best portable for sandy environment?

Posted by: lopan

best portable for sandy environment? - 13/02/2005 23:13

Just got a new job that will put me in the green zone in Iraq... I'm going to need a device with gobs of storage 30gb or better (being that I'll be there for a year), and it needs to be fairly impervious to sand... (nicely sealed) and of course decent sound quality and a nice battery life.

Being that I've never had a really nice portable MP3 player, what would you guys suggest.
Posted by: tman

Re: best portable for sandy environment? - 14/02/2005 11:39

Probably going to get flamed on here but how about an iPod? It's fairly well sealed if you put tape over the docking port and make sure you leave the headphones in.
Posted by: matthew_k

Re: best portable for sandy environment? - 14/02/2005 15:18

Is the new click wheel sealed? You may do better looking for the older generation with all touch buttons. Of course, that always sounded awful to actually use, but I never tried one.

Now, how much sand are you really going to be exposed to if you're staying within the "Green Zone"? It was my impression that it was downtown Baghdad, not really the middle of the desert.

I'm extremely happy with my Karma. I havn't had a problem with it yet, and it's got many of the great empeg features. (It's great when you press the menu button and hold it a seccond time just to see if it'll take you back down to where you were in the playlist tree, only to find that it does exactly that...)

Matthew
Posted by: bonzi

Re: best portable for sandy environment? - 15/02/2005 10:53

Quote:
Now, how much sand are you really going to be exposed to if you're staying within the "Green Zone"? It was my impression that it was downtown Baghdad, not really the middle of the desert.

If dowtown Baghdad is anything like downtown Khartoum (sandwise), a lot

BTW, good luck, Brett! Try to keep out of too exiting activities (like getting yourself abducted or killed)
Posted by: lopan

Re: best portable for sandy environment? - 18/02/2005 17:48

Quote:
Probably going to get flamed on here but how about an iPod? It's fairly well sealed if you put tape over the docking port and make sure you leave the headphones in.


I was thinkin the same thing, even though I love my empeg, and would love a rio portable, I'd hate to buy one then have it break due to sand...

Quote:
BTW, good luck, Brett! Try to keep out of too exiting activities (like getting yourself abducted or killed)

Although I plan on being as safe as possible, I'm not doing civil engeneering, security or anything that would put me directly in harms way, I'm assured by my company that I'll be in a hardened facility working with servers and from what I've read the green zone is surrounded by 15 ft high concrete, so I don't fear so much about being killed as much as I hate to leave my family for a year... But thanks! I'm actually more worried about some of the day to day crap you have to deal with, apparently everyone that goes gets fleas, they have real lice problems, only bottled water can be used for consumption and some really creepy bugs and such that can pose problems.
Posted by: lopan

Re: best portable for sandy environment? - 18/02/2005 17:59

Quote:
Now, how much sand are you really going to be exposed to if you're staying within the "Green Zone"? It was my impression that it was downtown Baghdad, not really the middle of the desert.

I've talked to a few people that have been there, apparently a lot! Not like the sand at the beach but really fine sand that gets in everything, one lady told me she never had skin problems til she went there, now she has severe acne due to the fine particles of sand that get into everything including the pores of your skin. You have to be really careful with laptops and any type of electronics.
Posted by: tman

Re: best portable for sandy environment? - 18/02/2005 20:29

Quote:
Not like the sand at the beach but really fine sand that gets in everything, one lady told me she never had skin problems til she went there, now she has severe acne due to the fine particles of sand that get into everything including the pores of your skin.

Nice! Buy a tin of varnish and coat yourself before going

How about a cheap flash memory based player and just keep your music collection on an external HD which you keep safe in the server area?
Posted by: lopan

Re: best portable for sandy environment? - 18/02/2005 23:51

I was thinking about this I could use it as an external drive and could use any size drive I wanted. Might not be as sealed as some, but it's the cheapest I've seen if you get one with no drive... I have a 60 gb laptop drive layin right here in front of me

All the reviews say one of the only drawbacks is that it's huge... but looking at this review it's not THAT much bigger then the 3g ipods..