Audio Reviews

good sound quality, battery life but its always hard to get the program to say that its communicating with th eplayer. i would recommend it.

I am a teenager who just started college and I am quite Tech Savvy. I have been following the MP3 pardigm from the start. I have been apprehensive about buying an MP3 Player out there until I came across this one...AMAZON ROCKS. Yet, I reserved my opinion until I actually had this product in hand. The PINE D'Music product falls nothing short of PERFECTION. Its sleek look and its ergonomic feel are THE BEST out there. Blows the doors off of any Diamond RIOs.. which my classmate has..ha ha Josh. He agrees with me now after he heard the extra bass on mine. I don't know how people can even compare the two. It is sooo easy to download music and play it wherever I go. The best feature is it is able to record my voice to a T. I even use it to record lectures when I am in class..cool... and upload it to my PC. I recommend this product to anyone who wants an MP3 Player. If you don't believe me find out the hard way and be a Josh who asks for my class notes to be emailed to him and he still does not have the extra bass.

I have listed to 4 MP3 players, and the Pine D'Music is the BEST sound quality I have heard yet on such a player. The Ex Bass EQ puts makes it much more rich sound sound than the Diamond Rio! The Voice recording for over 2 hours make it real handy for work. I can even email the recorded voice files. This thing is Sooo easy to use. If you love music on the go, buy this one.

I would love the ipaqs if I could ever count on them to work. The 5555 is the third ipaq I have owned in the past three years (The company I work for gets them at a great discount, and I don't have to pay for them, which is why I keep getting them)

First off, there are many things to love about this pda. The fingerprint recognition is really cool. It works perfectly for me, and I don't have to worry about remembering a password or having it stolen. The integrated bluetooth and 802.11b is an excellent add-on, and hasn't added to the bulk of the device at all. There is a large amount of built-in memory, the display looks beautiful, the battery is swappable, and there are a lot of nice applications built in.

What disappoints me with every ipaq is the low reliability. It is so poor that I would never personally spend my own money on one of these devices. I typically have to hit the reset button on my ipaq several times per day, becuase under heavy use the thing will freqently slow down or completely freeze up. You can't blame third party apps for these faults, since I am commonly using the standard features of my ipaq when these faults occur.

My first two ipaqs died within about a year of purchase. The first one had a battery go bad, and since it was built into the device I could not swap it myself. The second one just stopped working. I could turn it on, but it basically just gave me a blue screen of death and nothing more.

I love what the ipaqs offer, I just wish HP could get their act together and make them work as they're supposed to.

Great while it works. Mine died after 9 months of casual use. I'm not looking forward to dealing with warranty repairs.

EDIT Start -

I would like to comment on reviewers who claim that the technical support is junk along with the device's reliability. May I point out that it is Microsoft's operating system, which is to be expected as no operating system is perfect. The iPAQ's hardware has nothing to do with how many times a reset is needed, since it has not only more ram, but a faster processor than most other pda's currently on the market. As for the technical support, I have had two iPAQ's and always received the same friendly and careless help needed to fix my problems straight away. Here's a recent example of how HP's support works.

1. Problem occurs.
2. Call to HP, they check warranty (lasts a year).
3. They send you an empty box, shipping and parts replacement, 100% free.
4. Ship it out next day.
5. Repair begins and ends in under an hour.
6. You receive an email confirming depature and repair success.
7. You receive the iPAQ back, only having it leave your side for less than 3 days.

If that's not service, then I don't know what is. I believe that many people are rude, arrogant, and are ignorant to their mistakes. I told the support technicians that I had dropped it and they said no problem, and replaced the screen, usb host connector, and battery all free of charge. Hope this helps your buying decision.

EDIT Finish -

In comparison to newer-age pda's including the Toshiba e805, the Asus MyPal, and the new Dell Axim, I hope you will regard my post only within HP and Compaq's products. This particular iPAQ is a giant leap from my Compaq iPAQ 3835, gone are the days of cradle synchronizing and wired connections. With Bluetooth and wi-fi I can synchronize and receiving data virtually anywhere.

