Beginning with Thanksgiving, Kathleen and I have been using a Nokia N93 mobile phone to shoot DVD-quality video at family get togethers. People are shocked when they see the quality of the movies we can make with this phone.

Conversations with some of our more gadget-savvy friends sometimes continue with the question, "But what else can that phone do?" After I say, "You mean you want more than a great phone that doubles as an incredibly compact digital video camera?", I tell them about how the N93 is the ultimate entertainment device for my son Jimmy.

Jimmy is our seven month old son. He likes to listen to songs from the CD Walt Disney Records : Children's Favorite Songs, Volume 1. These are songs like "I've Been Working On The Railroad" and "Old MacDonald".

The Nokia N93 and most of the other Nokia N-Series multimedia phones I've tested have extremely high-quality speakers built into them. The Nokia Music Player application and the speaker on the N93 allow me to play Jimmy's tunes, wherever we are, at a moments notice. I play his songs for him on the N93 when we are taking walks with his stroller or with him in the BabyBjorn baby carrier. I turn on his music when we're in the car and he doesn't like any of the songs currently playing on the radio. I play the music for him sometimes when we are shopping in home improvement stores like Lowe's or BJ's Wholesale Club.

Like every other gadget freak in the universe, I have an iPod and I have the right accessories for it. The problems with using the iPod in this case are:

• I need accessories to play music that someone else can hear, and I often need different accessories depending on the situation.
• I can't imagine using earphones with a child under age five or six.
• I don't want to have to put an iPod and several accessories into the baby bag that I carry when I'm out with Jimmy by myself or with Kathleen.

This makes the Nokia N93 or any of the N-Series phones the best music player I've found for use with babies and other young children. It's significantly more practical for me than an iPod in this case, or even a portable CD player with built-in speakers. I never would have imagined that I would be recommending a solution like this until I got a Nokia N-Series phone and tried it.

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