Yesterday, my wife and I had her parents and sister over for a cookout for Mother’s Day. This was the first time that I tried to connect my wife’s iPod to the Sony CFD-440 CD / cassette boombox in our living room. You may remember that I documented the process of connecting an iPod to a stereo for $8 or less. The bad news is that the cable that I bought to connect the iPod to the Bose Wave Radio in my home office doesn’t fit the boombox in the living room. Believe it or not, the Sony CFD-440 doesn’t have stereo inputs.
The CFD-440 is one of the things we have in our house that we got it before we were married. It has lasted this long because we haven’t needed anything better or different. When I get around to spending some money, I’m replacing the boombox with the Altec Lansing inMotion Portable Audio Speakers 2.0.
This is another one of the products I found out about by watching The Lance Chronicles on the Outdoor Life Network. Lance Armstrong had inMotion Speakers in his hotel room while he was at the USPS Cycling Team Training Camp in Solvang, CA. If you watch The Lance Chronicles, you can see that he does some training while listening to his iPod. I’ve also seen him listening to his iPod while warming up for races.
Another thing I noticed when I saw inMotion Speakers in The Lance Chronicles is how small they are. You could really travel with them as a portable stereo. The speakers pump out room filling sound for up to 24 hours on four AA batteries (although they can also work off the included AC adapter). They also connect to an iPod mini if you use the new adapter.
My wife and I have most of our favorite music on her iPod now. We could easily build play lists for parties that are oriented toward the tastes of our guests. Putting a set of inMotion Speakers in the living room would mean that music preparation could be as simple as making sure the iPod is charged.
Altec Lansing inMotion Speakers allow a hard core iPod user to better leverage his investment; Not just the cost of the iPod, but the time associated with loading it and building playlists for it. When combined with an iPod, they’re smaller, lighter, and far more flexible than any boombox I’ve ever seen.