A few reasons to avoid buying this:
- it is not a good first pda, as some features require proficient computer knowledge
- it is not worth buying unless you plan on using all features, including the finger print scan, otherwise go with the cheaper 4100 series iPAQs.

A few reasons to avoid buying another:
- is an 'upgradable' iPAQ, which means all previous software, cords/connections, sleeves (jackets), styli, and cases will work with this iPAQ.
- has wi-fi and bluetooth built in, along with 128megs sd ram, and 48 megs rom, gives you extra storage space.
- speedy processor and an sdio slot.

I believe this is the current best option for anyone wanting a powerful handheld machine. With the largest array of expansion abilities and wireless capabilities, it is the smartest choice you can make.

I purchased the mc3 as a Christmas present for my 12 year old daughter. It didn't take her long to get the hang of taking pictures or video and she had a lot of fun doing so. Downloading them to our PC (uses Windows XP) was pretty easy. But I do have a few complaints so far. The first is that the mc3 is now shutting itself off even though it says the batteries are OK. A change of batteries may remedy this. The biggest complaint is that we cannot download mp3 files to the mc3. The users guide is really poor with regard to this. And the fact that it is on CD makes it hard to flip back & forth. Kodak's website says to look at the users guide (big help!) The guide says to use Real Jukebox(included) to download but Real Jukebox doesn't offer the mc3 as a storage device. Very frustrating!! Somebody more familiar with mp3's may know what to do but the mc3 is supposed to be a toy, not a job. My last complaint makes me wonder how much thought went into the design and did Kodak even try it out. You cannot close the flash card door - it causes the card to pop out of the connector!! 9/25/02 Just found out from a friend that you need to push the lever up to get it out of the way so you can close the door. He found out by accident. How hard would it have been for Kodak to let me know? BTW, anyone else notice how badly AMC has gone downhill lately?

The emphasis here is that the MC3 is a toy - it's a lot of fun to play with, but it's not the sort of tool to use if you're planning on doing any serious publishing (online or on paper) or video work.

That said, this camera is fine for taking lots of fair quality VGA-resolution photos for e-mailing or sticking on your webpage (for what it's worth, the photo quality is notably better than other bottom-of-the-line dedicated digital cameras). The quality of the videos is at least comparable (if not slightly better) than the first generation Sony Cybershot cameras, although the MC3 doesn't limit the length of the video clips to 15 seconds like the Sony (a definite plus). The MP3 player component seems to handle various CBR-encoded MP3 files (I've tried 64, 128, 160, and 192Kbps with success), although it doesn't seem to support WMA. Finally, the USB cable allows for surprisingly fast file transfer, slightly slower than a dedicated card reader.

For $200 (which is how much this camera costs if you supply your own CF card), the MC3 is a fine gadget. If you want a good digital camera, video camera, or digital music player, you'll probably have to resort to getting three separate devices.

I have had this for over 2 years now and I still love it. The camera part is great fun, though low resolution is noticable in prints, prints look good. I upgraded to a 128 mb card which holds about 1.5 hours of music or 900 photos or 45 minutes of video. The best thing about this is it's TOUGH. I have dropped it numerous times, it has gone flying off of my desk. Sometimes the card pops out and the batteries always scatter, but it is always fine. It works just like the day I got it. Although there is one thing that I did not like. When Realplayer updated Jukebox, they did not upgrade the drivers for MC3. I eventually was not able to transfer files to the unit, so I bought a CF card reader. It works amazingly fast and lets me transfer my files through Windows Media Player. It now works like a charm, I would recommend this for anyone who uses Windows XP. If you can get a card reader, don't install the included software!

I thought that this is a great MP3 player. I went to a media store, knowing that it was small, but when I first saw it, it amazed me. It was really tiny. Once I got home, I downloaded the software onto my computer, and started downloading songs on it. It has worked great ever since. The batteries last long, up to 15 hours. The software was easy to use. The only problems I had with it were that it didn't have very much memory, I couldn't pause, and some of the songs would't go onto it. I wish it either had more memory, or it had an expansion slot. When I stopped it, it turned off unlike a CD player. The worst problem was trying to download some of the songs. When I tried from My Computer, the songs wouldn't play. I found that I could use Windows Media Player. The songs played and most of the songs took up less memory than they should have. I would recomend this MP3 player to anyone who wants something small and easy.

