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The Karma is the ONLY HD based player which does gapless playback properly. It's the main reason I have one (and would never buy an iPod).

wrong. the archos jukebox with the free, open source rockbox firmware has supported gapless playback for years.

apple and most car mp3 head unit manufacturers can't figure this out. it is a show stopper for me.

the archos doesn't have a problem with not turning off - the opposite, it turns off unexpectedly sometimes. similar problem, but doesn't require smacking it hard enought to interrupt power (holy shit show stopper).

Or equivalent? http://rockbox.haxx.se/

If not, I'll pass. If open-source firmware isn't available for it, I'll buy another model that does...

the debian mozilla packages currently in sid/unstable appear to be not propagating into sarge/testing due to not being built cleanly for the mips and mipsel architectures. i'm not enough of a mozilla or mips hacker to understand the exact problems with the build, but the failed build logs are available for review, if anyone wants to send hints to the debian maintainer.

if you use a more popular architecture (x86, for example), you can use the mozilla packages from unstable which are currently at 1.7.2 (1.7.3, having been released by mozilla just yesterday, has not been introduced to sid/unstable yet to my knowledge).

But there's hope: here's a good link about apt-pinning, which lets you pull select packages from sid/unstable while maintaining the rest of your system as sarge.

i just made the changes described in the link above to /etc/apt/preferences and /etc/apt/sources.list yesterday, and it worked pretty smoothly. if you run into any problems, you can try uninstalling the mozilla-browser and mozilla-mailnews packages and then reinstalling them while targetting the unstable distro like this:

apt-get remove --purge mozilla-mailnews mozilla-browser
apt-get -t unstable install mozilla

Designed and implemented Wget.
Personally, I feel wget is the greatest software every to hit the GNU/Linux desktop!

I'd have to go with Daniel Stenberg of cURL fame in this category. If you are still using wget, then try cURL. A lot of people only know wget, and that's a shame, because cURL is better in almost every possible dimension: see the table comparing cURL to wget and others to see for yourself. Not only that, but cURL is much more actively maintained and improved than wget.

While wget isn't a bad place to start, it's good to know there is a far more powerful alternative out there.

And, of course, it's part of far more than just Linux desktops - Apple even saw fit to make it part of OS X, and I routinely use it on XP, my own desktop OS of choice, as well several Linux and BSD-based servers.

It's an incredibly useful and valuable piece of code, and will become even more so in the future...

Designed and implemented Wget.
Personally, I feel wget is the greatest software every to hit the GNU/Linux desktop!

I'd have to go with Daniel Stenberg of cURL fame in this category. If you are still using wget, then try cURL. A lot of people only know wget, and that's a shame, because cURL is better in almost every possible dimension: see the table comparing cURL to wget and others to see for yourself. Not only that, but cURL is much more actively maintained and improved than wget.

While wget isn't a bad place to start, it's good to know there is a far more powerful alternative out there.

And, of course, it's part of far more than just Linux desktops - Apple even saw fit to make it part of OS X, and I routinely use it on XP, my own desktop OS of choice, as well several Linux and BSD-based servers.

It's an incredibly useful and valuable piece of code, and will become even more so in the future...

Can't believe nobody has whored the Wiki page with the technical scoop!

If you're worried about that, just don't use it. Sort of like Linux, I suppose.

I use Rockbox, and it is great, but Archos is a crap company who make bad hardware. If this does well, I'll get an iRiver (I'm on the rockbox mail list, but I actually missed this, heh). The Rockbox team have been looking for a good platform to port to who won't cause problems though. Although Rockbox hasn't even been threatened by the DMCA (as far as I know), other similar projects have, and have just ceased without a battle (even though they know they are in the right).

It's annoying people bringing up how they wish this was on the iPod or whatever. They can do the port themselves if they find the current firmware a problem. Also, Apple tend to make good firmware (if Slashdot posts can be trusted. I've never used an iPod myself and I don't want to).

