Buy Me This: Re-record your records

I am just old enough to remember a time when people listened to records. Cassette tapes took over during my toddler years, but my mother kept our record player to listen to Bing Crosby and Burl Ives at Christmas. Since then, we've bought those albums on CD, but there's still a mystique to vinyl that merits its continued use.

I received this record player for my 20th birthday, and I love it. I've been to a few record sales, and I've accumulated a collection of cheap, used records. I've bought some indie rock on vinyl from The Sound Garden just for the sake of owning the records, but they're expensive and the music won't transfer to my iPod. Sometimes I want to listen to my records in the car or while I'm walking around campus. Despite the fact that I have a portable record player, it's not quite that portable.

This turntable allows you to burn music from vinyl to CDs, the perfect solution to my dilemma. I could play the CDs in my car, or I could convert them to MP3 format to put on my iPod.

Unfortunately, as a broke college student, I don't have $400 lying around at the moment. Perhaps Santa will feel extra generous this year.