I think this is the right forum to put this in. If not, please feel free to move it, forum moderator(s). I am a complete newbie when it comes to MP3 players. I want to get one, however, and need some help figuring out which one to get and how they work. I know I want one with at least 512 MB of space. Other than that I don't know what is good and what is not good. I suppose the smaller the size of the player the better? I've seen that most play not only MP3 formats but some play WMA and/or some other file formats. Some MP3 players (the one's I've noticed, anyway) say that they'll play more WMA files than MP3 files. Are WMA files smaller than MP3 files? Also, there are flash MP3 players and than the new one's that use actual hard drives. Sound right? Is one better than the other? I am working with a limited amount of money. I can't spend more than $150 on this thing. Any thoughts on what you'd get as well answers to my questions? I appreciate your help with this.

Hi, Flash drive MP3 players are ussually between 128Mb-1Gb and can be very cheap, they are also very small in size and come with no or small displays. Hard disk MP3 players are between 5Gb and 60Gb but are ussually much more expensive and are bit smaller than a discman and can get quite heavy. They can come with nice LCD displays and some are even coulor allowing you to view pictures. Personally I wouldent buy a MP3 player unless it was a hard disk one because I like to have a lot of music with me and a flash disk MP3 player just isnt big enough to fit all of my music. If you do decide to buy a Hard disk MP3 player dont automatically go for an iPOD, there are other (better in my view) options avalible. Like Creative's ZEN, Sony's iRiver and others. My brother baught a 40Gb iPOD and once you add EQ settings and turn the volume around half the sound distorts a awfull amount, that was listening through the standard iPOD earphones and plugged up to a set of good qualitiy speakers. I would go for Creative but there are many others you should look at. Hope this was helpfull. Mattwizz3 : ) AMD K-7 600MHz & Asus K7v 256Mb SDRAM 80Gb WDC, 8Mb Buffer 128Mb ASUS Radeon A9550 Cyber Drive CD-RW DVD Combo Spirit TV tuner

Ya, I echo the above comments in terms of the free space on the player. It really has to do with how much music you intend placing on it. My opinion is that you would rather have more free space then less. I also agree with the Creative Zen suggestion. In fact, I have a 30gb model and chose it over an IPod due to pricing. The Creative was cheaper and did everything the IPod could do as of about 18 months ago. However, I did like the IPod user interface better.

You all have been a great help. I have a new question. I'm used to playing MP3's on my PC with Winamp. How does it work with an MP3 player? In Winamp I can create playlists and load those, shuffle the music if I want, etc. How does it work with an MP3 player - same or different?

It's pretty easy to use them and you can play songs at random, create playlists etc on them but they are different to eachother. Once you buy one you will see how easy they are to use and they will have instructions on how to use them anyway. But you might want to get a seles person to give you a demo on how to use it. Mattwizz3 : ) AMD K-7 600MHz & Asus K7v 256Mb SDRAM 80Gb WDC, 8Mb Buffer 128Mb ASUS Radeon A9550 Cyber Drive CD-RW DVD Combo Spirit TV tuner

Well, I've decided to go with a Rio Nitrus. It looks pretty good, it's hard disk size is not too big and not too small, and the reviews were positive. Thanks for your help.