In my opinion, the most sought after gadget at the moment is the iPhone 3G from Apple.

But what if you only want a portable music player?

Would you go for an iPod Touch, which has a load of extra features like internet browsing, email, downloadable apps and WiFi iTunes store, or would you go for an iPod Classic?

An iPod Classic gives better value for money if all you want to do is listen to music.
For an 80Gb version you’ll pay between £148 and £186 which is phenomenal value for the amount of storage you get.
80Gb will hold approximately 20,000 songs or 100 hours of video.
Yes, the iPod Classic also plays videos.
With a crisp and clear 2.5 inch backlit display, the iPod Classic is a must have gadget in anybody’s home.

Whether you’re going travelling or just want to listen to music on the move, it doesn’t get much better than an iPod Classic.
Sure there are other music players available, but not many can boast as much storage, battery life and style as an iPod.
And speaking of battery life, the iPod Classic comes in with an impressive 30 hours of music playback per charge and 5 hours of video playback.
To fully charge the battery takes 4 hours, but there’s a fast charge option which will charge 80% of the battery in 2 hours.

As I mentioned, if you’re going travelling and want a great music player that’s durable and robust, then you really shouldn’t look any further than an iPod Classic.
Planning on going to the beach this summer (when it arrives)? You’ll want to take some music with you right? What better way to carry your entire music library about?

At the end of the day, not only does the iPod Classic look good, but it feels good too.

Long gone is the time when you had to have the hi-fi up full blast from the living room just to hear a whisper of your favourite tunes from the garden. With summer now in full flow, the back garden is the place to be for social gatherings of friends and you are going to need your tunes out the back to keep the party vibe going (and to annoy the neighbours).

So now is the time to invest in a proper little gadget for the summer and they don’t come much better than this Outdoor Wireless Speaker. It works by simply plugging your iPod, computer or any other sound-spiller that you have into the mains-transmitter (which is provided of course) then lugging your speaker out to the garden and your mains transmitter will stream all your tunes over wirelessly, voila! Easy peasy. What’s even better is all the volume controls, bass and what not are all on the speaker so you don’t have to run back inside to change the volume when old Mrs McLintoch next door tells you to pipe down (not that you would listen to her anyway).

As an added bonus this already funky looking speaker gets even funkier when night falls with its added cool blue light. It won’t illuminate an entire garden but it is definitely a snazzy little thing and will have your more drunk friends Oooh’n and Ahhh’n in its presence.

Is there anything that the Apple iPod can’t do? I thought i had seen all of the accessories, tools, docks and what not to go along with the world’s favourite MP3 Player but yet again i have came across something new. This time it is in the form of an alarm clock but in a cross between both the new and old age it comes in a rather cool retro look. It is the Retro iPod Alarm Clock.

As soon as you pop your iPod into this Alarm Clock/iPod Dock it immediately sets itself to clock mode so you can select whatever tune, playlist or podcast you want to wake you up, yes playlist option is there for all you deeper than deep sleepers out there. It even features a snooze function so you can attempt to drift back into that dream you didn’t want to be wakened from before the next attack of beats pounds your ear drums.

If you turn it over to the back it has a dial that you can use to change the volume, which is perfect for Sunday’s when you don’t really want to get up. You can just set the volume to low and not get up then blame the Alarm Clock for not waking you! Or if you do actually want to get up but can’t normally, then simply turn it all the way up to DANGER DANGER ! Ear Drums May Explode Mode.

A regular occurrence when using gizmo’s such as iPod’s and mobile phones as your alarm in the morning is that they run out of charge in the middle of the night. The Retro iPod Alarm Clock will also charge your iPod while it is sitting on its perch so that you never miss a meeting, a squash game or a family event (bad news if you enjoy missing family events).

With a range of colours to choose from in Classic White, Black and Pink it is suitable for both male and female and will look cool on anyones bed-side dresser.

When it comes to radio, aside from tuning in whilst in the car or putting in a shift at work, is there really any need tune in to it anymore what with all these other media devices that we have at our disposal. With the younger crowd no longer tuning in some might say that radio is dead but a little thing called the Internet seems to think otherwise.

Thousands of radio stations with some of the world’s best DJ’s broadcasting every week are available to the whole world over the Internet so why would the youngsters want to tune in to Radio 2 on a Friday night? They are all tuned in over the web of course. The only problem is of course that it is Internet radio which means they need a computer to tune into their favourite station right? Nope!

If you are one of those parents whose kids are always hogging the PC in the hall with the radio on then the BT Internet Radio is your saviour. BT Internet Radio will allow you to listen to over five thousand Internet radio stations from all over the world in any room of the house. Plant it down anywhere in your household and it well connect with your broadband service wirelessly so you can send the kids to their room to teeny bop or you can lay it down in the kitchen so you can whistle while you cook. It also has built in speakers, an alarm clock and it can access your computer and play your favourite playlist. Who said radio was dead!

At the end of last year Creative launched a 32GB version of their popular Zen player in Asia and in true Creative fashion they teased us Brits with a one off limited amount of the mega memory player in December, a whole 50 of them! However from this week on the teasing stops as the Creative Zen will be available to all in the 32GB format.

