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摘要

Alternatives to the iPod: Andrew Harrison pits new contenders from iRiver and M-Bird against top and bottom model iPods. With the Apple iPod as the leader in the world of portable music players, other models continue to appear almost daily, many promising better performance or features, the better to entice the would-be buyer away from the ubiquitous all-white pacesetter. Here we take a closer look at two different i Pods at each end of Apple's range, along with two players that represent the two storage technologies employed by all such portables-one solid-state (Flash) memory, and one hard-disk drive, namely the M-bird XT-21 and iRiver H340.