This is my first post so go easy on me. I haven't read this entire thread, but the feeling I get is that there's one party who thinks that flash based devices will be the future of "musical data storage", while others feel otherwise, correct? There's some other little debates about CD s vs. DVDs, etc. I'm not sure that I agree that flash based devices will the future or not, but I can tell you that I wouldn't buy a portable hard drive to store music or files. A hard drive is nothing more than a collection of stacked, spinning 'platters' . A CD or DVD is also not redundant enough for many large corporations to use to back up data, tape drives are still widely used becuase of a simple feature: it does what it's supposed to do and it works as it was intended to. Reports of CDs & DVDs wearing out after 7-10 yrs is not what I call redundant. I've only read articles and never come across it myself, but its enough to make me think that CDs & DVDs aren' as good as tape backup for the long term. so the question comes back to "what are you going to use it for?" If you want quality live recording gear, with possibility of redundancy (replaceable media): go for MD. If you want to load up your entire music collection in one device, go get a nano. Sorry this is long but I also would like to add that the technology will not determine what is going to be the "future" of portable players/recorders. Marketing & big business and availability will determine that. Case in point: VHS & Beta Case #2 : Atrac vs. Mp3 Sony wanted to control everything, the quality was better, but because of their lack of vision, mp3 is the dominant choice as a result of it's availability and use.