Someone else mentioned how this is "too little too late" because the "target audience" has gone to iPod now. I've never decided if these types of posts are trolls or not, but they annoy me. The programmers are probably programming it for themselves. I bet they want the port so they can work on the firmware themselves when they find something bad in it. I don't know for sure, but I think other people using it is just a side effect which makes it feel worth while. Anyone where who does hobbyist programming will know the feeling.

As for "Will I lose features" - well if you look at this page you can see Rockbox is very complete at the moment, compared to the original firmware - including great support for Blind People, which many people have benefited a lot from. These are great guys doing great work. Of course, things like OGG isn't on there, and it will never be on the Archos, but it will be added to the iRiver if the project gets off the ground. It is the nature of Free Software - and rockbox is GPLed - for features to be constantly added. Programmers, especially, like OGG too much for it to be left out for too long.

Rockbox has done impressive things. Video with sound, for example, and help for blind users. It has reacted to the demands of the people who use it - and for that the users should be thankful, as I am. They're only doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. Remember they owe us nothing.

More about Rockbox at Slashdot that you might find interesting.

While we appreciate positive attention for our work, this story is a bit early. We have just begun to look at the iRiver iHP/H1 hardware and are quite a bit away from having anything of significance to show (such as running code).

I'll try to preemptively answer some common questions:

- No, we are not violating the DMCA or any other intellectual property laws. We are only distributing software written by ourselves and we run it on our own hardware. Our software does not circumvent any access control or copy control mechanisms.

- We are not doing this to "expand our market share" or any other weird corporate-style reason. We are doing it because our old Archos hardware is becoming obsolete and hard to find so we need to find new hardware to run our software on. The fact that the iRiver has a large user base is a bonus though, since it means more potential contributors.

- We are not looking at the iPod or Rio Karma since they contain a chip made by Portalplayer that you have to sign away your firstborn to see the docs for. That is a silly practice we do not wish to encourage. The iRiver contains hardware with published docs.

Feel free to drop in on irc if you have any questions.

/Björn

is Rockbox, the open-source firmware for most of their devices, with features out the wazoo, assuming you're one the the lucky wazoo-bearers of the species.

is Rockbox, the open-source firmware for most of their devices, with features out the wazoo, assuming you're one the the lucky wazoo-bearers of the species.

I have one of those newer video archos' but you can't put Rockbox (open source os) on them which is the only thing that makes an Archos worthwhile. The have crappy quality control and their OS sucks. My AV140 will often play two songs at once (bug, not a feature) and sometimes it'll lock up and not turn off until the battery dies. It doesn't take too long for it to die either, I'm lucky if I get a hour and a half of play out of it. If you do go with Archos, try and get one of the older Recorder models since Rockbox solves many of these problems. You won't have video, but do you really need to watch DivX movies on a 1" screen?

My experience with the Archos MP3 players is quite different from yours.

First off, the interface on the Archos Recorders and Studios were so bad that someone had to write a new firmware to give it a better interface (see Rockbox). The iPod has a better interface.

Secondly, when using my Archos Studio 20, I could never get a stable connection between the unit and my computer. Tranfers would always screw up in the middle of it, and in order to minimize problems, I had to transfer songs one at a time. When I contacted Archos Tech Support about this, they told me to update my drivers. When I did that, the problem wasn't fix and upon subsequently contacting Archos tech support, they wouldn't respond. I hope that Apple does better with their tech support.

Lastly, my Archos cratered right after the warranty period was up. Sucks to be me. I contacted Archos about it and they basically told me that I was stuck with it and there was nothing they could do. They suggested getting another one. I've heard that some of the iPods have a similar problem.

I've since moved onto an iRiver Flash player and love it, but I do miss the storage capacity of the Archos. If the new Archos' are anything like the Studio 20, I'd stay as far away from them and that company as possible. Even though the Archos is about 25-50% cheaper, at this point, I'd rather go with Apple than Archos.

