Recently, my 20gb archos bit the dust (not from a hard drive issue; actually a cracked LCD screen), and all I have wanted since is a decent MP3 player. As far as I can tell, what I consider good is no longer produced. I have a few simple requirements:

• must use a USB mass storage interface. I mean that the thing is just an external hard drive that can play music, no oddities, and no needed software. This is the simplist way on both the manufacturer’s end and the user’s (at least for people like me).
• Let me view and play by folder. ID3 tags get messed up, don’t follow standards across a library, etc… I prefer to sort by file, rather than metadata, for no other reason than it is an easier way to sort, and I can add in structure that one could not extract from ID3 anyway. I spent time to sort my library this way.
• use a hard drive. I want something substantial. In the past, that was 20gb, now it is 30gb; the trend now seems to be towards small things. If I ran (or really exercised at all), I would get one for just that use. Really, I think many of the problems with hard drives is blown out of proportion. I don’t think I have ever actually seen a hard drive failure on any computer of device I have ever had any control over. That is on well over 100 machines. I have seen plenty of power supply failures, liquid cooling failures (it is always sad to see a Mac cry coolant…), memory errors, etc… but never a hard drive failure. I believe the statistics, but my personal experience differs.
• Not an iPod. iPod’s have and always fail the first two requirements (they loath their users–seriously), the price is high, etc…. There are only two arguments that I have ever heard that have been at all convincing to me for why an iPod is worthwhile: 1) you can return broken one’s easily, 2) stuff is made for them. I don’t care about 1) because I don’t break shit that much (the MP3 player’s I have used for normal walking around/traveling/etc use both lasted around 4-5 years), and as far as 2), those devices are nice, but headphones still work fine. Really, you should use a computer to power anything else. Style isn’t worth $200+ extra and reduced functionality; that is just stupid. I respect anyone a bit less for buying an iPod. Plus, I can’t even use it on my computer without installing rockbox or something.

For the most part, Archos has served me well on these points, but they have moved towards making any hard drive mp3 player huge with crazy video options and their portable ones small flash based things, like any other manufacturer. Ogg, etc support would also be nice, but I would be willing to live with just the first two. Battery life is also a factor, but my definition of usability takes precident. I think I have found one or tow from extensive searching. I don’t care about video; I just want music. These used to be made, so what happened? This is simple! Why can’t some weird Chinese compnay do this?

To further my addiction to gadgets, I have purchased the Archos PMA430. Every mp3 player I have owned (that is, things I got as mp3 players) has been an Archos thus far. To put it quite simply, Archos does what I want; I don’t have to use any particular media player or operating system to transfer data (has always worked as a USB mass storage device), I can record stuff, and there are usually a few more features. I got this one because my archos gmini 200 is starting to show it physical and technological age (because 3-4 years is somehow old). Anyways, I saw this thing for sale for $200 off something on dealhack and decided to go for it. Enough with the brutal details.

What I find curious about it is the price I got. Obviously, I did some reading first. cNet called it the “holy grail” of whatever the hell you call this class of devices. The main problem they raised was price. When it came out in 2005, this thing cost something like $800. I wouldn’t pay $800, but I would pay a decent amount for a Linux-based mp3/video player/recorder, with wi-fi, and a slue of other crap from a brand I trust. I just don’t get how they make money. They don’t have a page on their site anymore for this thing; they have pawned it off to second-sellers at this point. Every time I have gotten something from them, I have been amazed out how far ahead of Apple they always are. Perhaps Archos moves too fast for the general public, but I tend to think that they just market badly and don’t have the best hardware designers out there (that is, design of appearance). I just don’t get it.

Anyways, this thing has been added to my daily device set. Currently, this set is my cellphone, this thing now, and my nokia n800. As of one day of use, it looks like I should have some fun with this thing. One thing I will miss is that I got to a point with my gmini where I could operate it almost fully without looking at it. I can’t do that with this thing, so I am going to have to start using things like playlists. I also have an Archos something 700, which has a huge screen and many of the same features, but it not at all portable. I think I am going to start using the DVR functions on these things a lot more. Transfer is easy as those two can act as hosts to other USB things. The main problems I read about involved the wi-fi, and battery life. I haven’t had troubles with the wi-fi, but I don’t think I will really ever use it since I have the n800, which already serves the purpose better than thing could so it is not really a problem. I haven’t really been able to test battery too much, but I it needs a lot of juice for video, so music time benefits a lot. We will see how it works out….