Playaway a Digital Portable Audio Book Listening Device

On a trip to the library I noticed a new kind of book playing device. I thought that it looked interesting but did not have the time to look into the book player any more than a glance. I took the kids to the library on a day off from school and had a chance to check out the digital book player again.

Playaway digital portable books are similar to books on tape, audio books and books on CD. The Playaway books are like little hand held walkmans that do not require tapes or discs of any kind. When you use one of these digital books you will realize that they are small, compact and lightweight. One book on the Playaway digital player is the size of a deck of cards and weighs only a few ounces.

These Playaway preloaded digital books are available for Libraries, School Libraries, the military, health care and individuals. I would recommend that you look into getting these portable books if you are a librarian or a school librarian. As far as an individual buying the Playaway books, it is more expensive than a paper book. If they had the book Twilight on the digital player I would probably buy it because it would get played over and over enough to make it worth the price.

The Playaway digital books are great and extremely portable. I did not have to worry about losing anything extra. The entire book is all contained on one device. Playaway books are easily paused and they bookmark your spot automatically when you turn them off. These books that are read aloud on the Playaway are hours upon hours long. One book no matter how large will fit on one Playaway reader. So you may have a book that read aloud takes over 20 hours to listen to, but it will all fit onto one Playaway. That means you don't have to change tapes or CD's and no stopping in the middle to fiddle with this or that, unless you want to.

You do however have to supply your own set of headphones. To be honest though, most households have a set of headphones lying around somewhere. So I don't really see that needing a pair of headphones as a problem.

One small problem that could come up is that you may have to replace the batteries. The Playaway digital books require one AAA battery. While the library had supplied the audio book with a battery we did have to change the battery once during two plays. Not bad for over 14 hours of listening entertainment. Us having to change the battery may have been just a coincidence. The Playaway book may have had several other uses by other library borrowers before we had to change the battery. Then again you could have the same problem with a personal CD player if you were using one of those to listen to the books.

These Playaway books like books on tape are a nice change of pace from reading paper books. You can multitask while listening to a book on the digital player. Children could listen to the books on long trips or while in waiting rooms or just for fun. I think that the Playaway players are a great new technological advancement.

If you are interested in finding out more or which books Playaway has to offer you can go to their website: http://www.playaway.com/