Thing is I don't really use ANY md feature beside the mp3 playability. And if gaps means gaps between songs, no that won't be a problem. My md just had this crazy quirk where it would stutter and stop playback like a fraction of a second but noticeable nonetheless. Then the time between stutters would get less and less until playback would just completely stop for about 15-25 seconds and then it would continue, without problems... Its kind of hard to explain but the problem was not random, stutters would start at the very same point of the song, everytime. So I figured there was a problem with the process of writing music on the disc. Finally I just gave op on it, some recordings it would stutter some it wouldn't. I'm guessing it had something to do with mp3 codecs and conversion to ATRAC3, cause if I changed the mp3 codec it would work, sometimes. But you can see what a tedious process it was to make sure I could listen to my music without it crapping out during every song. Yeah, the unscrewing part is kind of a bad marketing move, but atleast the possibility is there. I don't think there will ever be a mp3 unit which will have all the features the MD's have. But I just don't use them, the reason I bought a MD back in the day was because it had exchangeable storage and still stayed compact(atleast since the net-md's). I'm not the kind of guy who listens to the top 20 and has enough with 512mb because only the latest hits are in rotation. The onlything available back then were discmans with mp3 playback, but try stuffing that into your pocket. Or smaller mp3 players with nowhere near enough storage capacity. But my MD has served me well, it just time to move on... (Sonicstage is stil shit though, but thats a whole different story )