With the same amount of on-board memory as the iPod Touch plus an SD card slot capable of taking up to 8GB more it’ll take a massive effort from you to fill this little baby up with media but I’m sure you can rise to the challenge. What is even better though is that if you are looking for a quality, teensy, mega memory player you no longer have to join the endless list of Apple fanboys, the Zen has everything you could possibly need. It will support file types WMA, MP3, AAC, WMV9, MJPEG, MPEG4, DivX and XviD and will display video at a 320×240 resolution. It has other great little treats for you to enjoy as well such as a built in FM radio and a built in microphone, supplied software for converting formats and it will play stuff bought from iTunes.

Fiddling about with the iPod Touch’ interface may be more enjoyable than that of the Zen but the Zen’ video quality is brilliant and with more memory you’ll squeeze a lot more movies into it. For a player the size of a credit card it packs a hell of a punch!

The Apple website was shut down again today but sadly it wasn’t due to the big announcement of say… a brand new 3G equipped iPhone, it was the significantly less appetizing announcement of a new iPod Shuffle.

Apple have introduced a new iPod Shuffle to their catalogue in the form a double the capacity 2GB model, so now you will be able to get twice the amount of random music bliss.

Other than the increased storage space, the new Shuffle is just the same as the old one that is favoured by joggers all over. It is the same clip-on with no screen, no FM radio and no speaker simplicity player that we are known to love.

The only other change is prices. The new iPod Shuffle will be retailed at £45 which is £4 less than the price of the current 1GB model and of course, keeping the 1GB model at £49 would just be barking so it is now down to a bargain basement £32. Nice!

The rumours were flying around everywhere this morning that a new iPhone was going to be unleashed upon us today, fueled by Apple shutting down their online store and bloggers “confirming” that the new iPhone would be in stores by as early as lunchtime. Well, as it turns out, those rumours were very close to home and they err… confirmations by bloggers all over the Blogosphere were spot on! The 16GB iPhone is here along with a very surprising 32GB iPod Touch, something that none of the pundits predicted.

The beefed up iPhone was called by pretty much everyone in the Blogosphere this morning but the new iPod Touch has really caught everyone off guard. The new 16GB iPhone will cost £329 - a £60 rise on the £269 8GB iPhone and there is still no sign of the 3G that we crave. The new 32GB iPod Touch will also leave your pockets £329 lighter and is also a £60 rise on the price of the previous top-end model. Both new products are available immediately online to both US and International customers and are expected to hit stores as well in the next couple of days.

A week ago, Sony announced that Skype for the PSP was to be halted in Japan which left a US and European release looking very precarious indeed. As Europe rarely see’s a release before the Japanese i wouldn’t blame you for writing off your chances of receiving Skype on your PSP but those wind-up merchants at Sony have sneakily included the Skype feature in their new firmware update, Version 3.90, released today for the PSP.

The new firmware update is available to users in both the US and Europe as of today and you can access it via your PSP’s Network Update. Unfortunately owners of the original PSP will not be able to take part as Skype will only run on Slim and Lite models. The release of the new firmware means that Sony have managed to meet the end of January deadline that they first set. The new firmware update also includes Go! Messenger which will be running by February and will enable voice and video chat between PSP users, nice!

Adding the Skype and Go! Messenger features to the Internet Radio feature that was released in the last firmware update, the increasingly useful PSP is now becoming a very appealing piece of tech not just to gamers but to pretty much anyone, hell, even my mother has one now!

Is it just me or is public radio becoming less about music and more about some overpaid, under-talented nobody bleating on about what they had for breakfast this morning, or going on about who they met this morning on the way into work, who actually turned out to be another nobody. Look none of us really care, give us back our tunes.  This is a problem I’m not prepared to put up with up with any longer and so I’m in the market for a new car stereo which can hook into my mp3 player, a Zune as it happens. I also subscribe to a lot of audio podcasts, so the ability to catch up with these on the daily commute will come in handy.

I was pleasantly surprised to find an extensive offering of car audio, like this Pioneer, which will allow you to connect your mp3 player via the line in, or you can load a CD full of your favourite mp3s and play those instead. Given that that you can fit on many more MP3 songs than a regular audio CD this is a great feature if you want to keep your car free of lots of empty CD cases. It will also play regular CDs, and of course allow you, if you must, tune into your local radio station - ah yes he had an Egg McMuffin this morning ! The Pioneer also allows, via an optional connection to control your music collection on your iPod from the stereo. Or how about this offering from JVC which, although lacks support for plugging in an external MP3 player does once again support MP3 or WMA CDs. It also supports DAB radio, which allows you to get the additional  features offered from digital radio, such as textual information.

Finally with systems such as these I can say no to local radio and listen to my own music / podcast collection on the way to work - roll over Mr DJ here comes the Cliff Richard Christmas Special !

Audio and video player designers, Sandisk, are setting their sights on Apple’s Nano with their new 32GB Sansa View MP3 player. The Sansa View has been available since last September in an 8GB and 16 GB form but they have unveiled at CES in Las Vegas this week that a 32GB model is here and they are pretty much ready to give the green light, launching it in the US in February with a $350/£175 price tag.

This massive increase in memory will mean you will be able to hold around about 50 movies!… so you definitely won’t be watching the same one twice that’s for sure. To make it even better there is a microSD expansion slot so you can have even more memory if you feel the need! Battery life is also pretty darn impressive with Sandisk claiming that the 32GB View will be capable of a 35 hour lifetime with audio or seven hours with video.

Along with the rest of the Sansa View mob, the 32GB version will come with a nice 2.4 inch colour screen and a very sleek, super cool design. Will this new 32GB Sansa View have Apple quaking in their boots then? Most probably not but this is a great little player with some terrific specs.