I've a Sony NetMD minidisc, my middle son has a minidisc without Net MD and my eldest is on his third MP3 player. So we've got wide experience of a range of stuff, but no iPod (yet!).

The minidisc player without NetMD would be near useless, but what we do is record using mine and play on his; this arrangement works well. The only serious problem we had was when a label peeled off a minidisc and jammed up the works, leading to a costly repair - £30. The labels and minidisc itself were Sony brand, so it is not as if we were using unsuitable labels.

As for MP3 players, my son is very keen on them, mainly because they are extremely small and lightweight, but even 256Mb of memory doesn't hold anything like one minidisc and keeping a stock of memory cards is comparatively expensive. Personally, I wouldn't swap, but neither would he.

I don't think either of us is likely to be attracted to iPod - he would find it too big and I find the minidisc perfectly adequate. Each to his own, as they say.