All I wanted for Christmas was a $230 gizmo (with a funny name)

Just in time for the holiday season, my CD player got stolen out of my car.

The very next day an MP3 manufacturer out of Buena Park, Calif., e-mailed me, requesting that I review its newest product, the mobiBLU digital audio player. And, to my astonishment, this little device happens to have built-in stereo speakers.

Was this a coincidence, or a perfectly planned plot orchestrated by the music industry to entice a business reporter to write about its new-fangled gizmo? Well, if it was then they've picked the wrong reporter. I look at electronic gizmos such as the mobiBLU HDD MP3 Player and I just wonder why there are so many capital letters in its name.

It's shiny. And when I first opened the plastic box inside the box inside the box they shipped it in, I was really impressed by the spine size of the user's manual. Okay, not impressed, scared out of my mind. Are these people serious? It's like a novelette (71 pages) with diagrams. Inside the manual are pictures of "what not to do" with your MP3 player. Do not expose it to a heater. Do not take a bath with it. Don't punch it. Oops. What else was I supposed to do? It was taking a whole three seconds to power up.

So, I'm not going to sound really cool while talking about the mobiBLU ABCDEFG. But, I am cool enough to know that everybody else in the country loves these things, asked for them for Christmas, and was sorely disappointed when they opened that MP3 player-sized box under the tree and found that it was actually a Roget's Thesaurus. What, Dad, I thought you've always wanted to know the synonyms for melodious.

Let.'s be honest, $230 is a lot to shell out for yet another portable music player. Wasn't the Disc Man the height of technology only six months ago? Who can say this isn't another $230 investment into the cyber vortex, which only really consumes paychecks, and next month won't there be a cell phone with a digital music player component? They put everything else in a cell phone, why not music? Of course, it would be hard to hear the person on the other end. Unless you don't want to hear them. Then it's perfect.

Anyway, I somehow did manage to get songs on it, even though I couldn't understand the user's manual. But I don't blame that on the manufacturer. They probably assumed buyers would know that to "download songs" they would have to skip from page 17 to 33 to 63, then finally to 65.

I put about 30 songs on the MP3 player but I honestly can't tell you how they got in there. A friend of mine has a nice computer and he owns a lot of MP3s so it was like kismet. I just sat back and watched the fireworks. The mobiBLU can hold 2,500 songs, and supports both MP3 and WMA formats.

So, I'm driving to work again with Kanye, Jay-Z and Christina. How does it sound? Like music coming out of tiny little speakers. The earphones are nice, though.

The product will be available at CompUSA or from the mobiBLU online store www.mobibluamerica.com.

Contact reporter Becky Bosshart at bbosshart@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.