Manufacturer: Diamond Multimedia Tech: Portable MP3 Player Bundle: MusicMatch Jukebox, CD MP3 Sampler Price: $199

The Internet has often been referred to as the future of communication by both the media and the populace alike. Likewise, music has always been considered one of the basic forms of communication that human beings use to relate with each other.

It didn't take a Nostrodomous to figure out that the two forms would eventually merge, especially since the rate of world-wide Internet users is growing exponentially each year. The first example of the Internet's large impact on the world of music comes in the form of the portable Diamond Rio walkman we're reviewing today.

Comprised of no moving parts and requiring only one AA sized battery to supply up to 10hrs of music, the Rio PMP300 is the first product of what is sure to be many based on the growing music compression format known as MP3. MP3, or MPEG-1 audio layer 3, is a phenomenon that has quickly grown into a mainstream business. Quite simply, when used with an MP3 decoder, full-length songs can be compressed to a size that's 10X smaller than they are in their native state while retaining near CD-quality fidelity.

The drawback is that any file compressed via MP3 requires an MP3 decoder in order to be able to listen to the song in real-time.

Enter the Rio PMP300.

Housing 32MB of internal flash ram, the PMP300 can store up to four hours of MP3 audio content depending upon the level of quality the MP3 song was originally encoded at. To achieve a level of audio quality that rivals a true CD's the song must be encoded at a level of 64kbps or greater (the max is 128kbps). The Rio can hold approximately an hour's worth of MP3 encoded songs when set to the 64kpbs level and roughly 30 minutes when set to maximum of 128kbps.