Rating: 
Summary: Archos Jukebox 6GB Recorder - so far so good
Review: I purchased the AJBR a week ago after a significant amount of research into all the models currently available (Nomad, Jukebox 6GB, smaller memory MP3 players). Around 25% of reviewers on a number of websites appear to have had real problems with the product, with the remaining 75% more than satisifed. A couple of summary comments: (i) The unit is surprisingly solid and compact, although access to the battery compartments - should you need to gain access - is ridiculously fiddly. Ensure that when you purchase the unit, you initially charge the batteries for 12 hours - not the 6 hrs stated in the manual, as you could have issues with battery life. (ii) Sound quality on the recorder (with its additional sound functions) is excellent - even with the supplied headphones. I have yet to utilise the recording function, but from research, am under the impression that the recorder has greater sound functionality that the basic 6GB model. (iii) The process of "drag and drop" has so far worked without issue, and the creation of playlists/folders is very easy. The only downside is that tracks are listed alphabetically, which on some albums will mean tracks are played out of their normal order. This is easily recitifed however - either by amending the titles of your tracks slightly or downloading free shareware from the Yahoo Groups site (see below) which allows one to re-order tracks. (iv) The manual supplied with the Jukebox is very basic, and I have found more use in signing up to the very well subscribed Yahoo Groups chat room concerning the Archos Jukebox. I remain very happy with the purchase, and hope that I do not have to have recourse to significant customer support assistance. At the price offered, there is little to touch it at present. The only real reason I have not rated 5 stars is that I am waiting to see if the unit performs to a high standard long term (ie - over the 3 month warranty period) - after it has endured several recharges of batteries and many hours of play time.
Rating: 
Summary: Hardly ever works, so what's the use?
Review: I purchased the Jukebox recorder in mid August. When I first received it, it worked for a couple of hours and then stopped functioning, apparently due to the fact that the
original batteries were defective. Once the batteries were replaced, I only used the Jukebox recorder for handful of of short sessions, mostly to add music and make sure it was working before my next trip. About a week ago, I charged the batteries and added a couple of new mp3 files to the hard disk, but now when I turn the Jukebox recorder on, I get a "Hard Disk Error" that appears to be fatal. Archos tech support doesn't respond to emails... In the short time that I have had it, the Jukebox recorder is most often not functioning properly. I don't have hours to spend troubleshooting the thing every time I want to take it along. Each time that I have planned to take it with me on a trip, it has failed to work, so what good is it to me? This is not the kind of performance I expect from a product costing (...so much) (when I bought it). Good idea. Poor implementation.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing performance/non-existent customer service
Review: I read the good reviews for this player, and the solitary poor review. The odds were in my favor, so I took a chance and purchased this product. Big mistake. In the two days I have owned this product, it has worked only one hour. It refused to read a lot of files, but it *did* hold a lot of data. I just can't get to any of it. Twenty-four hours after I opened the box, it started freezing while reading files, and I had to restart it. Finally, it refused to work at all and froze upon booting up. It exhibited all of the problems that a previous reviewer had commented upon. The toll-free customer service phone number has been disconnected. I am beginning to believe that all of the good reviews for this product were written by Archos employees or advertisers. I would suggest that a would-be purchaser steer clear of this product, and anything produced by this company.
Rating:
Summary: A decent product, but throw out the manual.
Review: I received the Jukebox recorder for Christmas, and I was a little apprehensive after reading some of the negative reviews.
Sure enough, I started to have problems with it almost immediately. Hard drive errors, skipping, and poor sound quality.
I thought I might be doing something wrong, but the manual is a joke and no help at all- maybe the result of a poor translation from the original French. Looking for answers, I found a discussion group on Yahoo and what a difference that made. The FAQ section is much better than the manual, and even gives a few tricks people have figured out to make things easier. There are also several free downloads of programs written to make operating the jukebox much simpler. The tips are too numerous to list here, but the one that made the biggest difference in my case was to get rid of the included power supply and buy a regulated one from Radio Shack. The unit works much better now, and all of my problems have disappeared. I've put almost 400 mp3's on it and used only a fraction of the hard drive space.
