My old Sansa clip is dead. It may be alive, but I can't see the screen any more, so I can't navigate to the play controls, which means dead to everyone reasonable. The only thing left that I have is my 2007 Shuffle, which is wonderful except for the highly dubious battery life and it's staggering incompatibility with everything not Apple.

So now I am shopping for a new MP3 player. Most likely, I will pick up the next iteration of the Sansa Clip. I recognize its flaws and I am willing to live with them. And for $50, you can go a little wrong.

In my players, the one thing that I demand is physical touch. When I'm busy, I don't want to be stopping to look at buttons, and double that down for driving. The Shuffle remains the king of touch operation, so it saddens me that the clip isn't viable. I'm just not going to import my music collection into iTunes again. My laptop does not have a large enough hard drive. That leaves me few options.

Why don't I use my smart phone? I've tried that. The phone uses too much power, drains its own battery, and bricks itself. That is not useful to me. No, I want something that can get damaged during a camping trip and I won't care too much. I might say, "Ouch," but then again, I might say, "Oh, well. It was cheap."