[TeMPOraL]

I did, AFAIR. USB MP3 players haven't happened yet AFAIR, and the alternative were DiskMans, which had all the problems of optical drives: shake it harder, it'll lose playback or damage the CD; any scratch or speck of dust on the CD was likely to make some tracks unplayable or even half of the CD unseekable, etc.

Optical media really sucked hard for regular use. In retrospect, I'm surprised people put up with CDs and DVDs for so long.

[erfgh]

Factory-pressed CDs are really durable. I have CDs from the 80s and they still work fine. Now CD-Rs... it depends what you buy. If you used some cheapo brands then yeah they would fail. Otherwise they were also fine.

[RmDen]

I had a Rio 300 followed by a Rio 500 before the iPod was announced... those were the times.. converting to 64bit wma format so you could fit maybe 40 songs on the 300