MP3 players evolve as digital music digs in.(Product Updates)(Evaluation)

Despite highly publicized legal wrangles involving MP3.com and Napster, recent understandings between these music-distribution sites and some major record companies suggest that even the music industry realizes Internet music distribution is here to stay. So odds are you'll continue to find plenty of online music to download, though it's likely less of it will be free.

To keep up with the demand for a little Net music, electronics firms are developing new personal digital audio players. For this Update, we looked at five players that arrived too late for our full report last November: the Compaq iPaq Personal Audio Player PA-1, the Sensory Science rave:mp 2300, the Iomega HipZip, the Rio 600, and the Creative Nomad Jukebox Player, one of the first high-capacity portable jukebox players. The Ratings (see page 51) compare these players with the models tested for our November report.

MORE MUSIC!

These new players are noteworthy for their diverse storage options. So far, portable players have been hindered by their inability to hold more than an hour or two of CD-quality music, and by the high cost of removable flash-memory cards. A 64-megabyte (MB) card that holds about an hour's worth of CD-quality MP3 music costs about $100 to $200, depending on type; 32-MB cards are $65 to $100. (See sidebar "Storage for a Song," page 50.)

Only one of the new players takes the conventional approach of storing music on internal memory, removable memory cards, or a combination of both. The other players introduce new alternatives: low-cost removable disks, snap-on memory modules, and a miniature hard drive.

Low-cost disks. The tiny PocketZip drive used in the rave:mp 2300 and Iomega HipZip works with removable 40-MB rotating magnetic disks that sell for $8 to $15, depending on how many disks you buy. Price is the big advantage: You can store music for as little as 20 cents per megabyte, compared with about $2 per megabyte for memory cards. The drive, an Iomega product formerly known as the Clik! Drive, is also used by devices such as digital cameras and laptop computers.

One drawback is that the disks have moving parts and are more fragile than solid-state cards--hence the plastic cases used to protect them from dust and damage. Also, each disk can hold only 40 minutes or so of CD-quality MP3 music rather than an entire hour-long album, which 64-MB cards can generally hold.