The hottest back-to-school accessory this year is sleek, stylish, holds 10,000 songs and fits in your back pocket. With features like these, it is no surprise iPods are revolutionizing digital music and wildly popular on college campuses. They were even given out free this fall to all first-year students at Duke University.Back during the holiday season of 1996, a certain furry red doll elicited the same sort of consumer frenzy that now surrounds the iPod. The demand for Tickle Me Elmo dolls exceeded their supply, and the public went crazy for them. Then there were digital pets in 1998, but that soon grew old. Those toys appealed only to a small age bracket, but the iPod is for nearly everyone. After all, who doesn't like music and convenience?

iPods are ideal for students because they are portable, personal to one's own music taste, can store back-up files and serve as a calendar, organizer and alarm clock. Commuters navigating crowded subway cars and sidewalks can make their way to work as music pumps through their white iPod earphones. But the new toy is not just for city slickers; this summer young kids were shipped off to sleepaway camp with a canteen and an iPod in tow.

The Duke giveaway-a new third-generation 20 gigabyte iPod for each first-year student-is part of a pilot program between the Durham, N.C. school and Apple. The iPod distribution is part of an effort to increase exposure to digital media, according to Duke's Web site. The devices are programmed with Duke-related content, and administrators hope that students will download course content such as language lessons, music, recorded lectures and audio-books onto their new iPods.

Duke is giving iPods only to the incoming class to make comparisons and adequately measure how well the iPod contributes to learning. Pod-less upperclassmen will serve as the control group.

Funding for the Duke iPods comes from a special technology fund and not from student tuition. The subsidiary iPod industry will likely increase sales since the Duke University computer store will be fully stocked with accessories to complement the 1,600 new iPods on campus.

First-years at Brandeis won't receive free iPods, but plenty of students are arriving this week with the popular device.

Judah Milunsky '06 is an economics major and on his third iPod. He bought his first one three years ago and now sports a third -generation iPod with 20 gigabytes of storage space. Milunsky uses it when he runs and skies-he says it goes 25 minutes without skipping a beat and he can charge it anywhere. "It's just a very efficient and fast device," he said. "It's useful to have and I am very happy that I bought one."

The lightweight portable player entered the market in 2001. The high price of $399 and its exclusivity-originally, it was only compatible with Macintosh computers, which have only a 20 percent share of the personal computing pie-kept it out of reach for most people.

Soon, new technology increased the iPod's song capacity, lowered its price, and yielded a Windows version of the apparatus. iTunes, Apple's own online music store, was designed to work in perfect sync with the music player and made it convenient to download songs. These factors allowed iPod sales to skyrocket.

This summer, the iPod underwent more transformations, making the commodity hotter and cheaper. A 20 gigabyte machine that holds 5,000 songs sells for $299, and the 40 gigabyte iPod holds twice that amount and sells for $399. For an extra hundred dollars, the iPod also includes a docking station.

iPod sales in the third quarter of this fiscal year hit 860,000, compared to 249,000 the year before. A salesman at an Apple store in Towson, Md. said the store sells hundreds of units a day. iPods are also sold at Apple certified resellers and online.

The booming sales of iPods and other digital music players can be a saving grace for college students. After the initial investment for a player, they can save money and storage space. Some iPod users load their entire CD collection onto their iPods and then sell their used albums to music exchange stores, earning back a percentage of the hundreds of dollars spent on CDs over the years.

Also, iTunes and programs like it allow listeners to download music at 99 cents a song, letting them choose only the songs they want and save money over purchasing an entire CD.

When iTunes first appeared, there was whisper of whether anyone would pay for digital music files when there were plenty of ways to illegally download free music.

Apple has proven those skeptics wrong. iTunes accounts for more than 70 percent of the market share for legal downloads and in July, Apple celebrated a milestone when sales topped 100 million songs.

Illegal downloading is still popular among much of the population-especially college students. Illegally downloaded songs upload easily to an iPod and play just as well as legally downloaded ones.

Apple is confident that its music player is the best product of its kind. Apple CEO and cofounder, Steve Jobs told Newsweek last month that he thinks the iPod will prevail as the top seller despite newly-released competing products. Dell, HP and Sony now sell digital music players, but iPods are all people are talking about.

"It's the best thing I've seen to come out for portable music," said Andy Wilent, a sophomore at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. Wilent bought his iPod three months ago and is now browsing for accessories.

With constant improvements and better technological innovations and a declining price, the iPod craze is not likely to be a passing fad. Convenience is timeless and music never goes out of style. It appears that iPods are here to stay.