My maternal grandpa has found a new hobby ever since he learnt the benefits of digital music, mobile music players and more importantly the MP3 format. Asking me to explain thrice, to make sure he understood the concepts, he proceeded to open three large wooden drawers filled with LP's (vinyl records) and asked me to do the needful to get them onto his spanking new iPod that he would get the next day. Unfortunately at the time, there was no 'InstantMusic Vinyl & Cassette Ripper'

Unfortunately, it was not easy to say the least. Despite having good contacts with people in the right fields, it was going to be expensive and there was no way to do it in a cheaper or easier manner. Well, Grandpa may have something to look up to this Christmas as I have decided to let him have fun with the InstantMusic Vinyl & Cassette Ripper.

The ripper allows you to hook up an old turntable or cassette deck to the InstantMusic and plug it in into an available USB port on your PC. The included software allows you to convert your music to MP3 files, or burn directly to CD. It even smartly detects the gaps between songs to divide that old Journey LP into individual MP3 files.

Available for around $50 USD, you even get some bundled software such as Nero Mix and Soundtrax to make the job easier.