Mobile Advisor

• The basics
• Pros and cons of MP3 players
• Solid state players
• Mini hard drive-based players
• Regular hard drive-based players
• The big issues
• Other considerations
• Weighing up the options

Supported Digital Rights Management (DRM)

If you're using a commercial music download service, DRM is something you should know about. Many Australian music download services use Microsoft's WMA format and a standard license permitting a music file to be downloaded once and copied an unlimited number of times on up to two hardware-based players.

Microsoft's 'Plays for sure' program: Website (www.playsforsure.com) and associated logo will help you to choose from a large selection of players that are guaranteed to support WMA and its associated DRM technologies. Not every player that supports WMA will be listed, so you might also want to double check that the player you have your eye on has WMA playback and that it supports DRM (some will play WMA files but only those without DRM).

NOTE: Apple's own DRM technologies work to 'encourage' users to buy an iPod. iPod owners can only play DRM songs purchased from Apple's iTunes music store. Likewise, non-iPod players can't play songs purchased from iTunes.

Upgradeable firmware

This goes hand in hand with the file format issue. Firmware is basically the operating system of the device.

If a player doesn't support some MP3 features or other audio formats, find out whether its firmware can be updated for future compatibility.

You can usually upgrade the firmware via your computer, but confirm this with the vendor; otherwise, you might have to return it to the factory to have a chip replaced.