Wow, a DAT Walkman [1]! I forgot that this existed, but I am remembering now that I heard about them in college and desperately wanted one. I was (and still am) an avid listener of music. Digital formats were such a leap over analog media at the time. There was an art to holding your portable CD player (on edge, cradled with your palm facing upward) so that the CD did not constantly slip as you walked. It always amused me that my portable CD player was called a “Discman” instead of a “Walkman”, as if Sony knew that walking with one was impractical. They solved that a bit later with portable CD players that had bigger buffers… But a DAT Walkman presumably would not have had the problem at all. But I had neither the funds nor the knowledge of where one might acquire something like this. Technology back then often felt just out of reach.

In college I had a Japanese-American friend who came back to school from a summer in Japan. She had what looked like a little toy cellphone on her keychain. She showed it to me and I said “cute toy” and she responded “it’s not a toy!” She powered it up and showed me the screen. It even had a little trackball to control an impossibly small cursor. Naturally it did not work with networks in the US. But it left me feeling a bit stunned and wondering what I was missing not living in Japan. I think this was in 1999 or 2000.

[1] https://extinct-media-museum.blog.jp/archives/22934077.html

edit: it was probably more like 2002-2003 now that I think about it. It was probably more of a “joystick” than a “trackball.” I wonder if anyone on HN knows which one I’m talking about.

I remember a friend got one of the first mp3 players on the market. I think it was a Sony and could hold less than 10 highly compressed songs. Still, it was tiny and could fit in a pocket and didn’t skip!