Magic Music Box

I'm a bit of a control freak about my music collection, and staying on top of it is getting harder and harder. It was bad enough, a couple of years ago, trying to alphabetize a couple of hundred CDs. But then, like a lot of kids my age, I started doing Napster. Seven hundred downloads later, my collection is hopelessly Balkanized. To listen to a Moby track, I can stick a CD on the stereo. But to hear the remix, I have to run downstairs, fire up the PC and select the right MP3. I tried ripping all my CDs onto my computer, but its 2-GB hard drive gave out before I got to the Cs.

Solution? Buy an MP3 jukebox. Not those little MP3 players that store maybe 10 songs at a time, but the new sandwich-size devices that have enough hard-disk storage for 120 hours of music and are flexible enough to plug into your home stereo, car stereo or PC.

Thought the Walkman and Discman were pretty cool in the '80s and '90s? Imagine walking the streets with every tune you own (and quite a few you borrowed) in your pocket, one button push away from total aural bliss!

That's the theory, anyway. In practice, it's not quite so easy. There are now three MP3 jukeboxes on the market. Each has a hefty price tag (between $400 and $600) and lousy battery life (about four hours), and each is a first-generation device--which means imperfections are rife. The 6-GB Nomad Jukebox from Creative Labs takes ages to boot up. The 6-GB Personal Jukebox 100 from Remote Solutions only takes CD rips (which means you can't transfer any Napster files you might have stored on your PC). And the 9-GB Neo 25 from SSI is a pain to navigate, forcing you to scroll through every track on a tiny LCD screen.

If you can't wait a year or so for second-generation devices--and why should you?--I recommend the Nomad Jukebox. For one thing, it's upgradeable--meaning when the wrinkles are ironed out of its operating system (which in its current version forgets those songs you've lined up the instant it powers down), you'll be able to download the improved version for free.

The Nomad is also the only one of the three jukeboxes that functions like, well, a jukebox--only without the quarters. You can select your songs in a flash (they start playing instantly) and queue up new tunes even as the old ones are playing. The Nomad would be perfect for a long road trip with your co-pilot playing deejay--except, of course, for that pesky four-hour battery life. (Remote Solutions solves that problem by shipping its jukebox with a car-outlet adapter.)

Still, the Nomad was good enough to get me started. Its hard disk, unfortunately, was not sufficiently spacious to store my entire collection. Creative Labs claims the average CD collection is much smaller than mine, between 80 and 120 CDs, and the Nomad certainly has space for that. The rest of my bulky medley is now squatting happily on my computer's hard drive; I just swap tracks as necessary.

Meanwhile, I'm happy to report that the Nomad can not only alphabetize tracks but cross-index by album, artist and genre. That's going to keep me occupied for some months to come.

For more information about the Nomad Jukebox, visit nomadworld.com . Questions for Chris? E-mail him at cdt@well.com