4. An auto-off feature

If you enjoy listening to old time radio shows in bed it's well worth checking to make sure the player you are thinking about has an auto-off feature. Without such a feature it means the player will continue to play until the batteries run flat, which isn't ideal.

Some players have a sleep facility that lets you set a specific time, after which the player will turn itself off automatically. Others, such as the creative, offer a permanent auto-off feature that will turn the player off if no buttons are pressed for a set period of time. This can be very useful as it means that even if you forget to set the sleep-timer the player will turn itself off after an hour, or whatever length of time you've set for the auto-off timer.

5. Sufficient space for all your audio files

When buying a player it's important to consider how much space you will need for files.

It's easy to think that the more space the better, but this isn't always the best way to approach the matter.

For example, there's no point getting a player with 60 gig of space if you're just going to use a couple GBs. Equally, it's not wise to buy a player with only 1 gig of memory if you're planning on copying your whole old-time radio show collection onto it.

Personally, I prefer a smaller sized player, such as the Creative Zen Plus, with 8 gig of memory than a larger sized player, in physical terms, with 50+ gig on it. From experience I know that I'm never going to fill more than 5 or 6 gig at any one time and so anything more would be a waste.

The easiest way to calculate how much space you need is to remember that a typical old time radio show is roughly seven megabytes and a typical music track is usually about five megabytes. So, on a 4 meg player you'd be able to store roughly 570 old time radio shows (that's about 285 hours of listening) or 800 music tracks, which is about 80 full CDs. On an 8 meg player you'd receive a double amount, which is more than sufficient for most people.

Another benefit of the smaller players is the storage tends to be solid-state, rather than a mini hard drive, which means they're quite elastic and harder to damage if if you drop them by any chance.

I hope that these five tips will help you in your quest to get the right player for your needs. Whatever you do, don't get overwhelmed by the wide variety of players now available.

Just use these five tips and you'll be able to eliminate over seventy percent of them straight away, which will give you a much more manageable list to select from.

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