Rating: 
Summary: This is almost a dream machine!
Review: I go out of town and country several times a year. When I am in town, I go on day hikes around the Bay area. I used to bring a portable radio and a portable CD player, with a few favorite CDs.
More often than not, I would regret not bringing a particular CD with me. Also, there were times when I wanted to record a program or a piece of music on the radio.
All these problems are solved with the Archos Player/Recorder/FM radio with a 20GB hard drive! I bought one about two weeks ago and it has met all my expectations so far. I had a little difficulty initially because the manuals were not as detailed as they should be.(BTW, this is my only gripe with this product otherwise the title would even better.)
This pocket size product with very good sounding headphones, weighs less than 11oz. On the 20GB harddrive, I am loading it with music from my CD collection. I am on my way to including over 200CDs, including a 64 CD set of an audio NIV Bible! Imagine having all this in the palm of your hand.
Each CD is converted into high quality MP3 files by the software provided ,called MusicMatch. You can vary the quality level as well as the sampling rate (which techie readers understand.) So far, sampling at 128kbps for music and 64kbps for voice, produced excellent recordings. I cannot tell the different between listening to the MP3 tracks vs the original tracks(using the same headphones as a test.) It takes MusicMatch about 6 minutes on my Pentium 3 computer to convert an average CD (but this is gated by the speed of your CD-ROM devices.
This product has a built-in microphone to allow you to record the proceedings of a meeting. Setting the sampling rate low, you can store up to 700 hours on the 20GB drive.
But the feature that makes this product different from other Archos and competitive products is the inclusion of a FM radio and the ability to record directly from this radio. The Archos product designers added a feature to have a 30 second buffer. That means, when you decide to record something you have been listening to, by pressing the record button, you will automatically get the previous 30 seconds recorded as well. I find this is a really smart and useful feature. Additional functions allow you to "chop" off unwanted beginnings and ends of a radio recording.
The installation of both the Archos unit and the software went smoothly without any hiccups. I am running Windows 98 on one computer and Windows 98SE on another. All the later versions of Windows and NT are supported according to the specs.
Archos promises to update the firmware for this product from time to time. The new firmware can be downloaded from the internet.
The unit is driven by a builtin Lithium-ion battery and when fully charged I can run the unit for about 10 hours.
So far I am more than pleased with this product- its functionality , its size/capacity and its speed. For the reasons above, this is almost a dream machine for me.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm happy with it despite its few flaws and complexness
Review: I have needed an MP3 player with this kind of hard drive for a long time. The Ipod, which I have used, is a nice machine, but I think that the Archos is a better purchase. First of all, it is a LOT cheaper. For me, 20 GB is enough... I have 1500 songs on my Archos and have only used about 1/3 of the memory. The Ipod does not have a radio and therefore does not have a radio recording feature, either. The Archos suits my needs perfectly. I could spend a lot of time describing the product, but instead I am going to point out the things I have encountered with the machine that either suprised me or agreed/were contrary to other reviews. As a music player, this machine is probably like all others. Many reviews say that the product locks up, etc, but I have yet to encounter this difficulty. I found that the player's battery life isn't the 12 hours that the specs claim, but I always get through the day. I expected to be able to use the machine while it charged, but I found that you cannot use the system when it is plugged into an AC adapter. This was unexpected. Since the Archos lacks an antenna, the radio stations are often difficult to hear. One review said that radio reception was excellent, but it has not been in my experience. The radio does work however, you just have to hold the machine in a certain spot. The biggest problem with the set is the lack of user friendliness. I have had it for over a week now, but I still have not figured out much more than how to operate the basic functions such as listening to music and the radio. I have messed with the settings a little bit, but it is still difficult to unlock some features. You really have to know something about computers, etc, to figure this machine out. I would not reccomend it to someone with minimal computer skills. I have not figured out the voice recorder, the file cropping feature, how to delete files yet, or even how to use the playlists! I would HIGHLY advise organizing your music directories on your computer before using this product. I have my files put into folders by artist and then album. It