128MB USB key

MMC Reader and multiple MMC cards

20GB Archos MP3 player / hard disk

The USB key is just handy and easy to take anywhere. It's the sneakernet of our day.

The MMC cards can be read by my Palm, used in my camera, and the small USB reader plugs into everything else. Lots of small, easy to carry storage. Hard part is keeping track of all the small MMC cards.

The Archos is a multi-function unit that does the heavy lifting, yet is still quite portable. (Yeah, the Apple zealots are all screaming iPod!, but I like my hackable Archos FM Recorder. The RockBox firmware is great.)

I'm using an Archos Recorder V2. It's an MP3 player with a USB 2.0 interface and a 20GB hard drive. Windows sees it as a generic Mass Storage Device so you can just drag and drop files to and from it. It uses a standard 2.5" notebook hard drive. Those hard drives are expensive compared to desktop drives, but at least it's easy to upgrade the drive (up to a limit of ~120GB, if I remember correctly). It can run off a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, AC adapter, or USB power. I think they're selling for $150-$200 these days. If you get one, do yourself a favor and install the RockBox firmware.

I've also used various digital cameras the same way, but they tend to have less storage space available.

Download curl, then you can do stuff like

curl http://hugetractsofland.com/{amy,crystal}/[01-05]/ img[1-99].jpg -o "#1#2-#3.jpg"

The perfect command....which I've yet to find a use for. um..yeah.

The BIOS is just one area-- a critical feature we should all demend in consumer electronics gadgets (by voting with our dollars) is flashable firmware and documented architectures so OSS alternatives can be utilized to customize the hardwares capabilities. An inadvertent example is the Archos Jukebox MP3 player/recorders. We should see such capabilities in consumer devices as critical features that will allow us to fully utilize the hardware as we desire. Does the iPod provide for OSS firmware? No? Then buy an Archos or equivalent instead. Such a feature should be ADVERTISED as a competitive feature and appear on the spec sheets. The potential advantages are enormous-- what it represents, in effect, is Open Source hardware that can be utilized in ways unforseen to the manufacturers.

Unfortunately, many manufacturers do NOT desire such features, as it tends to counteract planned or even natural obsolescence. However, if we only buy gear that is self-extensible through open source, they can be forced to provide the feature if they are losing out to competitors who aren't afraid to offer it.

Then again, there's this: (www.theinquirer.net) The absolute best thing about Archos is RockBox/A> "MP3 PLAYER-MAKING COMPANY iRiver is taking the mick, according to its own message board's users. iRiver has been promising upgrades and firmware releases since last year, when the 40GB iHP-140 - pretty much an iPod clone - was launched. However, the company has released nothing yet. Originally, iRiver said the new features - including on-the-fly file deletion, real shuffle mode, on-the-fly playlist and gapless playback - would be released in May and June. The company offered an apology at the end of May and promised to sort things out as soon as possible. Still nothing. Thanks to such huge delay, the message board users are up in arms over the lack of updates. User "jotwee" says, "If they don't change their behaviour I will never buy an iRiver product again". This thread is full of angry iRiver customers. And, as a side note, your blue-haired logo-lady looks like she's suffering from horrible acne"

I'm personally running Debian Testing which is automatically kept free from conflicts like those you describe. And the automated updates of Debian using apt-get work very well.

they're the same size as a portable CD player.

No, they're not. CD players are constrained by the dimensions of the 120mm diameter spinning disk and it was perhaps the popularity of this form factor that influenced Creative to go with a 127x127mm form factor for their first HD nomad in 2000.

However, the earlier Compaq (150x80mm) and Archos (115x83mm) recognized that a longer, thinner form factor would suit many people better.

Inclosing I'd like to note that I generally wear combats ("cargo pants") so perhaps my available pocket storage is higher than many people's...

I have seen them up close (the Archos Jukebox and its ilk, right?) and they're the same size as a portable CD player.

