This news story was highly amusing (Giving up my iPod for a Walkman).  My sister was the first person in our house to have a Walkman.  By an odd coincidence – considering recent events – the first album she got to listen to on it was Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  I later got a personal stereo, but not the Sony kind.  In fact I went through many, either killing them through use or they fought back killing my cassettes (my treasured copy of Frank Zappa’s Sheik Yerbouti died in this way).  There is no worse discovery than finding your favourite cassette tape is now a crinkled mess of useless magnetic tape. 

Later I graduated onto a discman, discovering that any small vibration – such as a gnat landing on a tree twelve miles away, was enough to make the disc jump.

I currently have two MP3 players – one a cheap and cheerful player from Tesco, the other is on my phone, and is actually a Sony MP3 player (full circle then).

I confess to finding the whole business of downloading tracks or ripping discs a bit tedious.