Which do you prefer?

If you listen to music on some sort of headset, which do you prefer? I got an iPod Shuffle for my birthday, which came with the white earbuds pictured here. I've never been able to use these because they're too big and hurt my ears. I know they make smaller ones, so I might get some of those for the Shuffle. For my regular iPod, I use the Bose headphones pictured. The others I keep in my purse to use, like if I'm camping or traveling, and don't have my bigger ones. Did you know these all have specific names?

Full-sized headphones are called circumaural headphones. They are much larger and can be heavy and bulky to carry around. The good thing is that you can buy ones that literally reduce all outside noise. I love my Bose ones.

Pads that sit on the ears are called super-aural headphones. The ones I have actually clip onto the outer ear and are surprisingly comfortable. They work pretty good and block out quite a bit of outside noise.

Headphones that go inside the ear are called earbuds or earphones. I guess I have small ears because these have always hurt me. They're small, so they're easy to travel with. The downside to these is that they don't reduce outside noise very well. Because of that, people tend to turn up the volume louder, which can eventually lead to hearing damage.

I really like this iPod Shuffle that Rick and the boys gave me. It's tiny and about the size of a Wheat Thin cracker. Mine is blue. What's cool is that you can push a button to hear what the name of the song and artist is. I guess the older models didn't have that feature. I've loaded it up with Matchbox Twenty, Rob Thomas, Powderfinger, and Bernard Fanning. I'm thinking of adding all my Goo Goo Dolls music and maybe some Red Hot Chili Peppers. All these groups are kind of along the same line of music, so I thought they'd make a good playlist. Of course, I still like my 60GB iPod. Mine is an older model, so it's thicker than the new ones that are out now, but I still have some room on it.

So anyway -- what type of headphones do you prefer?