I gotta look into the design of these micro hard drives. They seem to have these things designed to be mobile, with much tolerance to vibration. Maybe it's not even mechanical, but a solid state drive (only about 1cm thick)?

thx

http://portables.about.com/b/a/175644.htm

I'd recommend the Flash mp3 players, because if you're active like me (jogging) a hard drive based, no matter what anyone says, is either going to eventually skip, or the hard drive is going to die. I replace a lot of hard drives for notebooks; they are NOT bulletproof...if you bang them around, they ARE going to break.

Being active with a flash mp3 player is what I like....and with the new generations coming out, most of them have slots for removable memory cards (like with a digital camera).

I have 3 memory cards, and put my thrash metal like Metallica and Megadeth on one...80s on another, and on the 3rd whatever I want...but IMO solid state is the way to go....if ipod is what is your bag, the 4gb Nano is pretty slick; be sure to get some type of protective cover, I know somebody who's 3 week old Nano is all scratched up (new it is really shiny) it looks real bad for such a new mp3 player---but the size and color lcd kicks arse...

I just don't go the Apple route because they ignore what the competitors are selling products for, and you can save quite a bit of money on your player.

YES, go with 128kps..or even what I do, is all my CDs have been converted to 256kps....256kps has very little degradation sound to my ears, but it still is much smaller than a .wav file.

Here's a CNET review of mp3 flash players with a memory expansion slot:

http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-6210137-1.html

I just got a Motorola m25 off eBay ysterday. Crossing fingers)

micro 1" hard drives are mechanical.