By Bill Husted
c. 2000 Cox News Service

ATLANTA -- Driving to work, I often make mental lists of all my mistakes. I could drive to Oregon and back and still not get bored.

For instance, there was the time, at 23, when I bought a $29.95 wig at J.C. Penney with the conviction it would forever change my life. It did. I looked so weird -- very much like I was wearing a dead possum -- that I had to move from my native Arkansas in shame.

I haven't done much better with my high-tech predictions.

There was my fearless pronouncement, years ago, that AOL would soon bite the dust. AOL not only stayed around, it's the world's largest ISP. Then there was the column in which I explained in great and logical detail how the telephone companies such as AT&T would soon dominate the ISP business. As usual, I was wrong.

The real experts don't do much better. When I was a kid, Popular Science put a Buick with wings on its cover, explaining we'd all be flying to work before long in cars with fold-down wings. Anyone who tells you he can see the future of technology is either a multibillionaire or a liar or has to fold down his angel wings to sleep at night.

So I don't feel too bad telling you I was mistaken when I said MP3 -- that's the technology that lets you download music right from the Internet in highly compressed data files -- had the same prospects for mass success as a polka band.

As usual, I was sincere, logical and wrong.

One of my problems is that I learn best by actually using a technology on a daily basis. While I had messed with MP3 enough to know how it works, I didn't spend enough time with it.

I got that chance thanks to my car. It's an aging 1991 Nissan 300ZX that is falling apart at the same pace as its owner. The car stereo developed a high-pitched squeal that sounded expensive. So I decided to try MP3 again.

Since I didn't particularly want to search the Internet for music and download it, I began converting some of my favorite music to MP3. The software that comes with the MP3 player makes that easy. You just put a regular music CD in the CD drive of your computer, and the software converts it to an MP3 file and stores it in a music library on your hard disk.

All of a sudden, I started to understand some stuff I had missed about MP3. My favorite songs and albums were now on my hard disk. And the software automatically filled in the names of the artists and the album name. So, unlike using my CD player at home, I could search the hard disk for just the kind of music I wanted and assemble custom playlists easily just by pointing and clicking. I could assemble playlists that suited my taste, skipping songs that I didn't like, mixing artists at will.

Even before I transferred the first tunes to my MP3 player (about the size of a package of cigarettes), I was using the computer's sound system to listen to my own custom mixes of music while I typed away at the Great American Novel. It is very much like owning your own FM radio station and being able to pick the programming you want, mixing in Cole Porter with Chuck Berry to suit your own whim.

Then, encouraged by all that, I transferred an hour's worth of music to the tiny player. That's easy, too. The player comes with a docking station that attaches to the parallel port of my computer (the same connection used by the printer). I simply click to select the tunes I want to transfer, and then -- in a few minutes -- they are recorded by the MP3 player. The sound quality is terrific. According to the specs, it isn't as high a quality as that from the CD player, but I don't hear the difference. And I sure enjoy the freedom of being my own musical programmer.

That means I can vary the playlist for my morning's drive easily and quickly. If I want to take the player along on a jog, it's easy to add music suitable for running -- something with enough oomph to make me forget I have middle-aged knees.

Story Filed By Cox Newspapers

For Use By Clients of the New York Times News Service

Distributed by The Associated Press (AP)