For me 80GB will be a watershed size on these things. At 80GB one could place about 120 to 150 CDs worth of music on the machine -- actual CD Audio files, not "CD-quality" WMAs or MP3s that have 10% of the original information. When someone makes a good 80GB portable player for under $300, it will be hard to resist. And since that day seems so soon, it seems pointless to invest in them yet ... although 40GB, which some of them do now, is getting very close.

Isn't kind of incredible that within a year we'll probably be able to buy a portable AV player that holds 4x as much as TiVo's from a year or so ago?

It will be interesting to see the variety of features marketed to audio-lovers on these things -- the as yet unknown equivalents of Burr Brown DACs and other sliced and diced features that marketers aim at the higher end. People say the MP3 generation does not care about audio quality, but they will grow up.


"These go to eleven."