For a good time(line) have a look at this chronology on the Rockbox website http://rockbox.haxx.se/playerhistory Rockbox is an open-source firmware replacement for archos players.

I own an Archos Jukebox 6000, and I own an iRiver IHP-140.

There is some talk about iRiver firmware hacking in forums and whatnot (misticriver's are probably the best), and some talk among the Rockbox folks about porting their firmware to different devices, but as best I know it's still mostly talk.

The iRiver mounts as a removable drive, same as the Archos, and its database can be dispensed with (or, actually, never installed in the first place). I would strongly recommend getting rid of the iRiver's database, as it greatly increases the IHP's boot time.

Those of us intelligent enough to purchase an Archos Jukebox, this is old news. I took my original 20GB out and replaced it with an 80GB drive long ago. Also, for an added bonus there is an excellent open source firmware project.

It could be relatively easy to establish a hierarchy of places to contact a person starting with VOIP, then progressing on down to sending a voice to text message at the very last.

I've got a special number that I can program to route people to several of my real phone numbers (ringing simultaneously if I want to, different numbers at differents times in the week, etc.) - if I don't get to the phone at all, you can leave a voicemail message (or decide to text me). I imagine that whichever country you're in, there are "universal messaging" services that provide the same sort of functionality. Maybe not as cool as VOIP on your PCS phone, but then it would also have to do WiFi, find open hotspots etc.

Right now at least, we do have phones (V600) that will automatically negotiate networks (so I can have one phone to travel with internationally rather than having to keep two or three depending upon the networks), but most of these phones have maddening interfaces and that in of itself could use some thought and effort.
I'm at a bit of a loss here.. All GSM phones I know of are perfectly capable of selecting which network they should use, and on most you can select networks you prefer (e.g. because the network it picks because it's a partner of your own provider charges higher roaming charges - unlikely, but it does happen).

Look, placing GUI interfaces on lots of stuff is OK if it streamlines your operation of the device, but the phone companies and even automobile manufacturers are using lousy GUI interfaces to perform simple tasks. (I absolutely refuse to consider the new BMW's because of that stupid GUI that has to be navigated through three screens to change the radio station or move the seat or change the temperature.

Abdo-fucking-lutely. I only wish my phone had a "skinnable" UI, or was open source, or at least some way to change the damn UI from always requiring one buttonmash to many for menial tasks. That's why I love the fact that my mp3 player (an Archos jukebox) has third party open source firmware to replace the stock firmware. Its UI is a lot better, even though it's made by geeks and no marketing decisions went into it.

Also, tomorrow I will be purchasing one of them nifty smart phones that runs (GASP) pocketpc, because at least you can rip out the firmware and dick around with it, or do stuff like buy a $16 voice dialling application to extend the functionality of the thing. Plus, no more T9, just tap or jog text.. When the need arises I can even buy a GPS module and plug it in..

Now, a way to have it run linux...

Certainly this is a standard marketing practice that happens to many, many consumer products. What will make things much more interesting in the future is that more consumer devices are being hooked up to computers and there are many more bored/keen/unemployed programmers lying around.

When combined with the Internet, which allows parties from geographically dispersed areas to work together to overcome completely artifical barriers like this rebel hacking discussion group . To me, this is a great example of the amazing democratizing possibilities of the Internet. The Internet has the potential to give consumers more power than ever before. Just like P2P file sharing, corporation are going to have to come to grips with the reality that digital technology is altering the rules of the game. Previous practices, like blatant software limitations, simply are problematic. While they can just try to sue the pants off everyone involved, they won't be able to keep pace with all of the hacking activity. Especially when many of the hackers are located in places like Russia, where the rebel hacker is from.

Two of my favourite digital devices - my digital rebel and my archos jukebox - now have greatly increased functionality due to hacking. I can see this happening much more often in the future.

