I do also use a discman on a regular basis. Not really cumbersome; nice alloy slimline design with id3 tagging, fits in my back pocket. My minidisc gives me around 45 hours before needing recharging and only runs off one battery though.
I couldnt find where I said anything
about re-recording (replacing a damaged disk maybe?)

At least with iPod or similar devices, there's no chance of damaged disks thru scratching, dirt & grime, exposure to heat or whatever.

lol... No Lord, they just decide to lock up after a year just like digital cameras do :-O

Must be damned cheap digital cameras then. Admitedly the ones I trained with cost multiples of thousands of $ each, not to mention a pro slr. But the one that's here seems to be lasting ok. I still think it gets back to battery care. I don't know much about the other portable mp3 players, except a comment from a fellow uni student a few years back that the mini disk they had had a lot of short-comings. I don't know what brand it was.

Yeah lord.. The entry level ones arent very good (just as entry level mp3 isnt).

Minidiscs are pretty impossible to damage though, theyre enclosed. Sometimes manufactuers produce budget
disks which can become damaged by enrty level/ defective units,thats about it. Been using the format for around 6
years and only ever come across two damaged disks.I dont know anyone who`s owned one & then "upgraded" to mp3,genuinely dont. Also, I disagree with that earlier point about sony investing primarily in mp3 for the future. Theyre just keeping up with market demands,being diverse (as good companies usually do).
Mp3 units are the flavour of the year since they became more affordable. I think the format WILL eventually be the standard but not right now... it`s just not developed enough or as cost effective.

Well just to stick a dagger into the last surviving water cannistor in the desert, lol whatever that means; as a choice I'd prefer non-lossy music. Audiophiles also go this road. That means alternative formats. Problem is, mp3 players can generally only play mp3 formats (there's some exceptions) such as iPod & apple lossless. ok so the files are much larger, but they are identical to cd quality or aiff/wav extracted directly from cd. apple lossless is about 50-60% of the wav/aiff size. mp3's range between 10-25% of original size for b/w 128-320 kbps. Some music simply doesn't convert over to mp3 very well. mp3 knocks off the top frequency ranges, & maybe the bottom ones as well. It also removes a lot of the headroom when playing back on headphones. Try it. Listen to a song with a wide range of frequencies, lots of stereo separation, & then play an mp3 at either 128/320 kbps. I notice with some mp3 songs even at 320 kbps. I playback some music from the comp thru the speakers also (a 2nd set of speakers for this room.)

Okay some people are somewhat frequency deaf or are not experienced with head-room, but it matters for some like me.

I ran into some songs encoded in .flac
Losless compression like .ape
I downloaded the flac installer wich contains a WinAmp plugin and a coding/decoding frontend....
Superb quality at about half the size of a .wav and last but not least: it's opensource
Aparently they use a compression tecnique like .zip and .rar
Files can easily be converted back to .wav

http://flac.sourceforge.net/