Sansa Taco

My wife got me a Sansa SlotMusic player as an early anniversary present.  I had never owned a portable MP3 player or other iPod-type device before then, though my wife has several and let me borrow one of her older ones.  It mostly contained music she favored.  When I wanted to listen to my music I would use my portable CD player or Sony Walkman portable tape player.  My wife got me the Walkman a few years ago primarily to listen to books on tape from the library.  Several months ago my wife entered an online contest and won a Sansa SlotMusic.  It came with a jacket or outer shell with a picture of the rapper Akon and a chip of Akon’s music.  The player doesn’t store music itself but has a slot for small chips that can contain music.  The chips can be placed into a device with a USB plug, plugged into a computer, and have digital music tracks stored on them.  All Sansa MP3 players are made by SanDisk who also makes flash drives.  The chips for storing music come in different memory sizes.

We replaced the Akon jacket with a generic Sansa jacket.  The jacket slides on and off and looks like a taco shell.  The whole SlotMusic looks like a taco and, like other users, I just call it a Taco.

As part of my anniversary present, my wife transferred the music from most of my 170+ CD’s that I have accumulated over the past 12 years onto our computer.  She then transferred them to an 8 gigabyte chip for the Sansa SlotMusic.  It’s amazing that the music from all those CD’s fits on a chip that’s not much bigger than a dime.  We put the chip in the Taco and now I can listen to my music anywhere.

The Taco is a very simple MP3 player.  It doesn’t have a screen or the ability to select specific tracks or playlists.  It has one button for play, pause, on and off; a dual button for volume up and down; separate buttons for forward and reverse; and a headphone jack.  It doesn’t pick songs at random but just plays them in the order in which they are stored.  It seems to have put the CD’s and many of the individual tracks in alphabetical order.  There’s some limited song selection capability with the forward and reverse buttons but it would be very tedious to scroll through everything and not be able to see the song titles on a screen.  The Taco uses one AAA battery that provides about 15 hours of listening.

I’ve used the Taco just about every weekday since my wife put the songs on the chip.  I listen to it on the train to block out the noise from the other passengers and at work to get through the tedious, but necessary, tasks.  I go through one battery per week.  So far, I’ve listen to everything though Queen Greatest Hits III (as of the first (written) draft; through Salsa Fresca as of the second (typed) draft; through The Colors of Latin Jazz – Corcovado as of the third (posted) draft).  The music started with my Coachella 2002 CD since the alphabetically earlier CD’s were loaded later.  Every time I start listening I have to turn down the volume because the default is set so high.  It has worked well and I believe it has lowered my stress levels.  I once forgot my headphones and had a tough time getting through the day without my Taco to listen to.