I bought this item used, and it didn't include the software... so the first thing I did was download the software free from the samsung website, which is way better than what comes in the box (my roommate has the same model). The headphones that came with it aren't good, but I have some cool back-band headphones from philips. A really cool thing is that this player can play variable bit rate MP3s, so I've got 28 full songs on my 64MB model, and it sounds the same as 96K mp3s. Battery life is good on alkalines, alright on the NiMHs that I use with my PDA. Oh yeah, it is very customizable, Samsung has a program you can download to make your own (even animated) logo to replace the YEPP logo that shows when you turn it on. Also it has a feature that is a necessity for me, Shuffle play, I can't stand hearing music in order, and it also can show the time remaining on songs, which is pretty cool. So the player is about as customizable (if not more so) than a full-size music player. Incredibly light (1-2 Oz.) and a little larger than a Zippo lighter. Which is pretty amazing!

This little thing is truly amazing ! As I read through all the reviews of users having problems, I can not help but wonder, if they might lack a bit of technical expertise. First of all, I have used this player on both, a Mac and a PC and if you handle the unit as you should any USB device, there are no hang-ups or any other technical issues. Never just disconnect a USB device from your PC or Mac or you are just asking for trouble (and that has nothing to do with the Yepp). Samsung has released a software addition for iTunes and if you are using a Mac, this unit fully integrates into this application and makes managing your mp3s on the Yepp a breeze ! The sound quality is outstanding and the unit is so small and light, it is no problem taking it with you anywhere you want to go. The perfect little companion if you are a runner or if you just want to take some of your music with you.

I bought a KOSS-1689,for about 55.00... Skips very easily,anti-skip eats batteries. Sounds Great! When it works.. Also-any Cd's that you make yourself--- will not play them!////Guess what? 12 month warranty./// Mine just "died" after 12 months and 1 week.. Anybody from KOSS care to respond? And, no there is no extended warranty on this kind of player.Plus an extended warranty costs too much anyway.I will be purchasing a Memorex to replace this one.

This is a magnificent CD player. It goes anywhere and does just about anything. It positively will not skip. Battery life does seem a bit short however but disabling the anti-skip functions of the cd player do help this. The headphones could also be a bit better, but the player itself is every bit as good as a Sony or any other name brand.

It's a great player, especially at this price! the 40 second buffer seems to be underestimated, as I shook, hit, and dropped this thing for a minute straight with no skipping. The previous bad review was probably based on jostling before the buffer is full, which is a problem on any anti-skip CD player. A great value, I highly recommend it!

I bought my Sound Blaster Extigy because of the price, but the USB features since I ran out of PCI slot. I was surprised that Sound Blaster Extigy is EXTREMELY easy to install. Just turn the sound card on and plug the USB cable to the computer and install the driver. I did it without any problem.

Another cool feature of extigy is, the card is external so I don't have to crawl to the back of my computer and try to switch the jacks. I use The Logitech 4.1 THX speakers and The speakers produce the most awesome 3D sound when I watch Jurasic Park III, it seems like the dinasours were in the living room.

Creative Labs unfortunately has bad reputation of having the slowest customer service. I wish they will improve it in the future, since they are no.1 sound card company.

Overall, I recommend this external sound card. The price is right and the quality is very nice.

I bought my Sound Blaster Extigy because of the price, but the USB features since I ran out of PCI slot. I was surprised that Sound Blaster Extigy is EXTREMELY easy to install. Just turn the sound card on and plug the USB cable to the computer and install the driver. I did it without any problem.

Another cool feature of extigy is, the card is external so I don't have to crawl to the back of my computer and try to switch the jacks. I use The Logitech 4.1 THX speakers and The speakers produce the most awesome 3D sound when I watch Jurasic Park III, it seems like the dinasours were in the living room.

