In general, I think mini-discs are past it... I love(d) mine when I used to use it, and I still get it out and dust it off for plane trips. If you step back a few years, and remember the days of portable CD players, and then compare them to minidiscs, you'll see why they were so popular in japan and should have caught on in the rest of the world. (Actually, minidisc players may be more popular in europe than the US...)

The discs are in a sleve so they don't get scratched, a tiny player can also record, and an even smaller player can just play,they (basically) don't skip, the batterys last forever, and once the built in one runs out you just attach the AA side module...

I'd still vote for one over a solid state MP3 player, but do yourself a favor and buy an iPod.

Matthew