Recently I decided to use lame with cbr 192kbps after comparing to the preset vbr settings (including extreme). I use the settings: --cbr -b 192 -h -q0

Using vbr I can hear the noise floor being modulated e.g. by a large amplitude low pass filtered bass sound. I contribute this to vbr changing bitrate. Maybe the psychoacoustic model just doesn't fit my ears:-)

The vbr files average around 200kbps anyway, so they're not smaller than 192kbps cbr.

It would have been nice if the test included cbr as well.

I use good headphones: Sennheiser HD-25, and my mp3 player: archos jukebox recorder running the open source firmware Rockbox

The cURL license seems okay now: cURL license. I suppose it wouldn't be on Sourceforge if it weren't okay.

Don't confuse cURL with Curl, from the Curl Corporation.

The cURL license seems okay now: cURL license. I suppose it wouldn't be on Sourceforge if it weren't okay.

Don't confuse cURL with Curl, from the Curl Corporation.

"Why does everything have to be commercialized?"

Please don't confuse communication with making money. It is not fun if the name you have chosen for your project causes some people to avoid it. Part of what makes a project a success is communicating about it.

Marketing is just communicating about your product or idea. It's true that most marketing contains some element of dishonesty, but that is due to the intellectual limitations of the people who write commercial ads and brochures and web sites, and their managers, and not due to the concept itself. Most people learn to hate the idea of marketing because they hate the lies, but communicating persuasively is often necessary for success.

"Some of us simply don't care, to put it bluntly."

I agree that's true, but I think it is unfortunate. It's true that communication largely determines how much you will be offered in pay when you get a new job, so money is sometimes involved. But communication also largely determines how well you will do in finding a significant other. Communication is a large percentage of everything people do.

I found it very, very difficult learning how to communicate better, but the results were worth the many years of effort.

You need communication every time you want people to go in a different direction than they would have chosen on their own. You need communication every time you want to manage or lead or convince.

My grandparent post got 14 replies in 6 hours. Why? Why didn't people just ignore it? Because I thought a lot about what I wanted to say, and then used my skill in writing to communicate it. Because it was well communicated, people could more easily decide whether they agreed or disagreed.

Part of learning how to communicate well is deciding that communication is important to you. I'm hoping to help convince some OSS authors that communication is important because I spend many hours evaluating and trying to implement open source software. Often open source web sites don't even contain explanations about the purpose of the project.

Here's an open source project that does it right: cURL. I had no trouble learning to use cURL.

On the other hand, I spent 5 hours last Saturday night learning how to set parameters for another open source project. Five hours is a lot of time to lose! And that's just for one project. Multiply the lost time on one project by thousands of projects and millions of users. The lost time because of poor communication is huge!

Might I suggest you try libcurl? It's a file transfer library with ready to use functions to hook into your plugin. It'd probably be easier than cutting and pasting wget code.

• Active development, wget seems to have languished the past few years.
• Support for turning off headers at the command line. Use curl -H 'header_to_turn_off:'
• Built in man page. curl -M (This is more useful in Windows than *nix, since there isn't a native manpage reader)
• Support for HTTP/1.1. Wget uses HTTP/1.0.

Read this page for more comparisons.

Curl is better. For one-shot downloads, it beats wget by far. I use it daily on WinXP and it works like a dream.

I propose that you add curl, the command line downloader. I use it for all my downloads. I used to use wget on Windows, but it doesn't seem to localize the UTC times properly for Daylight Savings timestamps. My files would always be about 2 hours ahead. Anyways, thanks for the informative list.

they could pay $250 for a cutting-edge 4GB iPod Mini will make them the envy of their technologically inferior friends

I paid $72 (new!) for a 20GB Archos about which I have no illusions as to hype factor but whose low price makes it an envied object by many of my friends. Maybe I have cheap friends?

My "cutting-edge" Archos plays video, features speaking-voice menu prompts and playlists, unlimited bookmarking, and supports a robust plugin architecture with games and PDA functions.

If and when the iPod Linux project manages to definitively crack open the closed iPod box then there will get some cool "cutting edge" add-on apps and functions, but until then for me it's a closed uninteresting box very far from the "cutting edge".

