Curriegroh brings up a good point. Storage capacities are increasing rapidly. The video iPod was created to store videos but hardly anyone I know uses it for that. We use it to store uncompressed audio. No doubt some people have 10,000 songs to store. I don't know anyone like that. My iPod has a mix of nearly 3,000. It would take over two weeks to listen to everything one time...if I listened my entire waking hours.

I have a difficult time understanding the bad rap given to portable music devices no matter what format of music saving they use. Although some brand these devices as antisocial I don't feel the desire to be social when I'm traveling. Music makes the time fly when I'm flying. A 9 hour trip to Europe whizzes by. A 14 flight to Shanghai is much more tolerable when I can soothe my soul with music from an mp3 player. I'm one of those people that waited to get one until the storage capacity was large enough to rip music at higher bit rates. I regret that when I think back to how many flight delays I suffered through when I could have had some respite at 192kbps. A lot of us grew up listening to surface noise and tape hiss. What's a little compression when you're sitting in queue on the tarmac for 3 or 4 hours? Plus the fact you're probably using $80 ear buds instead of your high end speakers?
And as stated previously, for listening while puttering around the house the compressed format...whichever one is used...is good enough for me.

Today you can buy a hard disk that will store the uncompressed content of 1000 CD's for less than $300. Buy another to back up the first. You now have a huge music library available without ever opening a jewel case. You can create play lists for any occasion. For someone who remembers 78RPM records it's a dream come true.

Now...how do we get SACD's and DVD-A discs on that computer...hmmm...