Rating: Summary: Great player Review: I find my experience with the Archos to be different from some of the others listed here. It comes with good headphones and a free carying case. I can shake it, exercise with it, and listen to it in my car without making it skip. You can make playlists without having it hooked up to a pC, and it works especially well with folders--organize your tracks by artist and album. Somebody said that they can only play 999 songs on it--that is true, 999 PER FOLDER. The USB is not as fast as 1394, but I transferred 15 GB of songs in a few hours--fast enough for me.
Rating: Summary: What a Pain! Review: Every description written about the ARCHOS is true except a major detail a consumer should know. The Jukebox is delicate. I purchased mine and have had to exchange it 3 times (as of now) due to it's sensative design. There are specific instructions, though simple, to follow while loading and playing files. If the user accidentally presses the wrong buttons, the mistakes wear on the hard drive and it won't be long before the device locks up and fails to work. I regret buying the ARCHOS. It's a terrific idea, 500 cds on one portable drive. But it's a bigger pain than it's worth.
Rating: Summary: So far, so good! Review: I just got mine yesterday ... and so far, so good. No problems making it work with Windows 2000 and my iBook. I'm able to transfer files back and forth between the PC and Mac easily by plugging the Jukebox into both. I admit that all the negative reviews scared me, but I wrote it off mainly to user errors. The unit isn't very intuitive, but if you're a gadget freak, you'll figure it out after a few uses. I've loaded over 125 albums and backed up tons of files from my PC and still have 10GB of storage left. I took it to the gym today and had no HD error problems as others have reported. It's just a little heavy to sit in your shorts pocket. All-in-all I'm very happy... so far.
Rating: Summary: Very good sound and storage capacity.. Interface so-so Review: Well I talked my fiance into letting me buy the archos 20gig with the promise that I would use it to start running. I found a lot more uses for it than that. The largest use being in the car. I bought a generic cassete adaptor and on long trips it is simply amazing. Another bonus is that I had a y cord handy that i had from an old car diskman that allows me to bring my large music collection and hook it up to anyones stereo. Very impressive for partys and the like. I have over 6000 songs on this thing with many playlists created that i can load depending on the mood. The size, storage capacity, and sound are fantastic. The size especially comparing it with others on the market is very nice becuase I can run with it using the travel pouch that comes with it. The only negative I have (and believe me this is a pretty large one), is the interface. Good luck finding a song if you have a large collection. Even with careful organizing of your music collection, it is cumbersome and difficult. Creating playlists makes this task easier but the more playlists you make, the more you have to sort through. I am getting quite used to it but compared to the ipod, which looks like it has a great interface where you can sort (i have never tried one), there is some improvement to be made here. But to use it as a "Jukebox" it is fantastic - put a large collection of music in a directory, put it on shuffle, and let it play!
Rating: Summary: A terrible MP3 player Review: I hate this product. It is not hot swappable, meaning you have to reboot the computer to get it to be recognized. It would cause my computer to crash frequently, transfering data was very slow, it would not let me transfer very large files, and this can't be used for jogging, since it has a hard drive that tends to crash. Don't get a hard drive/MP3 player combo - if you need both, buy them seperatly.
Rating: Summary: If only there was a zero star for this piece of [junk] Review: I HATE IT SOOOOOOOOO MUCH!!! SO MUCH! It's such a worthless piece of junk. It worked great for about a month and I loved it then all it ever did was say HD Error and fry the thirty dollars worth of rechargable batteries i bought straight from Archos! Oh how I hate them and this product! I'm fourteen, i don't have a job it took me six months to save up for this, and now I'm just out of about 400$ The customer service is non existant! If I email them they tell me to call them, if I call them I get a menu loop. It's unfair. I'm just [out of luck] over, but lucky for you this happened to me first, so it DOESN'T have to happen to you. I know you hear about the ones that supposedly work but the wonderful people at Best Buy replaced mine three times even after their store warantee wore off, but they won't anymore. So I'm broke and I have a ugly looking paperweight.
