empeg Mk2. The only other hardware player I've ever bought was a Rio Karma, which I ended up returning. I've occasionally loaded songs onto my cell phone to listen to, but I've never quite found another dedicated MP3 player worth buying.

The first software player I used was Fraunhofer's Winplay3, and the first MP3 I downloaded was "Naked Eye" by Luscious Jackson. It took more than half my meager computer's CPU to decode and play it.