For big files that there's only one of, I just the cmd in XP and use WGET to download.

Use cURL: it can do both download and upload from the command line.
But for interactive transferts, FileZilla is the best on Win32.

I was going to buy an iPod, but it's basically an expensive, disposable brick. Forget it. My player of choice is the Archos FM Recorder with Rockbox on it. It's reasonably small, sturdy, and it contains a 20 gig drive. The official Archos OS sucks ass, but Rockbox is ultra-fast, easy to use, and open-source to boot, which means I can write my own plugins (well, in theory). It comes with games, playlist editors, a text viewer, etc. There's no way iPod will ever be able to match that, especially considering the ~$120 price tag on eBay for Archos. Archos also makes a player called gMini 220, which has a neater form factor and a CF slot, but Rockbox is not available for it, and Archos's default OS sucks, so I can't recommend it.

I agree about the Archos-- and in fact I think the BEST feature of it is the fact I can get source code to player software that's better than what the factory built here..

And sure, most of you are saying, "I don't want to see the source code, I just want it to work", but that is because you don't realize what the EFFECT of having code available to the public means that all kinds of folks are tweaking and getting it to do things the designers never thought of. The latest hack for RockBox is to ADD talking directories and other talking features, which the original never had, and a crude video playback on the LCD (not that you'll use it, but someone did it because they could)-- there's an entire episode of Futurama you can playback on the darn thing, though it's a recipe for eyestrain on the dinky on/off pixel display-- but the fact that someone could have hacked it because they have access to source means that it's not a static product that the manufacturer will intentionally obsolete in the next version so you'll toss it and by their new one...

Sure, the Archos isn't a super capable platform that you can crunch 3D graphics on (though there is a simple 3D program on it now :-), but THINK of the power we would have as consumers if we were to DEMAND the manufacturers make their electronic toys open-source so legions of users could add their own enhancements rather than remain the bleating sheep of their marketing schemes...

In fact, someone WOULD have hacked OGG on the Archos by now, except the decoder is canned in a chip such that the CPU hasn't the right kind of access &/or horsepower to do it...

And I myself, don't particulary want to tweak the source code, but it is comforting to know that it's available and means the device will have a life of its own despite the manufacturer's inevitable desire to obsolete it.

Maybe you like these manufacturers dictating what you can do with the hardware-- what you can play on what, etc.., and as long as you roll over for them, that's what you're always gonna get. But if products that have that little extra capability for end users to hack and customize them become popular enough, the manufacturers will ultimately PLAN for it and make sure the hardware is flexible enough so you can really do what you want with it.

Suppose next year, it's no longer Ogg, or MP3, or WMA, but someone comes out with a new algorithm that is better quality, or smaller size, or whatever, and COULD run on the box you have but the manufacturer won't give you the code to do it instead preferring to sell you a new one? Do you really WANT a future where all products, hardware or software are by subscription and you have to buy a new whatever-it-is every year when the one you have is too out-of-date and the manufacturer refuses to support it anymore?

Don't hold your breath waiting for Ogg players until someone starts making chips for it, such as this one for Mp3. It may be that not that many of the player manufacturers actually make the chips that do the encoding/decoding, they just buy what's available off-the-shelf and good luck finding Ogg ones, even if they wanted to build such a box.

In the meantime, it's probably a good idea to stick with open-sourceable players such as those that can run RockBox... 20G storage with recording for about $200-- and some have hacked in 60G drives plus more memory for cache which significantly reduces battery life.

Recently, the Rockbox Open Source firmware replacement added voice support.

Considering that the rockbox firmware (which completely replaces the original (crappy) firmware) is free, multi-lingual, and has optionally enlarged fonts, I'd say go get one!

The Jukebox itself has a battery life of around 10 hours, and comes in 10-20GB versions, last I checked. Archos has recently been phasing these ones out of production, so you can find them cheap here and there, and off ebay.

