Rant-portable MP3 players-garbage!

[Jeff_D]

I recently had my car burglarized and the thieves helped themselves to my CD player and my cd collection (about 10 years in the making)- Needless to say I was fucking furious. So i thought it would be a good idea to use a portable mp3 player with an adapter in the car so I didnt have to leave my shit out in the open...

In the last week Im on player number 3 and I am very disapointed with what Im finding.

The Archos Jukebox
I bought an Archos 20 gig Jukebox ($280)- the first one didnt work straight out of the box! The second one was acting funny, but I got it straightened out- I wrote an e-mail to thier tech support, and more than a week later, I still havent heard back anything- plus thier tech support phone number is long distance- no 1-800 no. lousy! The player wasnt terrible- sound qaulity was mediocre to ok- display was a bit small- and not that easy to navigate- not very ergonomic. It connected via USB 2.0 and the computer saw it as a "mass storage device" with a simple driver set that most any XP machine would have so it doubled as a portable 20gig HDD. Not bad. It came with a chessy little fabric bag- no clip or anything- and it took a long time to start up AND shut down- im in and out of my car too often for that shit. So i decieded to to take a chance, return it and try..

the Creative Labs Nomad
the biggest piece of shit ($300) ive ever held in my hand. I should've known better, but i liked the dislplay better and as far as ergonomics go- it was very comfortable and easy to navigate with a thumb scroll- very cool and disc access was alot faster than the Archos (which churned and hesitated when you clicked to the next track or even scolling through the titles). But it sounds like total shite and you HAVE to use thier garbage software to access it- no drag and drop from explorer- which also means its not effective at all as a portable hard disk (like the Archos) and it doesnt keep your file structure, so everything is just one big long list- WORTHLESS

So anyway, Im very discouraged with the quality of MP3 players on the market today- my next try was gonna be the I-pod but i think i'll skip that and just get another indash cd player (that supports mp3 data cd-rs)

just my rant, thanks for listening (and maybe suggesting alternatives?) sorry if im not recording based here- but i think the quality of our music is pretty important to all of us- so take it for what its worth

/jeff

[c3hammer]

Almost all your issues with the Archos have been addressed with the open source firmware (freeware) upgrade from http://rockbox.haxx.se

[Jeff_D]

that doesnt make up for poor support, and an appearently, less than solid construction (the first one was already broke before i got it)- but that is interesting- i wonder if it helps sound quality any- prob not. thanks for the link.

/jeff