I don’t have subscriptions for anything or license keys. What are people doing?
this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2025
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I remember Microsoft revoking my license keys for a 2011 Office Suite disk which were supposed to be a one-time purchase. Since then I gave them the middle finger and installed pirated copies on every single family member's device.
They could have had a loyal lifetime customer but broke my trust and now they have a full family of non-customers.
I'm currently looking for a dependable MP3 player that is not $800.
Are you saying the one you have in mind is 800 bucks or is that your budget?
That was a typo. I meant to say NOT $800. Sony Walkman has options from $3600 to $400. I want to spend under $100, but I don't want garbage either.
Get a used iPod. Load it with RythmBox, swap the hard drive for a few hundred gigs of SD cards and you're golden.
I want Bluetooth though
It's not particularly high end, but I fairly recently bought a Mixxtape MP3 player for $60 new and it works well and can play as a cassette. The gimmick is wacky (but does work), but I mostly got it because I had to switch to a phone without a headphone jack and I wanted something small and inexpensive.
What the hell is even that?! It's an mp3 player that doubles as a cassette adaptor. That's wild
Yeah, as I said, it is a wacky gimmick, and it does work. My teen kid got a big kick out of it and at the insane price some of the new artists have been charging to get their music in cassette form, it pays for itself in less than three albums if I already had them digitally.
I will say again that it is a $60-ish portable music player, don't expect $1000 Sony gear build quality or interface. I specifically didn't want some sort of Franken-Android DAP, which most newer dedicated music players are, so it worked out.
This is all secondhand, but people seem to like Shanling as a brand
I had a Sansa Fuse about a decade + ago.
Is there an issue with getting a used smartphone with no service and a headphone jack?
I might just do this. I was hoping for something a little smaller. I might use a rooted android phone and use a minimalist launcher.
Check out Tangara https://www.crowdsupply.com/cool-tech-zone/tangara
This is exactly what I want. This would be so cool. I'm weary of crowd funding and you can't buy it anyway.
FiiO has some that aren't super pricey (they run a range, their entry level stuff is usually really affordable), their amps and DACs are pretty solid in my experience so I'd totally look into one, second hand would definitely be an option there too.
Just throwing it in there that none of my Fiio DACs or amps help up over time, especially with the more portable models. Maybe the build quality is better on their higher end models, but I'm definitely not buying any more of their stuff.
I like the echo mini. It looks like a cassette player