Panasonic's Tiny Digital Audio Player

Portable music devices keep getting smaller and smaller, but one of the things the tiny beasts have been missing is a removable means of swapping music in and out of them. Panasonic's new model SV-SD80 e-wear SD audio player is a portable digital audio player that uses removable media and provides up to 50 hours of uninterrupted play (using the rechargeable Ni-MH battery and one AAA alkaline battery.) An included 64MB SD Memory Card, which is about the size of a postage stamp, holds up to 64 minutes of music in High Quality mode (129 minutes in Extended Play mode). The player has a blue, two-line, 10-character LCD display and supports MP3, WMA, (Windows Media Audio) and AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) playback of encoded music. The SV-SD80 includes the Panasonic SD audio PC recording kit, consisting of an enhanced version of Real Network's popular RealJukebox software and a USB reader/writer that connects to a PC's USB port. With the software, you can rip songs from audio CDs or download content from the Internet. Once the music has been transferred to the SD Memory card, you just stuff it into the player. The SV-SD80 features play/stop, skip/search, volume up-down, play mode and hold/mode/normal switch. Other features include random play and repeat play. The LCD display will give you info that includes track title, artist name, album title, and elapsed time. The player comes with a water resistant case, in-the-ear headphones with an extra headphone extension cord, a neck strap, adjustable armband, 64MB SD Memory Card, PC software on CD ROM, USB reader/writer; rechargeable Ni-MH battery and battery charger. The SV-SD80 has a suggested retail price of $329.95.