Forgive us for getting nostalgic, but Father's Day has us thinking back to the granddaddy of today's MP3 players, the Diamond Rio PMP300. This 32-megabyte marvel held about half an hour of music and in 1998 went for $200. Today Coby's MPC-827 player holds four times as much. It costs $20. This means that for the price of a lap dance you can now haul Dad into the digital age. (Hey, taking him to a strip club would have been awkward anyway.) More important, this technology is not only affordable enough to give as a gift, it's finally easy enough for him to figure out. Make sure you pick something up for yourself as well, because some truly astounding things are happening in digital media right now. Players have massive capacity, many show video, and subscription services let you put any of more than a million songs on them for $10 a month. Audio and video podcasts are blossoming like Scarlett Johansson, with offerings from talented nobodies and forward-thinking big-media properties alike. You can download The Daily Show and Lost for $2 an episode, and earlier this year Jack Black did a video podcast from the set of Nacho Libre. Apple is of course to blame for much of this joy. Although it didn't invent the technology, Apple did perform amazing feats of design and marketing. Still, though the iPod is gorgeous, iconic and in possession of 76 percent of today's MP3 market, it's a little fragile for our taste. Take the Creative gizmo pictured at left. On a recent jog during testing, we accidentally dropped this player hard on one end. It bounced several times and ended up submerged in a muddy puddle--and never stopped playing our Arctic Monkeys track. Now, we'll take a hot chick who likes to go camping over a diva who needs to be talked off the ledge if she breaks a nail--but we're not everybody. Which is why we've gathered the best and brightest so you can make your own choice. Somewhere in here is a companion with your ideal combination of brains and looks.
Where and how to buy on page 121.
