Basically, I just want to plug something into a USB drive on the computer, drag and drop music files (either downloaded or from prerecoded music CD's we already have) and play lots of music without changing CD's when the wife and I are out driving.
I don't walk around attached to an earphone or any of those things which seem to be the norm among the pre boomer set. We just want something easy to use in the car our three lovely daughters have enabled us to get and hopefully use someday on a long road trip to visit our cute little grandson and little granddaughter on the way.
You’ll need to “Rip” songs from your CDs (using a computer) to put them on your iPod. Sounds like a job for your daughters!
Cheapest possible way if you’ve got a screen in the car is just use a thumb drive .... about $5-$10. That’s what I do in my car. I loaded it up with music and books on tape, plugged it in, and it works great! Plus, I can keep it plugged in all the time, no having to unplug it and take it into the house so I can charge the battery, because there’s no battery!
A lot of the SanDisk players and off brand models are usually decently priced (under $50 or so) for about 4GB. As long as you have an auxiliary plug, any player will do. And every model with the exception of Ipods allow you to drag and drop into a folder directly from your computer. Best of luck!
Up until this year, my car had a cassette player. I have thousands of recordings on sound discs—33, 45 and 78 rpm and was a heavy home taper until my trusty 1982 Radio Shack Clarinette 102 phonograph died. I still download songs from Youtube onto cassettes. I would like to find out how to transfer the music on cassettes to CD’s or some other digital format.
Wow - thanks for posting this. I, too, am very interested in learning about this. At age 55, I am a wife, mother to 3 sons and now a grandmother to a 6-month old grandson. I have been asking my youngest son, age 20, what I should get - MP3 or Ipod. I thought I was the only one in the world, at this point, who didn’t have one or the other, for heaven’s sake. I have recently started up working out at the Y again - 3 or 4 times a week, and wanting to listen to music or download some of the talk radio shows - all conservative, of course.
Anyway, I am interested in reading all the responses!! I don’t even have a smart phone...still using a flip phone. But - as my son reminds me...often - “Mom, you do have a laptop and an IPAD!!”...Anyway - I am eager to learn about all of this, so I’ll be reading the posts, right along with you.
About a hundred bucks, depending on the MP3 player.
If it's a new car then the radio should have somewhere you can plug in a thumb drive. Check the owners manual.
Something else to consider, if you have a smart phone (Android, etc.), is increasing the size of your SD memory card and storing music there for playback in your car. It’s cheaper than a new IPod, and an app like Meridian will fit your needs well.
Also, if you have a smart phone, try Subsonic - it is an application with two parts, a server running on your home computer and a client running in a browser or on your phone.
It allows you to stream ALL of the music on your home computer to your phone (for a nominal one time charge of around $20).
Lastly, if you do decide to go the iPod route, I would suggest going for one of the Nano models, as they have an ‘On-the-go Playlist’ feature that allows you to quickly add the song currently playing to a playlist; the use of playlists allows you to create lists of favorite songs for you, your wife, each child, particular moods, or genres (jazz, classical, etc.) This feature is available in the 5th Generation Nano and the iPod Classic, but not in the 6th Gen Nano or iPod Touch. IMHO, the OTG feature is the best iPod feature, and I would avoid models that don’t have it, no matter how “sexy” the video interface is...