category of digital audio players, the so-called midcapacity group, which includes the iPod Mini and Rio Carbon. Like flash players, they're more compact than an iPod because they house physically smaller hard drives with up to 6GB of storage. While that means less capacity for music than their larger hard-drive-based counterparts, it's a lot more than a flash drive can handle. For a sampling of the best in both types of hard drive players, visit PCWorld.com. The smaller drives also weigh less than larger iPods, typically 1.5 to 4 ounces, making them easy to carry in a pocket. But they're certainly bigger than flash players. And most hard-disk players--even small ones--still use non-removable rechargeable batteries. Eventually those batteries lose their ability to hold a charge and need to be replaced. That has been one of the biggest complaints of iPod users: Because worn-out batteries can't be replaced, they might need to buy a new player. Not all disk players trap you that way. Some, such as the Creative Zen Micro, now include replaceable batteries. Still, I couldn't get the sound of my iPod clattering along the pavement out of my mind. Here's my ultimate conclusion: If you listen to music while working out or doing some other physical activity, you should seriously consider a flash-based player. If you must have the iconic, sleek design of an iPod Shuffle (after all, some people think iPod is synonymous with MP3 player), understand that you'll give up features such as an LCD screen and lengthy battery life. After all was said and done, I decided I didn't need all the storage capacity of my dear, departed iPod. Now when I jog, I take along my new flash-based player. But it's not the Shuffle. I guess that makes me an iPod junkie on the mend.