The EggKing in uk.rec.audio:

Well is it?

If by dead you mean can't buy music on it then it was never alive, but the
format seems at least as useful as ever. There are perhaps more people
using them now than any other time.

The compression used is a little old fashioned next to mp3, itself invented
more than twelve years ago. Maybe you are more patient than I, but if I
were to buy player it would be one with pc conectivity so that the music
could be transfered faster than at play speeds. Some of the more recent
minidisk devices do this. I think Sony call them NetMD or somthing.

No brand, but still good mp3 players can be had quite cheaply, maybe you
can hunt down a 'george'[1] in the uk (Richer used to have them, but were
asking a high price and I remember seeing a few on ebay)

Lastly, if you want a portable device with cheap media consider an 8cm cd
player, the discs hold 180Mb, which is good for quite a few mp3 albums. You
can burn or read in virtually any cd drive/player. Anything mechanical now
is stopgap, mind, solid state is the future.

[1] see http://www.dansdata.com/usbmp3.htm

--
Jim H
3.1415...4999999 and so on... Richard Feynman