Creative Labs unfortunately has bad reputation of having the slowest customer service. I wish they will improve it in the future, since they are no.1 sound card company.

Overall, I recommend this external sound card. The price is right and the quality is very nice.

First I'd like to start off by congradulating Creative Labs by making an outstanding Sound Card. I attached it with my Klipsh THX certified 5.1 speakers and I watched DVD's on it and it rocked!
Pros:
1. External, easy to move to living room for movies, bedroom for music, computer for games, etc...
2. It has Optical in (for DVD's), Optical Out (for speakers with a digital in), Line In (for cd players...), Mic in (for mics, der), Headphones (so i don't wake my parents up), Analog outs (for some speakers that take analog inputs), digital out, MIDI in, and MIDI out. The number of connections make the sound card easily compatible with numerous speakers.
3. It has CMSS for simulated surround sound, for people who like to listen to 2 channel (audio cd's) music with sound that fills the whole room from all sides
4.24 bit sound for excellent sound quality output
5.Hooks up with USB for fast connection and ease of use
6.Remote Controll (i love to sit on the other side of the room and just turn it on, off =P)
7.Definitly saves room if you prop it up vertically onto the side of your moniter
8.Gold plated connections for best music transfer
9.The software that comes with it is awsome, although i still prefer Windows Media.

CONS:
1. External, I know it sounds contradictory but sometimes having a sound CARD placed in the computer maybe a little handier
2. When you share a USB port by have a 4 port-in-one gadget, the sound may crack resulting from lack of transfer speed

3. The dolby digital decoding gives out really small sound, so i have to turn my speakers fully up to hear the rumbles. (when speakers are turned up high, a low sizzling sound could be heard...)

All the cons are minor problems, I have moved the card into the living room easily everytime I rent a DVD. You see in order to have 5.1 surround sound from DVD's, You must have a dolby digital decoding...most dvd's have optical out, where you can hook it up with Extigy's Optical In and you could use the extigy as a dolby decoder, giving you surround sound for the ships in Star Wars flying AROUND the room or the bullets zipping by you...this is the best sound card for people wanting something more than just a sound card for the computer and want excellent sound quality...I guarentee you'll tell the difference!

IT is easy to review Radio Your Way, because it does EXACTLY what the description says. You set it to record shows by DAY and Time and it does that fine.

But be warned, it does not allow you to adjust the Bit rate of the recording. All recordings are recorded in a compressed .RYV format that, for people who understand MP3 sample compression, I would say couldn't be higher then like 20KHZ, The worst thing is that if you have an iPod like me, you then have to convert .RYV -> .Wav -> .Mp3. This sucks, the recorder should just record strait to Mp3 format.

Yes...the recording quality is horrible. DO NOT CONSIDER THIS if you plan to record music radio. I personally bought it to record Howard Stern, as I am a huge fan. Unfortunatly, the RYW audio quality is so low, it is almost too annoying to listen to the recording. If there is any reason not to get RYW it is the awfull recording quality.

Everything else, controls, etc, are adequate. By adequate I mean HORRIBLE...but dueable. The MP3 player does not display ID3 tags. The controls are completely illogical. And OS is jerky at best. But who cares about those things right? As long as I can get my Stern fix everyday? Wrong...because the audio quality is the dagger in the heart.

Simply put: This product is bad. I gave it two stars because it does everything it says it does without deception. But the audio quality is so low, you might not be able to sit through one of your recordings. Wait for something better to come out because this is simply a gimmick.

_______________________________________________________________

I recently read a review that states "all people who think that this is a bad product must work for a competitor." This is rediculous. I can assure you that as a student, I work for nobody! Simply put, this is one of the crappiest products on the market today. I returned mine. The quality is so awful.

