About CDs: I took a genealogy course a couple of years ago and the instructor warned us about trying to use CDs for archival storage. It was his opinion that CDs were on their way out. Those are yet usable today, but he predicted those would go the way of 8 track tape, cassettes, and BetaMax. He thought that DVDs would last a little longer, but their future might follow the same curve as CDs, only later.

CDs and DVDs require moving parts to read or write the disc. This presents a problem for mobile equipment; It gets bumped. To combat the problem of the read head skipping a track, makers have added buffers; The playback system reads ahead and stores data in a buffer. If the head looses its place, it has time to find where it left off to begin anew provided the buffer is large enough. When this works, the user is not aware of the difficulty.

It was the instructor's opinion that new recording technology for text files and music would soon arrive and displace discs, and when it does, manufacturers will stop making disc drives. A few years after that, one can no longer read or play his discs. Based on this, I'd look for a system that uses 'thumb drives' or a version of solid state memory. As of now, discs still have a few more years, but you had said you plan for many years.

Also consider that predictions are just that; those a not guarantees of the future and can be wrong.

I feel your comments are all valid but my primary need for audio content for my car is to play recorded books from my local library. When I got my last car, I could no longer play the "books on tape", but our library has graduated to "books on CD" so I'm good (for awhile).

On a related manner, some of the product info on certain cars say that they have a back seat DVD player, with no mention of CDs. I guess that would work for playing audio CDs.

A number of newer car stereos have an auxiliary jack. Any portable CD player (or even cassette player) should be able output audio to a headphone jack which can be connected to the auxiliary in.

Also digital media can be downloaded to a smart phone a nd then played through the latest systems via bluetooth connection. Yes, the old media (like analog tape) is essentially gone but digital media can be manipulated into differnt forms without a lot of difficulty to be played by a variety of equipment.

to add to what jemdandy said many new computers do not have disc drives at all. tye use peripheral drives that connect via USB or wirelessly.