According to recent research by Endsleigh Insurance, university students have on average over £6,000 worth of technology in student halls with them when they go away to university.

The items include such electronic gadgetry as MP3 players (iPods), laptops, computers and even musical instruments. In fact it’s instruments that are the most expensive items, with an average cost of £689 a piece. Laptops and computers and the next most expensive items.

Students also have consoles such as the Xbox, PS3 and Nintendo Wii in halls with them.

Despite all of the expensive items students have with them at university, 41% of students don’t have any kind of insurance for their kit, with 4 out of 10 students saying that insurance is too expensive. 30% of students don’t think their possessions are at risk from theft at all!

The most surprising thing is that students tend to underestimate the value of their gadgets, with an average estimated value coming it at £3,211, almost half of the real value.

Rhiannon Harris of Endsleigh Insurance stated:

Students are taking a lot of expensive possessions with them to university now and many of these items, such as laptops, MP3 players and mobile phones, are an easy target for thieves.

The iPod offers sound at a ‘Fisher-Price toy’ level according to Neil Young. This is quite a slap in the face for Apple who have engineered the leading portable music product of our generation. Neil was speaking at a Tech Conference called ‘Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech Conference.

In Neil Young’s address to the audience he stated:

Apple has taken a detour down the convenience highway. Quality has taken a complete backseat - if it even gets in the car at all.

He went on to say that the quality of music has been “dumbed down” as a result of MP3 files and MP3 players. He claims that MP3s represent poor audio quality, and is pushing for Blu-Ray to become the music standard going forward. He is also producing his life’s works on Blu-Ray, which he intends to release later in the year.

He hopes that Blu-Ray replaces MP3 as the musical standard.

During his talk Young criticised Apple in particular for what he called bring the quality of music down in a policy of convenience over quality.

He lamented:

We have beautiful computers now but high-resolution music is one of the missing elements. The ears are the windows to the soul.

Apple have reported their best ever profits for a Q3 period, largely attributed to sales of their Macintosh computers and iPods. During the period Apple sold over 11 million iPods worldwide, which is an increase of 12%. There were some price reductions in the mix however, which saw the revenue Apple received from the MP3 Players rise just 7%.

The iPhone notched sales of 717,000 units. Also included in the success story for Apple were sales of its new MacBook Air, but they haven’t included any sales for the 3G phone.

Apple’s impressive revenue was $7.46bn (£3.72bn) for Q3, and they’re expecting an even bigger Q4 now that the new iPhone has been released.

Apple supremo Steve Jobs stated that June was:

The best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple’s history.

We set a new record for Mac sales, we think we have a real winner with our new iPhone 3G and we’re busy finishing several more wonderful new products.

Abigail Haythorne died when she was knocked down by her car while riding on her bike and listening to her MP3 player; she couldn’t hear the car coming.

The driver of the car, Christopher Mills, explained that the 17-year-old girl road in front of his car without warning, from the safety of the cycle lane.

I knew there was a cyclist there but I did not expect her to come straight out.

As soon as I saw her come out I put the brakes on and steered to the right. All I know is that I hit the brakes hard.

Abigail was declared dead at the scene.

Thames Valley Police’s PC Gavin Newman discovered that the teenager had been listening to her iPod, which was still switched on and playing in her pocket.

PC Mark Howard explained at the inquest:

Later on, we found that the display light was illuminated. Her earphones were found tucked inside her neck scarf.

Christopher Mills had been travelling around 45mph when he collided with Abigail, which was within the speed limit. PC Howard told the inquest that had Abigail been listening she would have easily heard the car coming.

Mr Gardiner, the coroner for the incident, warned of the dangers faced by cyclists and pedestrians when listening to MP3 players and iPods while out on the road.

Miss Haythorne died as a result of an accident in that she was struck by a car.

Whether she could see the car coming we do not know, it is possible that she was wearing headphones at the time.

I would urge cyclists to reserve their hearing and not to use their earphones while using the roads.

Recent research in the United States by the NPD Group found that MP3 ownership among children, aged 4 to 14, had more gains in the last three years than those seen by any other electronics product. This includes digital cameras and mobile phones, and the research covered 3,200 households.

MP3 player ownership from children within the age group of 4 to 14 rose from 4% to a staggering 28%. A company spokesman stated:

PDMP (portable digital music player) usage has doubled two years in a row, increasing 10 percentage points over the past year, making PDMP’s the strongest growth product in both year-over-year and over time trends.

In the last three years electronic items such as mobile phones and digital cameras has experienced growth it double digit percentage figures, while items such as portable CD players have experienced a similarly spectacular decline.

The survey also found that 20% of children aged 4 to 14 owned their own mobile phone, but only 13% actually use them.

Vinyl records take up a lot of space in the home, and since they were eclipsed by CDs they’ve pretty much disappeared from our homes, all except for the houses belonging to wedding DJs and record enthusiasts.

