A Walkman for the Internet

摘要

Downloading music from the Internet isn't new, but loading those audio bits into a tiny player that fits inside your shirt pocket is— and it promises to be music's next big thing. Get ready for a tiny Walkman that doesn't use tape or a disc. Collectively known as MP3 players, the new portable music devices are not much bigger or heavier than a pager—batteries included. Credit the advance to recent developments in flash-memory cards, stamp-size bit buckets that can hold an hour's worth of digital music for playback through headphones. The newest and smallest of these pocket jukeboxes is called Rio ($200), from Diamond Multimedia (see "Best of What's New"), and work at Sony, Saehan, and elsewhere will widen the field next year.