[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

I would have said the Rio myself. But I would be wrong -- http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6450_7-5622055-1.html

Of course if we're just talking portable music then what about all those cassette tape Walkmans?

Note about the Sony Walkman: one of the things it had to overcome was the paradigm that a tape player could not succeed, it had to have a record function to succeed. The Walkman proved this wrong.

I could be wrong, but I think the Sony Cassette Walkman was the first successful personal portable audio player (meaning a player that you could carry on your person and listen via stereo headphones). That led to the development of other players, leading to the current generation of audio players. In terms of capacity, we've gone from players that can hold 2 hours of music, to players that can hold more than a month of music.