April 21, 2001. I bought my first portable MP3 player, a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox. It was only slightly more bulky than a typical portable CD player, and had 6GB of storage space. The total cost including tax worked out to $93.86/GB.
6GB seemed like a lot of space, but as I ripped my music library to my computer over the next while I found I had close to 18GB of music. So, I took my library of 192kbps MP3s and had them batch re-compressed to 64kpbs WMA files. Cutting it down to ⅓ the size let it fit my Jukebox just perfectly. But let me tell you, even with Windows Media Audio files having better quality than MP3 at low bit rates, I could still clearly notice the difference in audio quality but I just lived with it. Until...