You know, I went to camp and lost my CD/mp3 player. SO I decided it was time for an upgrade. I am saving for a car, and I'm being very VERY careful with my money. At first i thought i wanted an mp3 player, with an fm tuner, atleast 64mb built in and expandable. As I researched about 100 different mp3 players, from every single company I could think of, and many hours, I found FM and Voice Recording. This seemed like a miracle for me! I no longer have to struggle to find the name of the song i'm looking for! Just record it! I did contact the tech support from ......(which has very good service) and they said it will record in some strange file type, but I can convert it to mp3 on my computer. Kinda a hassle, but easyier and way cooler than downloading. The super good parts are that:
1. The earbuds are the fm antenna, giving it great reception.
2. There is a speaker on board, and when listening to the radio on the speaker, it has an fm antenna to plug in, giving it great reception.
3. The audio-in port. This means, I could plug in my friend's cd player to this machine, and use it as a speaker, or record directly from that or any source.
4. It's able to switch to an external hard drive mode
5. The great price from Amazon.com, from the pogo website, it is $$$ and has a 10% restocking fee. Amazon.com is much cheaper, and I trust them.

The bad parts:
32mb on-board memory, but its expandable. And with the $$$ i saved buying form amazon, i will buy an external memory card.
to recieve radio, you have to use earbuds (which i find uncomfortable) or the antenna, which will be bad for working out.

I ordered this machine this morning, and i cant wait til it gets here. As you can see, with all these plusses, and no restocking fee except S&H, if returned in 30 days, The only thing that can POSSIBLY go wrong, is the antenna being bothersome. But, from the xtensive research, I think I will be extremely pleased.

The batteries on this unit last longer than 3 hours unless you are using used batteries or those sold at the 99 cent store. Batteries on the unit will last from 8-10 hours and if you understand electronics you can get the most life from them. There is an AC adpater that you can buy for 9.99 to record at home (so you only need to use batteries if you want to take the radio with you) Since most recording will be done at home, you will not be using batteries at all. As far as Customer Service goes before you buy the product email or call them and you will see two things.

1.In the case of email a reply usually in minutes.

2.Actually beiing able to get through the phone lines and talking to someone who knows the product.

You can't beat the service. People like "Greg" are just IDIOTS who bash a product with other agendas.

Not only is this product built to break it is plagued by middle ware and proprietery copy schemes. You have to use either musicmatch jukebox (shudder) or e.digital's music explorer to copy files to/from it. The problem is that bulk copies with music explorer reorder the tracks so the playlists on the player are scrambled.

Also the buttons are constructed extremely poorly. Within 2 weeks I broke the play and stop buttons. If you press too hard they snap off and fall into the crappy plastic case. I have had to resoldier the output jack back onto the main circuit board no less than 3 times, and this requires taking the entire unit apart and working around the unremovable lcd screen.

Overall DO NOT BUY THIS PLAYER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. If you get one for free immediately throw it on the ground and stomp it to pieces.

I've had a few mp3 players in the past, but this by far the best. The shear capacity of the player is one of the major plus points, and combined with it's cost, makes an excellent product. The OS is not the nicest to use, but with future firmware updates (there has already been one firmware release..., will only get better. The recording feature is also another bonus, not for recording from CD's, but plug in a mic and you can record from any external source. Some people have complained about the casing, and the fact that the player crashes/locks from time to time. Well, I have had no problems with the case, with a little care (as any mp3 player should be given) you should never break this player. As for the crashes, these can be escaped by rebooting the player if it crashes. Although undocumented, it is possible to do this via a combination of button presses.
I would certainly recommend this product to anyone thinking of buying a hard drive based MP3 player.

Well, after reading these reviews and some one another site selling these, I've come to a conclusion that you have to be somewhat intelligent to use this. It is not that hard to install the software, just install it, and then uninstall musicmatch. Musicmatch is horrible, I'm using edigitals Music Explorer to send everything to the Xp3, so I'm pretty much set. The install cd will tell you it doesn't work with XP, but just hit continue anyway and you're all set. It isn't hard to use, at all.

I would not recommend this product. After 3 months, it completely broke. It was never dropped or used harshly. I would not recommend this product.

