I am writing this blog post as an assignment for one of my college classses, Music Business Trends & Technology.Recently I got an MP3/WMA player...and I absolutly love it. No more hassle of carrying around a multitute of CDs. I have enough space on my MP3 player to have a buttload of music with me at all times....and its so small. I think that MP3 players are great. I always thought that...but now I feel that even more. Who can resist having hundreds of songs at your fingertips in such a pocket-friendly fashion? If you have a digital music collection and don't have an MP3 player you are really missing out. I must admit though....you sorta need to know what you are looking for....what is compatible....what isn't.I first stopped at Best Buy and checked out thier selection. Almost everything I found there was only compatible with Windows XP and Windows Media Player 10. Now that was a problem for me. I have Windows 2000 Professional and Media Player 9. Another issue for me was that many of the MP3 players didn't state whether they played WMAs or not. I have a lot of WMAs along with my MP3s, so I needed something that would play both. I don't want to come down to hard on Best Buy because I have been a satisfied shopper many times there....but I have to say that I stood there with an MP3 player in my hand for about ten minutes, looking for someone to help me, someone to answer my compatibility questions. No one ever came to help me, no one in thier whole store even looked at me. So I left and went to one of their rivals, Circut City. At Circut City I found a lot more choices of MP3 players. There were quite a few of them that I found compatible with what system I was running. In the end I chose a "Zen Nano Plus" which is made by soundcard greats, Creative. The fact it is made by Creative was a great selling point for me because I have a Creative Sound Blaster Live! soundcard already installed on my computer and I love it. So far I think this MP3 player was meant for me. It has 1GB of space which is about 500 4 minute WMAs. It works for Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 and XP....so in the end if I upgrade my computer I can still use my MP3 player. Oh and did I mention, I only paid $79.99 for it. I am not to up to date with how much MP3 players cost but compared to the other prices I was seeing that was pretty good for what I was getting. Some others ran from the same price all the way to about $140.00. It all really depends on what you are looking for. It has many awesome features including skip free MP3/WMA playback(well duh, they're MP3s and WMAs...they don't skip), backlit LCD, FM radio/recorder, ability to directly record music from a CD player, up to 18hrs of continuous playback, a voice recorder, and I have access to over 2 million songs through services supported by Zen if I choose to use them. Amazingly it all runs on one tiny little AAA battery. It came with a sports armband and a case too so that I can use it when I ride my bike or go walking. Now I have the ability to have tons of musical genres wherever I go. I can listen to whatever I am in the mood for. I don't need to fret because I didn't bring "that CD" with me. If you don't already have an MP3 player, I am telling you that you are missing out on a great technology. I am not so sure it is a new technology. It's been around for years, but it still is an evergrowing current technology. I LOVE MY MP3 PLAYER!