CDs were much smaller, and you could store far more of them in your house. However even compact discs take up space, especially if you’re really into your music and have a wide range in tastes. Therefore the digital evolution means great news for those who love music. No longer are you restricted to how many records you can fit on your shelf, or how many CDs you can get into your CD rack. Now it’s just a matter of how many MP3s you can fit on your MP3 player.

Even then though, some people may find their MP3 player is too small to fit everything they want; that’s why some are turning to home servers. Instead of shelves full of dusty records or racks full of CDs, you can buy a portable hard drive and use it as a music server. You can store nothing but music on your home server, and access it from either your PC, laptop or choice of MP3 players.

The added bonus of this is, should you lose your iPod or MP3 Player, or should your home computer crash, your home server will still be safely preserving your music collection.

One of the best things about the iPod and the iPod range is the level of accessories you can buy for them, such as earphones, covers, clips and even speaker systems that turn an iPod into a full fledged stereo system.

However not everyone wants to spend money on the accessories, preferring to buy their iPod and spend their money on iTunes downloading their music, the reason for having an iPod after all.

Therefore if you want to turn your iPod into a stereo system without buying an extra set of speakers or an iPod dock, you’ll be interested in what the Instructables came up with. They’ve invented a new iPod speaker system, made from a Tupperware box. It looks cheap and simple, largely because it is, but it makes for a great speaker system.

Using the box, and the sound that it can reverberate, you’re able to create a sound system for your iPod. Check out the full instructions on how to make one at their website here.

For years parents have been suffering during long car journeys as their children would get restless, bored and agitated asking ‘are we there yet?’ constantly. However, due to the use portable gaming systems such the Nintendo DS and MP3 players, the children are quite content to sit patiently; it’s the parents who now get frustrated and ask ‘are we there yet?’.

A recent survey showed that 56% of children spend their time on car journeys playing on games consoles such as the Nintendo DS. 50% of youngsters also choose to listen to their own music on MP3 players or iPods, so that they don’t have to endure the musical tastes of their parents.

According to survey, it takes just 24 minutes for parents to get irritated on car journeys, whereas children can happily last for an hour and a half before they suffer the boredom of the trip.

10% of parents questioned said they became irritated in the first ten minutes of a long car journey.

Dowshan Humzah, director at More Than Insurance stated:

Children increasingly have plenty of options to keep themselves occupied and happy on long journeys. It’s parents and guardians who are now faced with a range of stresses from getting stuck in traffic jams to avoiding menaces on the motorway.

In the current climate of credit crunches, impending recessions and falling house prices, it can be difficult to decide what to invest your money in.

For example, if you can get a mortgage you could buy a house, as the prices are quite low at the moment. But wait! It might be better to just buy an MP3 player instead. Let’s look at some ways that an MP3 player is a better investment than a house.

You don’t need a mortgage to buy an MP3 player
This one’s obvious. If you want to buy a house these days you’ll need a mortgage, if you can get one, with an interest rate around 6% mark. You’ll also need a 10% deposit or you’ll be paying even higher interest. To buy an MP3 player however, you just need to pay the small fee the player costs, which is…

Considerably cheaper than a house
That’s right, MP3 players cost between £10 and a few hundred pounds. Even though house prices are falling sharply, they’re still quite at the level of MP3 players. You’d need a considerable amount more to buy a house than an MP3 player.

Better storage capacity
It may be surprising to most, but MP3 players have more storage than houses when it comes to keeping your music. For example, you can hold thousands of tracks and albums on a 20 Gig MP3 player or iPod, but you couldn’t store thousands of records in your house, unless you had a very big house… and that would cost even more money.

Stability of the price
It’s true, buying an MP3 player is unlikely to be an investment that will make you rich. However, it also won’t break you financially. With great investment comes great risk, and as house prices are falling now some homeowners are losing tens of thousands of pounds in equity. No one has ever lost that much on an MP3 player, so while your iPod may not hold its value when you buy it, it won’t lose you too much in depreciation, probably just a few quid in fact.

So if you’re thinking of buying a house, just buy an MP3 player instead. It’s a much safer option.

Microsoft announced a new game for their Xbox 360 console at E3, the video games conference in LA last week, which would appeal to MP3 player owners. The game is dubbed ‘Lips’ and is a karaoke game where players can sign along to their favourite tracks, though rather than having to rely on the music already on the game, you’re able to plug in your own MP3 player to the Xbox 360 and sing along to your own music.

Lips is, according to Microsoft, an answer to the SingStar games that Sony have made so successful on their PlayStation consoles. The SingStar series has sold in huge numbers worldwide and makes for an excellent party game, Microsoft will be hoping to move in on some of that success.

As mentioned earlier, Lips will allow players to plug their MP3 players and their iPods directly into the game and sing along to their own music. So long as your choice of music is in the games database, you’ll be able to see the lyrics and earn points for your singing accuracy.