Rating: Summary: Warning: Good product, but be prepared. Review: I recently purchased an Archos Jukebox STUDIO 20 and am very pleased with it. I get at least six hours per battery charge, have loaded over 15,000 minutes of music, and carry it with me everywhere. But there are a few things I was not aware of, or was mislead, before purchasing it. Here they are: 1) This unit DOES NOT record from any source. The only way to load music is plug it in (USB) to a computer and drag-drop your MP3s. The Archos Jukebox RECORDER 20 will record from any line source but the STUDIO 20 does not have onboard encoding. If you want the Recorder you have to pay extra. 2) The manual is the worst I've ever seen. Extra help has to be found on-line, but most of the controls seem very intuitive to me, so I've not read too much yet. 3) It doesn't do well in heat (direct sun for long periods) and it heats up _a lot_ when charging. I'd suggest you unplug it after about 4 hours. 4) You can't create playlists on the unit. The accompanying MusicMatch software allows you to create and transfer playlists... but it's not the easiest to use.And last - the screen (11 or 12 characters wide) makes reading filenames kinda hard. Keep your track names short or else you will have a heck of a time browsing your library! All in all I'm in love with it and, as I said, it comes with me everywhere!
Rating: Summary: Wonderful, but quirky Review: I did a lot of research, like most people in these reviews, and decided that this was the best buy for the money. I was wary of the quirks that a lot of people have mentioned, but was willing to trade a harder interface for the price drop between this and the Nomad Jukebox 3 or iPod. I was very happy with it right out of the box. Admittedly, I sat there for a few minutes trying to turn it on. Undocumented quirk #1 - You have to hold down the power button for five seconds or so. Also, You have to let it shut down from USB transfer in a certain way or you get neat little characters on the screen that mean nothing. Also, menu navigation took a bit to master, but it got easy quickly. These are just quirks, though, and I rather like them. It gives it character. Sound quality is wonderful provided that you do away with the garbage they give you and get something nice. I have Koss Portapros and they give it great, clear range. Battery life seems good, nothing surprising there. Storage is more than enough, and it's small enough to fit in a pocket. Some pockets, at least. Overall, I love the unit and I have no real complaints. Just make sure you're willing to sit down with it and hash out your differences.
Rating: Summary: Look elsewhere for your digital music needs Review: I puchased this unit and had nothing but problems with it. The design of the unit is flawed to the point where I cannot believe that people still purchase it. Those blue rubber/plastic protectors on the corners are EXTREMELY sensitive to touch and will cause the unit to shut down. The battery covers are almost impossible to remove. And to top it all off, my unit stopped working well within the warrenty period. Just stopped working. Total failure. When I tried to call or contact Archos, I recieved no response, and still have not. I am extremely dissatisfied with the product and the company. I will never purchase anything from them again.
Rating: Summary: Medium quality for medium price Review: The jukebox with its 20 GB-s hold more information then I will ever need. I've loaded sofar about 2000 MP3 songs, plus SW and fotos. It offers a large variiaty of music, altough I have the impression the random function follows certain patterns. Same songs in the same order get played sometimes. The sound quality is good, and the menu is quite easy to understand. The battery goes for about 8 hours,although after charging it about ten times, it dropped on its power. I like the form of the Jukebox, it fits everywhere and the corner pads make sure, it won't get bomped. Data transfer is easy done, you need to set up a well structured directory architecture, otherwise you will search for your data. Surfing it it is a little slow, but it works. As you turn it on, sounds like it boots the HD and takes a little while. Press the botton about for five seconds. Sometimes it hangs, you need to reboot it, which is easy done. If you wanna go jogging with it, make sure you hold it in your hand, otherwise it stopps playing. It is not shock resisistant. If you charge the battery longertrhen four hours, it gets quite hot and has a smell. Don't unplug the power supply, while playing it: it burnes the fuse.
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