Requisite reading:
Rockbox!
Archos

It also works with the Neo MP3 player which I don't have a handy link for.

The Archos Jukebox Recorder with the Rockbox open-source replacement firmware has several features designed for blind. I haven't used them, so I can't comment, but you might try posting a question on the rockbox list for further details.

Nope, it didn't support OGG. It was the first hard-drive based MP3 player released by Archos. The hardware was not able to play anything besides uncompressed (WAV) and MP3 audio files.

But hey, at least it has alternative open source fimware.

Linux on an Ipod is basically pointless. Especially on this very device, which is what hip people [penny-arcade.com] buy in the first place (don't get me wrong, I have one). That doesn't mean people can't tweak with it, but it's not that useful, since the geek population using iPods is outnumbered by the common consumers.

I've found the rockbox firmware for my Archos Jukebox pretty damn handy. And all it takes is to copy a file to the player. I'm sure an equivalently simple installation process will become available for 3rd party iPod firmware, and that 3rd party firmware will be just as good if not better than the original stuff in due time. Rockbox started out pretty useless I'd imagine, but I enjoy it now for its extended battery lifetime and countless extra features (though no real playlist abilities, but then, the physical UI of the archos jukebox player doesn't lend itself to easily composing those - so you have to compose .m3u files 'offline')

For an example of what a replacement third party firmware can do for an audio player, check out RockBox. It turns the obsolete Archos Jukebox 6000 series models into machines capable of playing music much better than the stock firmware, and also capable of doing other stuff as well.

The bottom line: iPodLinux is a work in development. When it reaches production quality, it WILL have more features than the stock firmware, and will support more formats as well. (ogg, anyone?)

When you've got an Archos Jukebox Recorder? As beautiful as the Ipod is, I much prefer playing my Sokoban on a handy little 1 X 0.5 in. screen. Who needs the best when you can hack the worst to be damn close? That's my philosophy and that's why I got my Archos and the Rockbox firmware (since the included firmware is elegently idiotic).

..oddly reminiscent of the Rockbox project (which has also enabled an MP3 player to play video).

I bought (what is now an older) 20 Gig MP3 recorder/jukebox made by Archos. I haven't RTFA, but going by past experiences with my recorder and what i've heard from others, i'm guessing the firmware will be junk. Thank god for open source and the good people at Rockbox. These guys have made my MP3 player useable, and continue to develop a darn fine product.

Now, what I don't understand is how come Archos wouldn't get involved with the Rock Box guys and try to just use their OS, or buy it from them, or something. I mean, the Rock Box os fixes so many bugs, and adds all kinds of features. The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts. -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Personally I find this to be a good thing. Reverse engineering, duplicating any device in hardware or software is cool. Copying the vaunted IPOD on a Windows Pocket PC? That's the ultimate in irony there.

I myself don't care for the IPOD or it's interface, so I've got no reason to play with this software. But the idea sounds interesting, if not particularly useful. What would be more impressive overall however, is if this company did something ala what Rockbox did for the Archos devices, and wrote a new OS to run on the IPOD itself.

Please don't blame your sysadmin (if you were). subversion is (largely) held up by apache2

Go get one today... then load the Rockbox firmware and keep on rockin. In version 2 you can even flash-upgrade the flashrom for a 4sec bootup.

btw... I posted a review on Amazon just this week and bought the rebated unit for my neighbor to use on his bike.

Yea, this sounds like an ad... but it's not. I just want to make sure people know what kind of bs they are getting from the major 'players' out there. Make sure you check the music management issues when you do your research. Any player I will buy must be Linux compatible.

Cheers! nomasteryoda
Yeah! my first posting!

aka ...

You might want to try switching out the AA nicads and go for NiMH--you can pick up a set of 2200maH and let the music play for 8-10 hours on a full charge. Works for my Archos anyway... That was one of the nice things about the old Archos--user replaceable batteries (not to mention harddrive and open source firmware).