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A multitude of vendors--from stalwarts such as Sony to fledglings like HanGo--offer devices for playing digital music, and the competition has yielded significant consumer benefits. When the Rio 300 debuted, it cost around $300 and could hold only 32MB (about 32 minutes worth) of music. Most newer models today--including our Best Buy, Creative Lab's Nomad II--come with twice as much storage capacity and range in price from $229 to $400. They feature added microphone capability, radio tuners, and other accouterments.

Unlike CD- or cassette-based portable players, MP3 players have no internal moving parts, so the music won't skip or change pitch when the device is jostled or dropped--a boon to exercise buffs. MP3 devices are far from perfect, however. Though the standard memory size has doubled from 32MB to 64MB, that's still good for only about an hour of near-CD-quality music. In addition, the MP3 files you listen to remain on the storage device until you replace them with other tunes transferred from your PC, a process that can be time-consuming and frustrating.

Speed is a serious concern here. Some manufacturers include USB support in their latest models, which greatly increases the file transfer speed. To run a USB-enabled player, you must use Windows 98 or 2000 as your operating system. As broadband technologies such as DSL and cable modems become more commonplace, digital music fans can download files much more quickly. (Compressing a typical 4-minute song into MP3 takes as little as 15 minutes on a 56-kbps modem.)

For audiophiles, sound quality is another weakness of MP3. The standard MP3 encoding rate is 128 kbps, whereas true CD sound quality typically demands 256 kbps or better. A higher encoding rate translates into a larger MP3 file that occupies more hard drive or portable player space. And if you stream music through your PC (see "Borderless Radio"), minuscule errors such as split-second lapses during a streaming session can result in hics--audible breaks in the stream of digital sound data.

Eric Hellweg is a founding editor of Business 2.0. He covers digital music for Spin, among other publications.