"No movings parts". How true is that? They have hard-drives, don't they? doesnt' the HD have to spin, ie: move?

Most MP3 players don't have hard drives. They use solid state memory cards. There are a few that do have hard drives but they're the exception.

there are a bunch with some sort of ram, there are a bunch with flash cards, some have harddrives, and a couple play off cds

most of the cheaper portables hold around 32 megs or 64 megs.. which is a little more than a cds worth of data.. might as well carry a minidisc player -- so, if i was gonna buy one, it'd be a harddrive one,like the iPod or a cd one..

but yea, the memory ones, have no moving parts.

Like all of the people above have said, it depends on the media it uses! Some use harddrives or those Iomega click cards, which have moving parts, but most use flash cards which do NOT have moving parts....

The car deck one it works really nice, it runs on a cd and can hold 150 songs on a cd. I think it is the best car deck i have ever owned

my friend with a sony has to wait for a good 10 seconds while it "reads"

Like I said, most use solid state memory cards like those used by digital cameras. There's no moving parts in those and theres no other moving parts in the mp3 player. There are some like the iPod and the Creative Jukebox that have hard drives. Those have moving parts.

It doesnt take long at all, it takes about 4 seconds