High Sierra Topix

Anyone use an MP3 for other than music? Post back with suggestions for one that works best for audiobooks?

And what is your favorite audio book web site?

I use a simple (iRiver) MP3 player to listen to books. My favorite site is audible.com. Their user interface is very good with speedy downloads and as far as I can tell many more available books than others.

A few of my recent favorites have been -

Eiger Dreams
No Shortcuts to the Top
Epic: Stories of Survival
Below Another Sky
A Short Story of Nearly Everything

Also; for a boat-load of free stuff to listen to I use iTunes (podcasts, etc.).

For backpackers, the ipod nano seems to have the best balance of weight and size to storage space. The 8gb weighs under 2 ounces and should hold about 100 hours worth of music or books. Playing audio its rated at 24 hours of playtime on a full charge.

Oddly enough, apple lists its maximum operating altitude as 10,000 ft. I'm not sure why that would matter though as there are no moving parts in it.

http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/specs.html

i use a shuffle, works well i dont realize its there

I went with the Sansa Fuze. 8gb. With a slot for a SD card for more memory.

I wanted a unit with big enough controls that no-longer-nimble fingers could use, and a screen that older eyes can still see. Plus, Circuit City was having huge sale so it was an offer I couldn't refuse.

I only have a biography of Alexander the Great loaded now. From Librivox.org.

After a fair amount of analysis I finally just broke down & bought an iPod classic, spent this week copying over a bunch of my audiobooks as well as some other files, I'm pretty happy with everything so far, I had previously used a Sony digital recorder which I was (and am) very satisfied with in general, however the iPod is a much better option for copying multiple files & has number of other benefits which I'm starting to appreciate!

As it happens, I too swapped out my old MP3 player for an iPod classic. Sort of funny to realize the iPod has four times the hard drive capacity than the PC I'm currently using (160G vs 40G).

It is nice just to stuff everything on an iPod without having to consider storage capacity.

Ditto what Shawn just said... one of the reasons I'm kinda' excited about my iPod Classic is that I don't have to make any decisions about which files / books I'm bringing & which I'm not - I'm able to copy ALL OF MY FAVORITES over to my iPod classic!

Long-term, a very good investment... we all change our needs over time, the Classic allows me to continue to increase the books/files I carry w me backpacking, I'm very pleased with my decision to buy this product!