   20gig mp3 player for $200?
  I'm looking into buying a 20gb mp3 player. Gamedev's as good as any place for asking that sort of thing, so here I go :)in order, I want - works with windows 2000 (I don't have XP yet).- storage. (20gb+)- battery life. (lots, >20 hrs).- no copyright protection crap (just mp3 from HD to player).- support oog / wma / mp3,... file formats. - acts as transportable storage for files.- cheap. < $220- relatively discreet (although size don't matter, really).I don't want- Ipod (yuk!).- Sony (yuk too!).- flimsy rubbish.   
HereCreative Labs 20gb Jukebox Zen Touch:20 gigs24 hours battery lifeCompatible with Windows 2000Supports mp3 and wma~$170 after $20 rebate[Edited by - whiz_kid on December 4, 2005 6:31:29 PM];  you aren't going to find very much that fits the bill for you.  your desire for 20+ hours of battery life alone kills almost every player on the market.  creative's battery ratings are greatly exaggerated, and playing files encoded at more than 128 will swiftly cripple the battery.the only company i know of off the top of my head that supports ogg is iRiver, but they don't meet most of your other requirements.creative is horrible for file storage, since you need their special "nomad explorer" to transfer the files. also, i can't think of a single player that WON'T let you take an mp3 and put it on your player.  most of them require that you use their software because the player has its own file directory structure and index file.  the "copyright protection crap" actually allows you a wider set of places to aquire music, not that any sane people someone who wants total control over their music would purchase it through something like neonapster or itunes.edit: i should elaborate on the battery.  its a hard spec to find these days, but a year ago manufacturers listed the amount of ram they put into their players.  i don't know if they changed it since i went shopping, but creative used to put 8MB of ram into their players, which means that after every other song the player will have to spin up the hard drive to load another song.  as encoding rate goes up, so does file size, and the amount of times the hard drive has to spin up and eat your battery.[Edited by - HelplessFool on December 4, 2005 7:07:58 PM];Quote:Original post by HelplessFool...not that any sane people would purchase their music through something like ... itunes.I have purchased quite a few songs from iTunes and have been quite satisfied by the process.  CM   ;  sorry about that... its not the "process" that is bad.  i guess i just like having a hard copy that isn't compressed with a lossy format.  they don't let you download the files in "apple lossless" format now do they? i haven't looked in a while.   ;Quote:Original post by oliiiI'm looking into buying a 20gb mp3 player. Gamedev's as good as any place for asking that sort of thing, so here I go :)in order, I want - works with windows 2000 (I don't have XP yet).- storage. (20gb+)- battery life. (lots, >20 hrs).- no copyright protection crap (just mp3 from HD to player).- support oog / wma / mp3,... file formats. - acts as transportable storage for files.- cheap. < $220- relatively discreet (although size don't matter, really).I don't want- Ipod (yuk!).- Sony (yuk too!).- flimsy rubbish.I've got an iAudio m3 and I'm pretty happy with it. It isn't perfect for your requirements, but I don't think anything is.- works with windows 2000 (I don't have XP yet).Yep; to the computer, it's a standard USB hard drive. You can put the audio files anywhere on the hard drive and navigate the folders through their interface. If you use their software (not required) it'll automatically sort it for you in the Music directory of the root filesystem.- storage. (20gb+)check- battery life. (lots, >20 hrs).only 14 hours, but that's still pretty good and I doubt you'll have much better luck elsewhere.- no copyright protection crap (just mp3 from HD to player).- support oog / wma / mp3,... file formats. It supports a large variety of file formats; mp3, ogg, wma, wav, and plenty of others. It doesn't support DRM, though, so it can't play songs that are protected by DRM, including 'protected' wma files. (It's not like they can just ignore the protection; the protection is part of the file format, and if they hacked it they'd get sued. They either include DRM and obey the limits of the protected files or they don't include DRM and can't play protected songs.)- acts as transportable storage for files.check; I even repartitioned mine and it worked fine. To the computer, it's just like any other external hard drive.- cheap. < $220Nope. $290 official price; it might be less elsewhere.- relatively discreet (although size don't matter, really).Sure; it looks great.I know it's not exactly what you're after, but if you can't find something closer to your needs, give it a thought.It also has a voice recorder, fm radio (that can be recorded), and line in (that can also be recorded). It encodes to mp3.   ;Quote:Original post by whiz_kidHereCreative Labs 20gb Jukebox Zen Touch:20 gigs24 hours battery lifeCompatible with Windows 2000Supports mp3 and wma~$170 after $20 rebateI have this mp3 player.  I like it quite a bit and have had no bad experiences with it.  Probably had it about a year, now.  The touchpad is annoying at first (and I mean *very* annoying, at least if you're picking songs/playlists/albums constantly.  if you just set it to random and let it run, it won't bug you as much), since it can be very sensitive.  I've gotten used to it, though, and you will probably get used to it as well after using it for a while.  Not to mentoin the sensitivity is adjustable.The battery life claim does seem rather dubious to me.  I'm guessing that I'm lucky to get 15 hours between charges, although that might be from playing 320kbps CBR mp3s, which is what a lot of my music is in.What I suppose I should really ask, is wtf do you need 24+ hours of battery life?  I usually listen to my mp3 player on the bus/train every morning and afternoon, meaning that it gets used about 3 hours per day.  I have to charge it roughly once per week, I'm guessing... maybe every week and a half if I'm lucky.Do you really need it to last that long without a recharge?  24 hours of battery life is seriously obscene.Maybe if you rigged it run on a fission reactor, or something...   ;Quote:Original post by nagromohas a nice playerreminds me of the earlier iRiver models, with fancy lcd remote thingy.  its a shame that kind of stuff never makes it into retail stores.;Quote:Original post by HelplessFoolQuote:Original post by nagromohas a nice playerreminds me of the earlier iRiver models, with fancy lcd remote thingy.  its a shame that kind of stuff never makes it into retail stores.I like the remote. I keep the hdd/player in the pocket and only have the remote out; I've gotten some comments on how small it is [grin]I've never seen any hdd mp3 player other than iPods in stores. It would be nice to see more variety, but Apple's marketing has done a great job.   ;  i've seen some samsungs and i think a phillips, and of course creative labs was putting them in stores before anyone else.i don't think its the quality of apples marketing that prevents other brands from entering, its the fact that small brands don't have the capital to advertise.  if they want to make it into the retail channels, they have to manage to spread far enough that they don't need the retail to survive in the first place.   