would be a mess if my files weren't organized. The play features are nice. I am the kind of person who likes to put an album in and listen to it and only it-- the Archos reads from one directory at a time. Therefore, if I am in my Pink Floyd folder and am listening to "Animals," when that album finishes, it will not move on to the "Dark Side of the Moon" folder (which comes next alphabetically), but instead it will replay "Animals" until you move out of that directory. Some people think this is a downfall, but I like how it reads the directories. This feature is especially noticeable when you have the "random" setting on. If I am in the "Animals" directory and turn on "random," it will only play the files in the "Animals" folder randomly. In order to play multiple artists randomly, you have to create a playlist, which is fine (with me anyway). My favorite play mode though is called "queue," which should be self explanatory, but it basically means you can select the next song you want to hear before the song you are listening to is over. That way you can make your selection and be done with it when you are ready and can enjoy two songs without stopping to choose a new track. You can only queue one song at a time. Some other minor things before I move on-- there is no hold button, which was a disappointment, but the "on" button is so hard to accidentally press, plus you have to hold it for a while to get it to turn on so it really doesn't matter. Also, people complain about the lack of an instruction book, but the software includes an interactive guide that shows you how to do just about everything. And now for my biggest gripe and the most annoying part of this machine. THERE IS NO VOLUME CONTROL. You can change the volume, of course, but I am moving to an MP3 player from a CD player-- meaning this is my first MP3 player, and I am used to having a separate button for volume. On this player, you can only change the volume using the up and down buttons, but these buttons function differently depending on what screen you are at. If I am browsing my catalouge and someone starts talking to me, for example, it is not possible to turn down the volume, because in browse mode, the up and down buttons are used for navigation. Also, you can't exit browse mode. Once you go into it, you have to either select a new song, stop your current song, or wait 20 seconds until it goes away. By then, whoever was talking to you is probably done and you will have to ask them to repeat themselves. I guess that goes back to the lack of user friendliness. To make a long story short, the Archos has too few buttons doing too many tasks. I spent a long time knocking the volume control, but that was really unexpected to me and is a hassle, but that isn't to say this isn't a great player. I am very satisfied with it. Like I said, I have only had it for a little over a week, though, and who knows what could go wrong in the future. I have not encountered ANY of the problems described by other people, though, and hope that I never do. I DEFINITELY reccomend this player to ANYONE who is even remotely interested in a large capacity MP3 player. For the amount of money it costs, it's better than the Ipod. **Update: I have had this unit now for several months and have had NO problems, none of the problems listed in other reviews have happened. I have definitely gotten my money's worth of enjoyment from it. A definite recommend!
Rating:
Summary: Buy this right now. It is amazing.
Review: I have owned the Archos Jukebox FM Recorder for a while, and it is the greatest peice of equipment I have ever owned. It cost just over half as much as the equvelant hard drive iPod (which doesn't have the FM radio or the built-in voice recorder). I have read many of the reviews, and I don't know why people complain. I have never experienced the machine crashing or doing any of the funky/quirky things that others have described. I don't know why people are whining about the battery life, because it lasts many hours and it has never run out on me.
The only quirk I have noticed is that if you don't press any buttons while a song is playing, after a few seconds the backlight will turn off to save power. The quirk is that sometimes it smoothly fades out, and sometimes it just cuts out. NOT A PROBLEM, THOUGH.
The only thing that has annoyed me about the machine is that while browsing through my songs (which are organized into folders by genre, then by artist, then by album, which works very nicely) it will sometimes take a moment to access the hard drive and find the next folder you are looking for. But this is never more than half a second, and I can live with it.
BUY THE ARCHOS. DOWN WITH THE IPOD.
Rating:
Summary: Better than I thought.
Review: I have read some misleading reviews about the mp3 player that I think I should clear up.
1-I have never had a problem with crashing or corruption.
2-Battery life is excellent
3-You CAN listen to music while it is charging.
4-You CAN change the volume easily without using the settings menu (Just press up or down while the song is playing!)
5-It is not as big/bulky as I thought it would be.
Rating: 
Summary: Customer Support?
