Since portable music players are, after all, portable, accessories that let you take your music on the road are valuable complements to your iPod.

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A good place to start would be XtremeMac's "Get Connected" bundle, ($49.95, available in versions for both old and new generation iPods) is a package of cables and adapters that pretty much cover all the major bases:

• Car charger (plugs into the cigarette lighter).
• Cassette adapter to connect your iPod to a car stereo.
• Y-Connector to plug two headphones into one iPod.
• 7' stereo miniplug male to male audio cable to connect to powered speakers.
• 7' miniplug to RCA cable to plug into a home stereo.
• 7' miniplug male to female cable, to extend the reach of the other cables.

These are high quality components -- hefty gauge cables, well made connectors, gold plating, iPod White color, It's a bona fide Best Buy; any two or three of the components purchased separately would cost more than the entire bundle.

I particularly like the car charger, which has a coiled cable and compact plug that won't get in your way. The bundle works for home connection needs, the car, and is great for travel. Throw one into your suitcase, and you can plug your iPod in almost anywhere.

Don't be caught up in the bundle's iPod focus, by the way. Only the car charger is iPod-specific; the rest of the cables and adapters will work with any music device. Good mini-to-mini cables are particularly hard to find, and miniplug extension cords are nearly impossible to get, so XtremeMac can help you out even if you don't have an iPod.

But perhaps you don't like to have your car interior tangled up in cords. Or you don't have a cassette player in your car. What to do?

You have two excellent choices -- one minimalist; one comprehensive; both cool.

The minimalist approach is Griffin Technology's "iTrip" ($35). This is an exceptionally clever device about the size of a ChapStick that plugs into the headphone jack on the top of the iPod. It transmits the music as a FM radio signal to your car or home stereo. The version for earlier iPod models is a little clunky if you want to hook up car charger, as you need to rotate it 90 degrees to clear the FireWire charging port. No such problem for the 3G iTrip as the charger connects to the bottom of the player.

iTrip gets its power from the iPod and, like the player, shuts itself off when it is not being used. To solve the traditional problem of finding a way to tune in a frequency without adding a clunky tuner mechanism, iTrip uses sounds sent to it from the iPod. The device comes with a CD of sound clips, one for each FM frequency, that you transfer to your iPod. You then play the clip for your desired frequency and that sets the iTrip.

Griffin is refreshingly candid about the audio limitations of the FM approach: "FM radio is not the best quality audio in the world. It lacks some high and low frequencies, it has a fairly poor signal-to-noise ratio and it is no where near CD quality. The iTrip simply creates a mini FM radio station on top of your iPod, therefore it will never sound any better that the best FM radio station you've ever heard."

In a home stereo that would be an issue, but in most cars the wind and road noise are going to mess up fidelity anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it. The key point is that it blasts out a strong enough signal to come through clearly even in areas where the FM band is congested.

Digital Lifestyle Outfitters, meanwhile, took an entirely different approach for their TransPod FM tuner ($99). This is a transmitter, cradle, and charger all-in-one. It's designed to answer the age-old question regarding personal electronics in the car -- now that it's plugged in, where the heck do I put it?

The white plastic unit is about half the size of a paperback book. A docking cradle for your iPod is on the front; you slip in the player until it locks into place. The unit ships with stick-on felt pads to adjust the spacing for the various sizes of iPod models. A digital FM tuner is just below the docking cradle, with easy to use tuning buttons.

On the back is a receptacle for a wide array of connectors to allow for the geometry of you car. You can attach the multi-jointed, adjustable cigarette lighter plug directly. Or you can use the plug with an extension that's also adjustable. And if those still don't work in your car, you can use a dashboard mount, which hooks up to a coiled wire power plug. It's the closest you can come to a permanent installation for your iPod while retaining cigarette lighter plug-in convenience.

TransPod also has a miniplug jack on the side of the device so you can bypass the FM and use it with a cassette adapter. The only downside of the unit is that, despite the multitude of connection options, DLO did not provide a power splitter so you could plug in, for example, a cell phone while the TransPod is plugged into the cigarette lighter. Someone who will want a TransPod in their car more than likely is someone who has multiple devices to connect.

Again, the key test of an FM transmitter is whether it will transmit over radio congestion, and it works excellently. DLO says that the tuning circuitry is improved over earlier models. For sure, the digital tuning makes for much greater ease of use. If you use your iPod in the car all the time, the TransPod FM is worth a look.

(c) 2004 Al Gordon.

In addition to his computer interests, Al Gordon is a principal in the Boston-area strategic consulting firm, Mary Fifield Associates, www.maryfifieldassociates.com

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You can reach Al Gordon at:

al@tnpcnewsletter.com