Rating: 
Summary: Great Jukebox!
Review: This is my second MP3 player that I bought. Needless to say I'm not a patient person when it comes to gadgets. If I can't work it within the first hour, I usually give up and take the product back. I read the online reviews and thought it sounded simple enough to use so I ordered it. Upon receiving the Archos jukebox player, I charged the battery and plugged in the USB. The little icon appeared on my desktop and I started creating my playlists from there and dragging/dropping music. This has been the best jukebox ever even though it's a little heavy, that's okay. I commute and really don't like carrying my CD player with bulky cd's, so this is perfect. I do recommend reading the manual to master the controls but if you own a cell phone, it should be simple enough. Oh yea, the sound is great too!
Rating:
Summary: So far I love it
Review: Before I start the review, I promise you that I will update this review if anyting else happens that will dramatically change my opinion of the unit.
I have had this unit for about a week. I love it for many reasons. First of all the price. I am a poor college student and I could not really afford to pay $300+ for a leisure time device. I had pretty much decided I would have to buy a Discman, even though I really wanted an MP3 player. As soon as I saw the unit, I decided to buy it. I could always return it, plus it comes with a ONE YEAR WARRANTY. Now compare that to the 90 days warranties that Creative and Apple offer for the Nomad Zen and the iPOd, respectively. Now let's consider the unit itself
- The versatile and stable OS RockBox one can install. I didn't even try the Archos OS because I know it stinks. Make sure you install RockBox as soon as you get your unit. Make sure you flash the OS and not just install it. The RockBox comes with an alarm, organizer, games, playlist editor, screensavers, favorites etc. It also has a lot of settings to adjust the number of songs in a directory, sound options, shuffle mode, and increases the max.number of songs on a playlist from 999(Archos) to 10,000. It also improves the battery life and load time.
- It is smaller and lighter than any walkman or Discman I have owned. I have jogged with both walkmans and discmans and I honestly don't see how anyone cannot jog with this. If they think it is heavy to jog, they need to be lifting weights, not jogging:)
- Buttons are not cheap. They look and feel just like Discman buttons. If you think Discman buttons are cheap, then these will look cheap, too. The only buttons that move are the on/off buttons and play. They move, because they are connected to each other, since the OS has operations that require you to hold on and push play.
- Screen is small, but gets the job done. It is kind of annoying that the light turns off really fast, right when you are waiting for a song title to scroll. No biggie, though.
- Battery life so far has been 7+ hours. More than I need.
- Headphones. I didn't find them cheap. I mean, they are not definitely not great, but they are not the worst either. Probably a little bit below average is what describes them best.
- Carryig case is nice. IT is padded, so it will definitely protect the unit.
Important links:
http://rockbox.haxx.se - The site fo the RockBox OS. It has a REALLY active message list, which helps you not only with RockBox but with Archos in general.
http://rockbox.my-vserver.de/chat/chat.html - a chat for that community. Real Time support. I needed while flashing the system.
Important: The latest version of rockbox(2.2) has an insignificant bug, which automatically puts the number of songs allowed per directory to 0 when you start RockBox for the first time. To fix it, go to General settings -> Limits -> Max Files in Dir buffer and make the number to whatever you want.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth the price
Review: I have had this for more than two months now. Definitely a good toy to have. I use it as a backup device for my home PC in addition to being an MP3 player in the car. The first thing that strikes you is that this is not light. It has a cheap & tough military feel to it. It is actually a hard drive. Takes about 3-4 hrs to fully charge and plays for about 10 hrs in one stretch. It lasts for about a week and half if I use it for 1 hour every day (two half hour commutes). The buttons are hard. My up arrow needed to be pushed down real hard during the first week after which it softened up. I found out recently that the unit is not as rough as it looks, though. It got jammed in my car trunk accidentally and two buttons behave erratically now. Voice quality is good. I am using it with a cassette adapter for my car stereo. The headphone that comes with it has a cheap feel. The operating system features are inadequate. There are a few bugs too. I used Rockbox OS for a few days, but I didn't like it any better. Rockbox has a lot of frills that I don't really need. Looks like Rockbox has built up a lot of features just to prove to be better than the Archos OS. So, I went back to Archos OS which is a lot simpler. The recorder works fine too.
