iBetrayed my iPod dreams

I have not-so-secretly coveted an iPod for years. The reasons are many.

Several of my friends have one, and I enjoy scrolling through the gadget's menus using that crazy-awesome click wheel. Apple makes colorfully coercive commercials for them featuring artists I love, like The Fratellis. When I studied abroad in London this past spring, I am fairly certain I was the only person in the city of 12 million that still owned a Discman, let alone walked the streets with one.

My desire to own the device (and my shame over still using CDs - how archaic!) has never been stronger.

So what has stopped me from buying an iPod? Lack of cash, plain and simple.

While most of my peers found it easy to shell out $250 for the "Classic"" 30 gigabyte model that I so craved, spending that kind of money while earning only slightly better than minimum wage wasn't something I could easily justify to myself. Also, my parents laughed and then promptly said "No" when I asked for one for my birthday/Christmas/any other holiday I could think of. So, I waited, hoping that maybe, someday, Apple would come to their senses and offer the player for the reasonable price, of say, $100.

They didn't.

But someone else did.

Enter woot.com and the Microsoft Zune. Woot is a site that, to quote its Frequently Asked Questions section, "focuses on selling cool stuff cheap," daily, featuring a single item marked down to an appealingly affordable price.

Last Monday I was on AIM when my friend Mark, a regular Woot-er, IM'ed me with the news that Woot was offering a 30 gigabyte mp3 player for the low price of $99.99. The Microsoft Zune featured many of the same capabilities as an iPod - high storage capacity, video player - while also offering an AM/FM tuner, wireless Zune-to-Zune sharing, and a 3-inch screen, trumping iPod's 2.5.

At half Zune's regular price, and 40% the price of an iPod, it was a no-brainer. I clicked the bright yellow "I Want One!" button and didn't look back.

My shiny black Zune arrived in the mail yesterday and I am still setting it up. I have worshiped the iPod for so long that it is difficult to get used to a completely different device. But the transition has been made easier by the Zune's smooth and efficient syncing capabilities, and the ease with which one can edit track info and delete songs from the hard drive. I even got to give it a name for the wireless network: "black betty bam-a-lam". You can''t go wrong with a 1970s song reference.

Sure, the iPod was my dream, and my heart is still a little bit broken that I don't have a click wheel of my own. But I finally have an mp3 player, and I'm happy to settle for a close second.

And the magnetic, anti-tangling ear buds don't hurt, either.