It's amazing how for granted we take such a task as decoding MP3s when (in the grand scheme of things) it wasn't that long ago we were using computers to do what seemed to be far more advanced tasks, that were unable to do something as "simple" as decoding a music file.

I have vague recollections of my first introduction to MP3 and thought at the time "this is definitely the future" and as soon as one of the first hardware MP3 players came out (MPMan? MP3Man? Something like that) I was straight on it.

Of course, it could only hold a handful of songs, I think it might have had 32Mb storage and had to be fairly choosey with what songs I'd take with me but it was brilliant, certainly for the time.

I seem to recall my second MP3 player was a Creative Nomad but I'm sure it would only play WMA files, there was something about it that ended up being a massive pain involving converting MP3 files and so didn't have it for that long.