Rating:
Summary: For $100, definite a knock out deal
Review: Bought one at the golden box price(...). Took a little bit work to flash the OS to Rockbox. With the more friendly interface and enhanced abilities, it worth every penny. Sound quality is great, rechargable battery inclued, even with a free case in the package. That is a complete all-in-on deal. With an open source system, you can easily upgrade to new edition and add more supported languages. Definite a good buy althrough it's kind of bulky and not fancy-looking. Good quality is for sure. Final note here, buy yourself a good earphone to replace the cheap one in the package which will make the box really rocks!!!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent mp3 player
Review: Great mp3 player, i have used it for 2 months without trouble. The only bad thing about the mp3 player is the battery. The first time i used for 5 hours non-stop. After i recharged and used it again, i used like for 4 hours and then started to shut id down. otherwise its nice to back up all your file of you computer.
Rating:
Summary: For $130 ? Exuse me! It's THE CHOICE
Review: I was planning to buy IHP-120, because it supported WMA, which I have a lot, but it never went below 300$ for 20GB model; it is $360 now. This ARCHOS with ROCKBOX open-source firmware, shows the same features for one-third of the price. Well, I better convert those WMA to MP3 and save my money.
It was shipped free from Amazon; it took 3 days. Player looks solid, well-made. Supplied headphones are junk, but with my Sony it's much better. USB transfer is >8MBytes/s, which is a CD per minute. RockBox firmware (rockbox.haxx.se) is very flexible, sound controls, playlists, fonts, languages, games, so on. Accumulators life is not too long, but i'm going to use it in the car with adapter. Good player.
Rating:
Summary: GREAT value
Review: I bought this at a special promotion for $130 and it's the best $130 I've ever spent. I back up my computer's data, I've transfered all my music and I use it to record lectures to make notes out of later so that i can sleep in class :)
Rating:
Summary: The Best Thing Since the Cassette Tape!
Review: I just received this device yesterday. The instructions said to allow it to charge for six hours. I was away from the house for four and when I returned, it was done charging. So, I searched my hard drive for all my mp3 files and loaded them to the device. The sound was astonishing. Just for kicks, I decided to record a track from disc and that couldn't have been simpler. This morning, I was laying in bed and listening, when I thought of the RCA jack still plugged into the out jacks on my Bose Wave Radio/CD Player. I decided to switch them to the inputs and plug the device in. Wow! What a great sound! (BTW, I never thought I could feel good about spending so much on an alarm clock, but if you can swing it, get a Bose. It's an amazing device). I also discovered that I downloaded some .shn (shorten) music files onto the device. It played them. That was extremely weird because I usually have to convert those to mp3 with special software. Either the device did that, or it reads .shn files. They still read in it's directory as .shn files. This device is extremely versatile and worth far more than the low price Amazon's asking. I am very happy.
Rating: 
Summary: Archos 20 GB Player/recorder V2 Reconsidered
Review: I recently bought the 20 GB player/recorder. I bought the 20 GB V2 model because I already owned the 15 GB version, which had proven to be very reliable and sturdy. I have used the 15 GB version with great success and satisfaction as an MP3 player/recorder, as well as a plug and play portable hardrive on various Windows and Linux systems. However, the 20 GB V2 player/recorder seems to be designed differently, and built in very flimsy manner. The control buttons seem to have a "tinny" and fragile feel. The unit itself has locked up while playing on several occasions. Worst of all, however, recently the unit has started to spontaneously power up into play mode. In some cases, if the unit is unattended, for example just sitting on a table-top, this results in the unit being on all night long, with the result that the batteries require charging again in the morning. It appears that the re-design with the V2 product has resulted in some serious quality issues. Another problem with all of the Archos MP3 models is that they all require a different power supply/battery charger, such that the one supplied with my 15 GB unit will not work with the 20 GB unit, and vice-versa. The Archos web site is very confusing, offering a welter of power supplies, none of which match the specifications of those shipped with my 15 and 20 GB models. What's worse is that the Archos documentation contains severe warnings about damage that can be done to the devices if the wrong power supply is used. Whatever you do, don't lose the original power supply! The Archos concept is great: an open platform that runs Linux (an open source OS from Rockbox can be installed), and is approximately one-half of the price of proprietary devices such as the Ipod. The Archos' greatest feature is the ability to back up LPs, cassette tapes, etc. to MP3 files using the Recorder feature. Sound quality of the backed-up MP3s is superb. Quality issues appear to be the greatest concern
Rating:
Summary: This thing is sweet!
Review: Once you get the Rockbox software. The hardware for this thing is great, nice design, durable and so forth, but the software it comes with sucks. Search for Rockbox on google and follow the instructions to install it. Once that's done, you're golden. I use mine everywhere, including running for which it does a fine job. I highly recomend it. I have a friend with an iPod which cost him much more and yet this thing does everything it does and more. If you're getting a MP3 player, get this one.
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