It can be easily connected to a stereo system, and with a shuffled playlist I no longer have to listen to the radio at work.
I would recommend buying one, and [...these] prices seem to be the best around, but get rid of the manual and you'll save yourself a lot of aggravation.
Rating:
Summary: Archo's is not what it is cracked up to be.
Review: I returned this item due to the fact that the file directory did not work and I was not able to construct playlists. Also, I had to find on the internet a driver that would work because the one on the disk they sent (which was to the 6000 not to the current unit) is out of date. Also the instruction book made little or no sense. I would stay away from this item. There are several other items that have the hard drives that work better such as the Roq It or Nomad.
Rating: 
Summary: Lots of Potential, but Fell Short
Review: I was excited when I ordered this item, and even more excited when I received it. I followed the directions and set it up..but after 2 days of minor use it locked up constantly when booting up, and I heard strange pinging noises (the hard drive?) when I turned it on. Some time I would get these symptoms, other times not. When it worked, it was wonderful. Maybe I pressed the wrong buttons? I may buy one when the model is upgraded or some major firmware updates are offered. Loved shopping through Amazon.com!
Rating:
Summary: All or Nothing Proposition
Review: I was wary of purchasing this product given the extreme dichotomy of experiences - the people that were happy with it seemed extremely happy, and for others the unit was broken out of the box. Nobody had anything positive to say about Archos' customer service, either. I went ahead and took a chance. The first unit *did* arrive broken - it would boot but it refused to recognize the hard drive. Fortunately Amazon's customer service was very good about it, and I had a working unit shipped to me at no additional charge within 3 days. You can find this unit at a lower price elsewhere, but the fast response from Amazon made me happy I'd chosen to buy it here. I'm quite happy with with the Archos Jukebox. It performs well, and has many handy playback options. For the size, price, and capacity, this is an excellent unit and has served me well. The cherry on top for this device is the ease of file handling - it can transport any kind of file between computers, as long as I have the USB drivers installed on them. Moving files back and forth between work and home is a breeze. Since it behaves just like a hard drive, I can also run MP3 utilities (playlist builders, volume equalizers, that kind of thing) on my songs without having to off-load them onto the computer first. This more than makes up for the crankily-slow USB port; 6GB is a *lot* and USB 1 just can't shovel that much data quickly. If you add songs to the device in comfortable spoonfuls, it's no big deal. The Jukebox is not without its problems, however these are not a great impediment. Firmware updates can probably fix them, but that depends on Archos's development team. First, I've noticed that the unit will crash when playing some songs. It will display ASCII garbage for the title, and cannot be coaxed to go to another song with turning it off first. I think this may have to do with a corrupted ID3 header, but I can't be sure. It does not fail gracefully, and that can be frustrating since I can't figure out which song the unit was working on before it dies. Second, it will clip the first second or two of songs if you switch to a new song in the middle of playback. If your MP3s don't have a moment of silence at the front, this can be disorienting and throw you off your stride. Third, it only seems to support one playlist. Period. You can build playlists on the fly, and the unit will recurse though nested folders to bring every file into the new list. This will eradicate any old list you had put together, though. I would like to see an option where I can create different playlists and choose among those as I see fit. This option may exist, but as has been noted elsewhere, the included manual is poorly written. Fourth, I'm paranoid while walking with this unit in my pocket or on my belt while it plays. It's got moving parts, and although it proports to have shock protection, I'm still paranoid, so I walk more slowly. This is a personal issue - for all I know the hard drive could take a hit from an on-coming bus - but it still affects my enjoyment. Fifth - More onboard RAM would probably save a lot of battery power, and make transitions between songs more smooth. Most MP3 songs don't go over 6 megs, 8 would be cherry, but the device only sports 2 megs. It can only load half of your song at a time, so the drive is constantly spinning up and down. Not a big deal - just an armchair engineer's aesthetic. I've found the battery life to be around 6 hours for me - less if I'm doing heavy-duty file transfers between computers. (I put 3 640MB Mandrake Linux 8.2 ISO images on it - copying them over took about 1/4 of the battery life.) Six - There is apparently a Resume function with the latest firmware. I assume this means I can listen to a dong part-way through, turn the Jukebox off, and when I turn it on, it will resume where it left off. I'm damned if I can figure out how to make it work, though, or even what it's really supposed to do. Archos' webpage is no help on this issue. Finally, the built-in mic picks up clicking from the hard drive, giving it almost no utility. I was hoping to use this device to record speaker notes in my classes, but it's just too noisy. Prepare to buy an external mic if you have a purpose like this in mind. That's more problems than I thought it had when I started writing this review :) Fortunatly, most of them are minor irritations and nothing world-shattering for my needs. If one of those features is vital to you, however, you may want to reconsider. All in all, the functionality and convenience of the Archos recorder outweighs the problems. If you can get one that works, odds are you'll be silly with enjoyment. You pays your money, you takes your chances.
