Archos Jukebox 20 GB Digital Audio Player/Recorder/Hard Drive 500277

- Excellent sound quality. Those complaining about the audio quality and volume levels of this player are either judging it using the included headphones, playing poor quality mp3s, or one of those smug audiophile types who do not like the sound of anything unless it's played on hardware made by an some obscure Swedish company. The Archos sounds excellent.

- Standard batteries. The battery in the iPod is proprietary, so you have to buy replacements from Apple, that is, if you can figure out how to change the battery yourself. If not, you have to send the unit back to Apple. The Archos uses four standard "AA" NiMh rechargeable batteries you can buy ... and replace anytime.

- Recording ability. You cannot walk into a room, press record on your iPod and capture an 8-hour meeting in MP3 format. You can with the Archos. The player includes a digital in, line in, and a built in microphone. You can record as long as you have drive space and battery power (10+ hours).

- USB 2.0. I was able to transfer 10 gigabytes of music to the player in less than 9 minutes. My testing against a similar "Firewire" interface showed the USB 2.0 faster, but the results are very hardware dependent. Your mileage may vary. "Firewire" may be, on average, faster, but only by a few minutes. The difference in speed, if it exists at all, is certainly not worth the additional $300 you'll pay to get an IPod.

- Standard laptop hard drive. The unit uses a standard laptop hard drive you can replace three years from now when 120 GB drives are selling for a $100. ... Replacing the drive will violate the warranty. So wait a year or two.

- Excellent menu system/navigation. It's a hard drive... files, folders, forward, backward, up, down. I find I can get to the song I want in less clicks (or twirls) than the IPod.

- Windows XP: plug it in, it works. No software to load. (You will need to load drivers on Win95 systems.)

- Excellent mobile drive. Not just an MP3 player. You can copy any type of file to the unit.

- Four times the fun at less than half the price of the same size IPod. ...The Archos is a durable metal object reminiscent of the detonator panel on one of those stolen nuclear weapons you always see in James Bond films. The IPod is thin, white and easily mistaken for a ladies electric razor or one of those IGIA ab-stimulators sold on late night television.

Some advice:

- Throw away the supplied headphones.

- Get a NiMH quick charger. They usually included a extra set of batteries you can charge in 4 hours.

- Be careful removing the battery covers. The chassis of the unit is metal, but the covers are plastic. Stick the head of a small screwdriver into the little slots and gently pry the covers outward until the cover tabs are clear, then lift the covers straight up. The covers do not rotate completely outward.

- The "resume" feature of the player is off by default. If you listen to audio books, turning it on is helpful.

- Just like any portable hard drive you can mistakenly disconnect during a disk write, the FAT can get corrupted. If the unit fails to boot completely running a full Scandisk on the drive will more than likely cure the problem.

- Do not use the player as a battery charger. Charging NiMh batteries generates heat. The batteries literally rest on top of the hard drive and trickle charging in the unit takes 8 hours. Although I have not experienced any problems charging the batteries in the player, the quick charger method mentioned above is much more convenient, and probably safer.

- If you don't have USB 2.0 ports buy a USB 2.0 expansion card. I ordered the IO Gear 5-port card with mine (Money). Like the player, under Windows XP it installed without requiring me to load any drivers.

- If you're offended by foreign languages and expect electronic device manuals to be written by Tolstoy and illustrated by Monet, do not order this player. The manual included adequately covers the basic functions of the player.

Pros:
1 Extremely durable steel casing
2 Standard AA sized batteries, which are easily accessable
3 REAL 10 hour play life before recharging
4 Excellent sound: bass, vocals, and treble
5 Works with Mac OS 8-9 and OSX, as well as Windows
6 Many installations can use the generic USB storage driver built into the OS
7 Only unit currently utilizing USB 2.0 for maximum transfer rates EXCEEDING FireWire
8 Easy to learn menu system
9 Doubles as a standard USB hard drive - for Windows or Macs
10 SPID digital in/out (use it with your digital amp or Sound-Blaster card), line-in, and earphone jacks, and a built-in microphone
11 No Copy Protection schemes - freely copy your music and data files
12 Supports Variable Bit Rate as well as the other common encoding standards
13 Uses standard 2.5" drive - easy later expansion (currently 60+ Gb), MUCH less expensive than Ipod 1.8" drives (current max 20 Gb)
14 Fairly small form factor - not as small as an Ipod, but you can change the batteries and hard drive easily: a trade-off I can live with.
15 Encodes to MP3 as it records!
16 1 YEAR warranty vs. 90 days for most competitors.

