The Personal Jukebox, or PJB, was created as a prototype personal audio appliance by Compaq's Systems Research Center (SRC) and Palo Alto Advanced Development group (PAAD). The PJB project started in May 1998, and the PJB-100 product shipped in November 1999.
The PJB is a portable music player built around a small disk drive. A 30 GByte PJB will hold 550 hours of CD-quality audio. The battery lasts 10 to 11 hours on a single charge. The player weighs 9.5 ounces and can fit your jacket pocket. The audio quality is generally regarded as excellent, and the user interface is remarkably easy to learn and use. A 20 GByte PJB currently sells for around $550; the 6 GByte version is under $500.



Stereo Review's Sound & Vision magazine said:
In my 20 years of covering audio and video equipment, I can count on the fingers of one hand those products that gave me a spine-tingling "this changes everything" feeling. Now I can add the PJB-100 to the list.



The PJB100's biggest claim to fame in my opinion is that from day 1 it would play back albums gapless!