The 64 MB RCA Lyra has enough internal storage for 13 to 15 stereo MP3s at good quality (128-160 kbps), or twice that in mono-good for spoken-word recordings. It's very small and pretty easy to use, has standard memory expansion, sounds good, and has a decent set of features for its size and price...SUMMARY

Good: Small size, attractive, neither too few nor too many buttons, big-ish screen, included armband carrying case/headphones/battery (a Duracell!), decent equalization presets, appears as a standard USB drive on Macs or Windows machines (and probably Linux), standard SD/MMC memory expansion slot.

Bad: Plays MP3 and WMA (but not AAC or other formats), only reads older ID3v1 artist/title tags (so MP3s that include ID3v2 but not the older v1 tags show up as "TWISTA~1.MP3" instead of "Twist and Shout.mp3"), displays only title/artist/bit-rate (not other tags), shows only time elapsed (not time remaining), clip-on headphones are kind of awkward, orders songs by filename (not playlist order), doesn't show up directly in iTunes (but you can drag tracks right from the iTunes window to the Lyra "disk"), no custom EQ possible, no backlight.

DETAILS

I'm quite pleased with this player, although it has its quirks. The key is that it sounds good and is easy to use. It's reasonably well built, but you can tell it's plastic. It includes a good Duracell battery and armband-style carrying case, and also has a little hole for a cell-phone-type lanyard (not included), so it's quite flexible and portable. Being able to add SD/MMC cards for storage means the 64 MB internal memory isn't much of a limitation: you can get 256 MB or 512 MB Secure Digital cards quite easily, and share them with your digicam or Palm handheld if you want.

The Lyra seems to order its songs by their filenames, not by the order of the iTunes playlist. Since I tend to play songs on Shuffle mode, that doesn't matter much to me, but if I wanted to listen to a whole album I'd need to make sure the filenames were numbered.

In addition, while the Lyra reads the ID3 tags included in MP3 files to describe artist, title, and so on, it seems only to read version 1 tags. While an MP3 file can include more than one type of ID3 tag, many of my MP3 files use only version 2 tags, so the Lyra displays the ugly short Windows version of the name ("WHOLEL~1.MPG" for "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On'.mp3", for instance). I may need to use ID3X or a similar utility to fix up my collection.

Finally, the headphones that come with the Lyra are weird. They clip on with little plastic hooks that go behind your ears. Although the design is interesting, they sound good, and the mirrored earpieces look cool, they're awkward. Traditional headband or behind-the-head 'phones are easy to put on and remove (my preschool-age daughters have no trouble with theirs). These are awkward and slow to get on and off, and the cords tend to tangle. If you want something small, a set of standard earbuds might be better.

Here's a good set of recommendations for replacements from a real headphone expert, with followup discussion...

This was my first MP3 player. I went inexpensive (Wal-Mart $68) because I had no idea if I'd like it. Like others, the first thing I noticed was the battery door. It's so flimsy, I'm worried it won't last long. Other than that, I have no real complaints. The player is amazingly small; it's great for your pocket or just to hold in your hand. The headphones are somewhat awkward, I ended up picking up a set of ear-buds, but I would probably have gotten used to the ones included. The display is rather large and scrolls the song title and composer. It was easy to load music onto the player. I just 'drag-and-dropped' all my WMA (CD) files onto the player from my computer using Windows. I had to use Windows Media Player to load the MP3s, but that was easy enough. I would not bother installing any of the software (on XP, at least, which recongized the player as a storage drive). I stopped trying to figure out MusicMatch after an hour. The 64 MB isn't going to hold a ton of songs. If that's what you're looking for, I would suggest paying the extra $20 or so and get the 128 MB player. Of course, you can buy a SmartDisc and upgrade this drive; I already have.