Rating: 
Summary: Great product. Over all convient and easy to use.
Review: I've had an Archos for about 2 months now. It's a great media for playing all your mp3's (assuming you don't have more than 5.7 gigs of mp3's.) Pros: Battery life lasts 10 hours when fully charged. Comes with Adapter to charge batteries in 6 hours. Can listen to music while charging. Set of spare batteries that will probably never be needed (I've yet to have to change them, and that's with about 2-3 hours of use a day). Small size, considering it's every song you have.....in your pocket. Various playmodes including random play. Alterable Bass/ Treble etc. Two easy ways to change volume: press up or down while a song is playing, or use the earphones volumes switch. Extremely easy interface. Don't even need Musicmatch. Screen shows song name, ablum, band name, analyzer, time played, time remaining, total time. You can browse for the next song while one is playing. Loud volume. Anyone who's used to computer speakers won't mind the headphones. Made so it doesn't accidentalLY turn on or off. Gets songs of the computer quickly (900 songs in about 15 minutes). Great amount of memory. Can record off a mic. Sturdy. No need for tech support :). Cons: Most of the cons are based from user misunderstanding, which is odd because the system is really easy to use. I had a problem when I first put all my songs into one folder, and it would play one song then stop, but as soon as I put the songs in their respectiful folders (organized by band name), I've never had the problem again. The backlights stay on while charging, making me worry about the backlight lifespan. I havn't gotten playlists to work, but everythings already organized in folders. The headphones are slightly uncomfortable after extended use. It doesnt' actually judge the amount of space left when you check, unless you're cool and you check it through the E drive. You have to wait 6 hours before starting :(. I use this thing all the time. 20% percent of the bad reviews are from bum units, the other 80% is just user misunderstanding. It's organized REALLY easy. install the disc, go to the folder with all your mp3s. Copy and paste them into your new drive, and seperate them. That's all. Nonething more. Errors are extremely rare, and usually only happens when batteries are low. I am in no way dissapointed with my precis El-Archo. All my mp3's work. And they're all with me. For 10 hours. And that's what counts. Uck and I've seen those huge nomads -_-. Sorry for making such a messy unorganized review, but don't miss out on this product just because my review was lame.
Rating: 
Summary: Mike Recording
Review: Just got the 6gb recorder. When I record with built in mike, there's a very loud hard drive whirring sound for a while, which starts up again occasionally. Will send it back if this is a trait.
Rating:
Summary: Awsome, but not perfect
Review: Let me start by saying that if you spend the money, you will be satisified. The player works great, sounds great, and is fairly easy to operate. Anyone with more than a little computer experience will catch on quickly. When you get the unit upgrade the musicmatch software (for free) at there site. The headphones that ship with the unit are junk..Don't judge the sound quality until you hook up a better set of headphones. The instruction manual is almost useless, but the unit is pretty simple to figure out through trial and error. I have not been able to make the unit skip, the buffer works great. Store your entire music collection, plug it into your home stereo and it will blow you away. On a one to five scale:
Headphones ....2
Instruction Manual ...1
Jukebox .....5
Overall ...4+
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