Kurisu, Trends are often mis-leading and short-lived; I had a HDD MP3 player that I had to send back to Japan twice and which is now dead as a dodo in the back of a cupboard somewhere. The greatest thing about MD is that the disk can have a problem but it is separate from the player in so much as the player's engine room stays independent of that which carries the MP3's, i.e. the disk, which is not the case with a HDD; where a seizing up of the MP3's means a seizing up of the player itself 'cos the two are one! The mention of a flash memory stick is totally unrelated to playing MP3's etc 'cos it's just a storehouse and not a player, and even if you have a player like RealPlayer within the flash disk things can still go wrong that wouldn't go wrong with a Sony MD player. Let's face it, the main thing apart from sound quality that sold us all on the MD player is the reliability, dependability and outright durability; these are adjectives people will not be labeling HDD's and Flash Memory sticks with in the future. In the light of what's been said about the possible phasing out of MD players, I'm so glad I got two, one for recording with a mic, and a Hi-MD; mind you, there will always be loads of Sony MD players about, the sad thing being that there will possibly be no more work on improving what's already out there! Your's truly, Dave