All I wanted was a mp3 player that I could listen to while riding my motorcycle. This unit gave all the promise of being just what I needed: large memory, easy to download through window explorer (drag and drop), easy to make playlists (I use Winamp). The addition of a "Rockbox" download makes managing the playlists better (I'm able to put up to 20,000 songs in a playlist while the Archos program only allows 999 songs per playlists; I wanted all 4600 of my songs in one playlist). The problem, as almost everyone stated, is that it locks up a whole bunch with any steady vibration, most times not playing more that a minute or so. After trying many tricks and bad words, I stumbled upon a setting called "Disc Spindown". It was defaulted to 5 secs. I raised it up to 40 seconds and the locking up ceased. The bad side to this is that the increased time will eat up the battery. Sooo, even though I not very pleased with this product, I think I can make it work for me. When I'm home and the player is not moving, I set the spindown to 10 seconds. When I'm on the road, I set it for 40 seconds (actually, I still trying to find a sweet spot) and plug the player into a DC power adapter. Note: the increased spindown time will result in some buzzing coming across the speakers or headphones. There's a whole bunch of other things I learned about it that the book didn't point out, but I let you learn those for yourself. Consider it a "learning experience".

Initially, I had my share of gripes with this product as when I listened to my mp3's every 27 - 45 seconds, the hard drive would make a metal "sliding" or locking sound which would also make the right & left equalizer bars to lock up for a few seconds (even thought the song did not lock up). I sent the jukebox back to archos for repair/maintenance twice (first time, they replaced the recharable batteries which didn't help at all and the second time they replaced the hard drive). Both times, their help desk reccommended I reformat the hard drive after I received the product back from them. Neither times did it fix the problems. I was ready to sell the thing and purchase an iPod when I came out to AMAZON and read on the reviews the same problems I was expiriencing were corrected if a different software (ROCKBOX) was installed. I went out to their website, downloaded the software, reformatted the hard drive, installed the ROCKBOX software and then reinstalled my songs. Since then, the product has not only been not locking up or making sounds but the software has additional features (fonts, display formats, clock timers on/off, etc.) that are wonderful!!!

I would suggest to any person who's been even a little bit discourage with the lack to performance with their ARCHOS to checkout the ROCKBOX website and see if what I have mentioned in my review corrects their problems.

I will say that I would give ARCHOS'S help desk a B- grade as they were very friendly, quick response turn around time in getting email/verbal correspondence as well as quick return of my product. The only issue I had was that when I contacted them the second time with my problems, at the time, I had not had the item for more than 6 months and I asked for them to replace the item. They explained to me that their policy is repair 3 times, after this, then they replace. I'm hoping I won't have to do this now.

Just bought the archos. Amazing. Buy this now! Although it is about one and a half times as thick as the ipod, it is about the same height and witdth, and it has twice the features for half the price!

If you buy this, upgrade to the rockbox firmware. It is much faster and works a lot smoother. Unlike an ipod, almost every feature is customizeable, and there are plenty of accessories at low prices.

Almost all of my songs (about 2,000: 9 gigs worth at average 2hundred something kbps) are recorded off of cd's in variable bit rate, and the archos recognizes all their bit rates perfectly. The sound is awesome and you don't have to scroll through any menus menus to get to the features that you use most.

I don't know why people complain about battery life. IT'S A HARD DRIVE! OF COURSE IT IS NOT GOING TO PLAY AS LONG AS A CD PLAYER ON A SINGLE CHARGE! Once I upgraded to the rockbox firmware, it worked for 13.5 hours playing continuously(which is comparable, if not more than the ipod). Just make sure to charge it completely before you use it for the first time.

My only gripe about this player is that the fm tuner sometimes is a little more static than a regular cd player and sometimes the player takes about a half a second to access the hard drive. (however this can be changed by adjusting spindown time; you can legnthen it, but it drains battery life.) However, the FM tuner works as well as you would expect it to in a portable device.

The hard drive can hold anything. I was in the process of switching to a new computer, and I backed up my entire hard drive onto the archos and it is recognized as a hard drive by any machine, so it is easy to transfer files.

Overall, I find the archos to be the best player out there for the money. If I had to do it all over again, given a choice between two of these or one Ipod(the ipod does not have an fm tuner and also has a smaller hard drive for twice the price), I would definitely go archos, wouldn't you?