Why an mp3 player?
The answer is simple: love. CD and tape players just don't offer as much cuddly-love as mp3 players do, or at such a high price. Yes my friends, you'll never need (or be able to afford) a mail-order bride or husband with this handy-dandy loving device. It also plays music; but it doesn't respond well to pet names like snookums or fluffy dingle-beetle. Did I mention that it plays music? Music that you can rip off from the internet? And then you can clear its memory and load it again? Why, you can very well make a different playlist for each of the 365 days in our calendar! Can a CD player do that for you? No. No it can not; and if you asked, it WOULD NOT. See? It all comes down to love. Who loves you more?
iRiver SlimX iMP-350 Apple iPod SonicBlue Rio Volt SP250
Key Features 6.6oz, Equalizer, FM tuner, 16.77mm thickness, world's slimmest MP3 CD player, rechargeable batteries, excellent remote, LCD upgradeable firmware 2000-song capacity, 10-hr battery, 6.5-oz weight and skip protection, in addition to your MP3 music files, you can store your presentations, pictures, documents and digital movies on your 10GB iPod plays CDs with MP3 and WMA files as well as standard audio CDs, delivers 8 minutes of shock protection, features an integrated FM tuner, long-life rechargeable batteries, an on-wire remote control, carrying case, and two styles of headphones, large, backlit LCD, shock resistant feature
Memory Upgrades ..they're available. that's good enough. Upgradeable to lalaMB using LaLa™ memory cards Upgradeable to 192 MB using MMC™ memory cards
Cheapest Price $144.99 $299.00 $149.99
Buy It From mpSuperstore MicroWarehouse TargetDepot
Review "Brilliant Toy" "The Best" "Best mp3-CD Player Out There"
Interface - USB
Universal Serial Bus. A personal computer external bus standard which can support up to 127 peripheral devices in a daisy chain configuration, can support plug-and-play (hot plugging), and has a total bandwidth of 1.5 megabytes per second.
Interface - Parallel Port
A socket on a computer for transmitting data in parallel, which means more than one bit at a time. There may be eight, 16, or 36 channels; each channel carries one bit of information, so eight channels would be used to transmit one eight-bit byte at a time. Not all the channels are used for data; some are used for control signals. A parallel port, also called a female connector, has 25 holes, and the cable that plugs into it has 25 pins. It is the kind of port used to connect tape drives, CD-ROMs, extra hard disks, and most printers. A parallel port transmits faster than a serial port, but cannot reliably send data more than 20 feet.
Flash RAM/Memory
A small printed circuit board that holds large amounts of data in memory. Flash memory is used in PDAs and laptops because it is small and holds its data when the computer is turned off.
Memory Card
does stuff with memories and cards...possibly stores memory on a card.
WMA
a music file that basically sucks
Liquid Audio
one of the newest members of the Xforce.
Equalizer
A device which can boost or cut specific frequencies, to compensate for loss and distortion in signal transmission
In the end, it really does come down to love; and who do I love? The SonicBlue Rio Volt SP250! It may be $5.00 more than the SlimX, but its key features are just so, well, yummy. As the reviewer said, it has:

-Search for songs while a song is playing
-Directory structures including packet-written CD's (i.e. DirectCD)
-Winamp playlists.
-Fast song-to-song switch
-8 minutes of memory buffer.
-One of the most usefull remotes out there
-A clear leather case that lets you see the display and use the keys (if you don't want to use the remote).

And as for the downsides, heck! I don't run anyway, I glorp along like ooze at best. Lets face it, it has the best interface in the country, and that is damn good enough for me. If I were to buy an mp3 player. Which I won't. I have college to pay for, Mr.Yang. Maybe you lead a life of decadence, but some of us have to think realistically. For shame.