Cons:

1 User's guide totally inadequate
2 Supplied headphones are awful - but most are. Smaller and lighter Panasonic RP-HS15 ... or HS35 are MUCH better - even better than Sony's offerings.
3 Larger and heavier than Ipod
4 Recording and playlists severely under-documented, need to check user forums
5 From others' comments, Archos tech support seems to be minimal
6 Plays only MP3 format, but firmware is upgradable

Having owned or borrowed MP3 players ranging from Audiovox, Neo (SSI), Nomad, and Rio, the Archos 20Gb Jukebox/Recorder is a great performer which provides excellent value.

Good Points

20 Gigs of storage (WOOOOOO)
Built in mic (More info in bad points)
Light (unless you enjoy carrying 500 cds with you)
Drag and Drop interface (soooooo easy)
Small (the size of a walkman)
Doesn't skip (unless you try to prove them wrong and beat it up/good for fitness finatics)
Can Record from other musical devices (go to your mates house and record thier stuff ha ha)
Easy to find songs
Headphones are stylish and foldable(is that a word) anyway they also have a volume control
Carrying case supplied (Blue what a 'shock')
It looks cool
The screen lights up for all you people who can't sleep
You get a charger (you can use any multi charger despite what it says in the book)
2x 4 rechargeable batteries (they are meant to last 10 hours, they do)
Best of all it doubles as a hard drive so you can store all the stuff you don't want anyone to see (Wink Wink)

Thats a lot of good points and i'm sure i left some out but now what you really want to know what are the bad points:

Bad Points

The mic does record your voice but the machines built in fan to cool it down mutes most things out
The batteries are to ... difficult to change without bending the side of the machine
It can brake down a lot
The headphones quality is ok but not great for digital music (buy a good set yourself you will have to admit that it was worth it)
The build quality is not great but as i say human error
The program that comes with it sucks (thats all i'll say)
Even though you have 10 hours of battery they take 6 hours to charge
The time and date reset everytime you run out of battery or change them, this means there is no built in battery for the clock
The manuel is an insult to anyone who has a brain and it doesn't even tell you about some of the functions (i will tell you later)
They only supply you with the lead that can connect to another machine with two ports (if your like me your getto blater only has one Aux port so flash the cash and get a one to one. A fiver will get you a good sony one)
It has a usb 2.0 cable (but most people don't have usb 2.0)
The tech help is useless

Ok that was the bad points but again i left some out (i didn't include the problems with the other players as that wouldn't be fair to Archos)

Now for those of you that do buy one and do cause it is worth it, here are some of the things it don't tell you in that ... manuel

The resume option puts you straight back to where you left off not in the middle of a song like people think but just to that song (this also is reset after you change batteries)

The queue option only lets you queue one or two can't remember but don't pick a load of songs cause it will skip the middle ones
The mic is accually at the top of the machine above where it says archos (it don't make much odds)

The diagnostic always says ok cause it wouldn't work at all if the machine had a problem

If you want to find your songs fast stuff those playlists and put your songs into folders like eg. A's, B's, C's Etc....

Remember your songs length has nothing to do with how much is left on it, its the size of the song that matters (size DOES matter AAAAAAhhhhhh) The difference in size is to do with the quality of the song.

Ok thats it i'm tired and i want to go to bed any questions irritate the tech support (PLEASE)

All in all this is a great machine buy it (don't forget you can trust everyone online ha ha ha) only joking have fun with it and impress all your friends and family with a toy thats out of Star Trek.

P.S. I know i put this down as 5 stars but then you didin't see the old ones