I've never gotten used to using the computer for music (my older system ground to a slow crawl if you used it to play CDs), so I was a bit off-put to suddenly have to listen to myself think. As I'm in the middle of a rather tedious project of bringing together several Excel files of school contacts into what will hopefully be an easy-to-update contact list for next week, I was in dire need for tunes to help keep my brain from liquefying and dripping out various facial orifices!
Now, my previous unit (if I'm recalling correctly) had only set me back $20 or so, and I was really looking for something in the same price range, plus something that would not take up any more space than it had. I was surprised how slim the pickings were on the web sites for Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, Sears, and various other searches I made. I finally identified a couple of possible replacements and jumped onto the el to see what I could find, starting with the Target down on Roosevelt. Well, it appears that Target is getting ready for Xmas, as all the "portable stereo" demo models were stacked up in shopping carts, with only a handful of units still on the shelves (not including the one I'd seen on their web site), so I hopped back on the el and buzzed up to Sears. Sears, likewise, did not have the $19.95 model that I'd seen on the web, and didn't have any left of its $29.95 big brother (which also had a tape deck). I was bummed, but wasn't feeling like getting a "discman"-type thing and adding speakers, but also didn't want to be spending a lot either. Then I saw this:
It's a little mini stereo, with the main box being about 5"Wx6"Hx8"D, just right for sneaking in on my desk, and speakers that could then go off to the sides. It's real basic, just CD and radio, but provides me with a "functional upgrade" from what I had since I can now access the volume and tuning controls, which had been around on the back side of my previous CD player. All this for only $35.00 (plus tax), a bit more than I was hoping to shell out, but a lot less than the "going rate" I'd been seeing for units that weren't as ideal for the space as this one is.
I was pretty pleased with myself, as I'd only decided that I was going to go on this shopping adventure sometime after 5pm, and I got on the el at Chicago at 6:33, got to Target by 6:45, got back on the el by a bit after 7 to run up to Sears, did my shopping, waited for a bus, got a coffee at the White Hen and was still home by 8pm ... all on a single $2 fare-with-transfer! Go me.
Like you care ...