Rating: 
Summary: two years and a hundred attempts, am giving up the ghost
Review: Originally purchased during the second fall of law school. I was initially quite pleased with this device, but have changed my mind over the years.
Pros: feature set far ahead of its time.
Cons: build quality, build quality, build quality - the plug for the battery pops open, turning off the device (it never did snap quite right), the plug for the ear phones broke, disconnecting the sound, the color screen is too small to watch videos and is scratch prone, the battery life is a joke.
Primary uses: recording lectures during law school (which worked sometimes, but often produced inaudible recordings - truly disappointing!), listening to MP3s (which worked most of the time, until the ear phones plug broke)
Secondary uses: portable hard disk for photos (20 GB let me enjoy my digicams, but watch out - sometimes it would say a card had been fully downloaded, but after trying to preview the photos, the images would be corrupted or unusable!)
Unacceptable for uses such as: playing video - it just sucked! too much of a pain to convert all my videos, too hard to watch, and when I tried, the battery didn't last long enough
In short, too much was attempted, and too little delivered with this model. Compared to the limited feature set of the iPod, I stuck with the Archos - it just did sooo much more.
But now it doesn't do anything at all, but just sit in my drawer collecting dust. A tremendous pity.
Rating: 
Summary: Run away from Archios!!!
Review: I made the mistake of buying 2 archios products, and both turned out bad. I lost all data on the first try, so I was luckily able to return it and get a new one. Not to mention it erased files on my computer due to it freezing up. It'll get over-heated, the screen can go black on you. In time the player seams will start to seperate. The jack for the earphone/speakers will shortout. I'm very disappointed with the product and make sure I and everyone stays away from future purchases.
Rating:
Summary: STAY AWAY FROM ARCHOS
Review: I've had two archos portable hard drives (The Jukebox Recorder 20 and a 60GB QDisk) crash on me with no warning. It was a completely unrecoverable situation on both of them. Archos customer service offered ABSOLUTELY no support. In fact when I called them to find out what to do to see if I could recover anything, the first thing they did was tell me immediately that they weren't responsible for any data. The second thing they told me was that I should just buy a new one. The first time I spent $1000 on data recovery. Shame on me for not backing it up. The second time, I'm backed up. It's just going to cost my time shopping for a new portable hard drive, and putting the data back together. I will NOT be purchasing an Archos EVER AGAIN FOR ANY REASON.
Rating: 
Summary: Does a LOT, but not reliable
Review: I bought this product specifically to drive almost cross-country. It was a perfect device for this. I was able to share photos and home videos with relatives I had not seen in a long time. I was able to listen to the 2000+ songs in my digital library during the drive. I could store my resume for job interviews and plug the device into nearly any computer and it was recognized as an external hard drive. Perfect, right?
Almost. TOUCHING the device when not connected to a power supply killed it after less than 2 hours. It was better NOT TO FOWARD a song I was not in the mood for, but to just let it play. TOUCHING the device would mean that until it was powered up again, it was useless. Wish I had known that before a 24 hour drive, of course. But, at the worst, it is a completely recognizable external hard drive for space. At best, it is a fully functional multimedia device with many, many quirks.
Rating:
Summary: Features are only good if the unit works.
Review: Summary:
Poor quality combined with even worse support. My Archos stopped holding a charge with about 3 months left on the warranty. I emailed. Then I phoned their tech support. Then I emailed again. 6 months latter they finally returned my messages. They refused to repair the device under warranty. They wanted to charge me $65 to repair the device. No way am I going to send it to them. I would probably never see it again. I am going to try and fix the unit myself.Take my advice: spend your money elsewhere! Might I suggest a Dell(support) or Apple(features). I know the Archos can do video, but don't fall into the trap that myself and so many other have--I've run across a large number of them in forums and websites. WARNING--IF YOU BUY THIS DEVICE DO SO KNOWING THAT YOU WILL GET NO TECH SUPPORT OR WARRANTY SERVICE!
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