Review: I just gotta give my 2 cents worth when it comes to Archos - I have stopped a bunch of my friends from buying any of their products because of the customer support - or rather - the lack of it. I got the 10gb version of this jukebox some time ago, sadly the thing died within 2 weeks - saying there was a hard-disk error. When i phoned customer support a guy told me that it was faulty batteries and that i had to replace them - funnily enough - when i replaced them i still got the error! I tried emailing again and again - and i would never get an answer from anyone in the company. However, when i emailed them about where i could purchase some batteries they replied instantly!
Rating:
Summary: Great concept but doesn't live up to expectations
Review: I love the concept and functionality of this device and it works great if it's connected to an external power supply, but the battery is severely under-sized. The player will only run for about 3 hours on battery and then just randomly stop if there is too much disk activity. I have tried to contact Archos numerous times by phone and email and have received no response. There tech support is non-existent. Until the battery issue is resolved, I recommend not buying this product.
Rating:
Summary: A nice-to-have but not worth the money
Review: I purchased this product in November. Its performance/price ratio is not good. Here is why:
1) Customer service is horrible. The phone line is always busy. They don't reply emails.
2) The AC adapter can only be used as a charger. i.e. you always have to use the battery
3) In my case, the battery can only last about three hours. The manual claims "up to 10 hours". Customer service ignored my inquiry.
4) When it is recording using the built-in mic, an annoying hard-drive-accessing noise gets recorded every two minutes. In addition, you can not attach a non-powered external mic.
5) The FM radio can not give clear sound no matter how hard you tune. What this product is good is it can record voice directly into MP3. I would not recommend the product.
Rating:
Summary: The battery lasts for 1hr and 30 mins -
Review: I recently purchased this player. I did a lot of research and concluded that this was the best player in terms of features. Well, what good is a player with all the features in the world if the player does not last. I contacted tech support, having to wait 30minutes only to be transferred to a voicemail. When i finally did reach them, they explained to me that the player needed to be discharged and recharged several times, and that my player was not faulty. Well, I discahrged and charged 10 times, and still the player would not run longer then that! I suspect this player runs with a NIMH battery!! Infact on thier website, under thier specs, the top portions states,"lithuim ion" and on the bottom portion it states, "Nihm". I noticed this at first and thought that this was probably a mistake, but after testing the player for a week, i am sure it's a nihm! The player looks good and feels good and sounds good, but highly unimpresive with it's performance. I since returned the unit and bought the Nomad Jukebox 3, a huge differnace. Not only the player sounds better, it last for about 9 hours on continuous playback. Also, the interface is much more professional, for example, i noticed when i wanted to forward to the next track on the archos, it would take about 3 to five seconds to get to the next song. The Nomad is instant. Bottom line, the archos does not have a good and reliable battery source to run this hard drive, let alone an MP3 player. I am sharing this review with the hope of helping someone out there make a right decision and not be fooled like me! Well done...."CREATIVE"
Rating:
Summary: Great Player
Review: I say this is well worth the money. If you use the rockbox system on it, it allows you to do TONS of extra features including having a playlist over the normal 999. Definitely but this product. 5 Stars http://[...]
Rating:
Summary: If you appreciate quality, then Don't buy this player!
Review: I simply cannot understand how anyone can write a good review on this product!! Either they have no idea how bad the Archo's is in comparison to other players or they just simply have no understanding of what quality is about!! I bought this player, and had several issues with it. Firstly, the battery power is horrible. Lasting for under two hours is an example of how poorly this player functions. Almost always, the player suddenly freezes and shuts down for no apparent reason. Fm radio does not function accordingly and when using the unit to record meetings, recording several times, the files rerecord over each other. This player was not designed for listening pleasure, rather designed to irritate, fustrate and infuriate users. Also, just when you think Archos's tech support can help, getting in touch with them is like breaking down a brick wall with your bare hands. So, be patient on contacting them, cause they have major problems that they have to deal with. I will be amuzing myself buy just viewing all the glowing reviews that mislead consumers with positive reviews.
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