Media player for your parents

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My parents emailed me the other day with a link to a song they'd found on Google. It was the lyrics page for a song but had the YouTube video embedded on the page as well. They then asked: "We can play this on our computer right now and I would like to be able to save it to a flash drive but I don’t know how."

Sigh. I then had to explain what streaming audio is and how even though they're listening to the song right now there isn't an MP3 of it hiding on their hard drive somewhere. We didn't even get into copyright law. The last thing I need to do is introduce my parents to BitTorrent or Pirate Bay.

So it amused me to see Maggie Mason's Father's Day gift ideas this evening. In particular, the sanDisk slotRadio seemed right up my parents' alley. You can purchase it bundled with a media disk of 1000 songs that can be copied anywhere seemingly DRM-free. And since my parents are still using a dial-up internet connection (don't even get me started about that), it saves them from waiting for 1000 songs to download from the ether, regardless of price. It also comes with an FM tuner for those folks who want to tune into the gym's TV stations while working the treadmill. Try that with your Nano.