Rating: 
Summary: Education application
Review: I purchased this product to capture lectures realtime as mp3 and then post for student use. The device works without a hitch. I also used it to capture legacy audio from Flash presentations and repurpose the content. The realtime encoding is the killer feature. If you don't need to do realtime encoding, then you might well look at other mp3 players.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely great value and product
Review: I've had my Archos jukebox for over a year and half now. Despite the fact that I've been treating the unit badly, it's still FULLY WORKING. I've dropped my jukebox many times that I think if it were another product, it would have been died long ago, and yet mine is still fine. Do you think iPod would survive with that? (I dont recommend you to drop your unit for testing purpose). As many people have mentioned, I also flash'd the firmware with rockbox (http://rockbox.haxx.se), this firmware will give you many great features and faster loading speed, proper to the crew who made it available. For the current price $130 on Amazon, you definitely can't beat this Archos jukebox with any other mp3 players from anywhere. Earlier today when I powered my player on, it auto turned off while loading up so I thought to myself "man, finally the time has come, it died". But boy, I was so wrong, I tried to plug in and recharged the battery. It turned out that I forgot to turn off the player since the day before so it ran out of battery (the firmware does have the feature to auto turn off after an inactive time but I did not have it set). So after a couple of hours recharging, it worked just as fine as usual. That was the time I realized how long I'd had this excellent unit, and so I decided to write up this review. This product deserves 5 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Do It
Review: I own of these units and my advice is don't do it. They are very poorly made and when mine (like many other people's) went wrong the after sales service is non-exsistant. The menus system is very basic and very annoying, you can't scroll through the songs whilst playing another, the software provided is feeble and unreliable. Do yourself a favour and get an Ipod...
Rating: 
Summary: Very nice unit
Review: My boss showed me his Jukebox (previous version) and I immediately thought it was way cool. I took a listen and was very impressed with the sound quality. I searched on Amazon and saw the V2 player ...and I thought, WOW! what a price. I've been looking at alot of players online and in stores, and I couldn't touch anything with this many features for the price. I read all of the reviews and noted the people who had good things to say, out numbered the ones who experienced problems with the quality. So I took a chance and ordered it up.
Received the player very fast. Ordered it on a Sat. and it came the following Wed.
Here's why I rated it 4 stars: I initially had the same problem when I first plugged it in to charge it, like one reviewer stated. Nothing happened - blank screen, no sign of charging. I was crushed! Then I read back through the reviews to find how that person resolved their problem. He was told by Archos to loosen the top right bumper screw, since it was shorting out the battery connection. My problem was with the bottom right bumper (the AC/charger input is right next to it). Before I loosened the screw, any slight movement of that bumper or pressing of the face cover near the bottom of the player, the unit would immediately shut off. Once I loosened the screw several turns, it no longer shut down. In fact, I've bumped and wiggled each bumper and squeezed the player in several areas and it still played on. Even gentle bangs to each bumper on a table and tossing it hand to hand didn't faze it. Now I didn't listen for skipping, etc., but I personally I always treat all my electronic equipment with kid gloves. Although sometime accidental bumps do happen.
The sound quality is phenominal and the controls for treble, bass, loudness, and bass boost are fantastic. When I play it through my cassette car adapter or my home stereo, the sound seems better than the original CD. The sound feels warmer, like vinyl albums. I'm totally pleased with this player and I would have rated it 5 stars if I didn't have the shut down problem. Thanks to the person wrote the review with the "fix" with his bumper/shorting problem. I've loaded over 5gigs of CD's and having a great time revisting some CD's I haven't listened to in awhile.
Rating:
Summary: Good enough
Review: It's a bit bulky, a bit heavy, a bit ugly. But 20GB for $129AR and ok firmware available (http://rockbox.haxx.se/), it's good enough. GOOD: Price, No drivers needed for win2k/winxp, decent battery life, decent firmware, BUILT-IN MIC!!! and Line-in for recording into mp3 format! BAD: Size/looks, NO "HOLD" for hitting buttons by accident,
Rating:
Summary: Great Value!
Review: I can't speak to reliability, but I've had mine for 3 weeks and it's wonderful. If you are currently using an MP3-CD player, look no further. The versatility and sound quality beat any cd-player hands-down. Better yet, if your car stereo has 'Aux In' jacks, you can add this player to your car and rock to your entire MP3 collection.
The RockBox software is a great upgrade. It even has provisions for using the Archos full-time as a car-only player. The best feature, to me, is the 'resume' feature for 'shuffle' mode. The RockBox website has simple instructions for making a playlist that contains all of your music files. The 'resume' feature allows you to make an 'all files' playlist, shuffle it, and resume right where you were when you turn off the player. On turn-on, it starts right in the middle of the song where you left off, AND preserves your place in the (random shuffle) playlist. Load your entire collection, and never hear the same song twice, as long as you own it! Awesome feature.
You don't need special software to load your files (it's just drag-and-drop' in Windows. The player also functions as a USB2 hard drive :-)
For the price, you absolutely can not go wrong with this player.
Rating:
Summary: Good Deals
Review: A little big, a little short battery life, but overall a great deal for the price. Perfect for flying or driving, but might suck for exercising
Rating:
Summary: Much better than expected (so far)
Review: I bought this product because my partner "vetoed" an iPod purchase as too expensive. Less than half the cost of a 20G iPod to start with, plus rebate, plus Gold Box discount, made it a no-brainer. I received the unit today and charged it up. It already had several sample MP3s on it, not to my taste, but enough to tell it worked. I had already ripped several hundred MP3s to my hard drive, using MusicMatch, paying good attention to the directory structure created and fixing it up where necessary. So I first tried to copy them over using the MusicMatch "synchronize" feature. It was taking forever and not preserving the directory structure, so I stopped that and just copied all the files over with Windows Explorer. Easy easy and fast - took all of about 10 minutes. Worked fine - there were all of my artists, albums and tracks. Then I got brave and downloaded RockBox to the unit - it worked fine from the first moment, it is somewhat easier to use, and I think the sound quality is better than with the Archos firmware. With either set of firmware, you do need to review the manual - while RockBox is more flexible, it's still not 100% intuitive. I wish both manuals were written by native English speakers, which they're clearly not. I also wish the RockBox manual was written by a non-techie, but with a bit of reference to the various RockBox mailing lists and forums all is relatively understandable. It's no iPod in terms of interface, but it seems to work. The unit itself is smaller than I expected, but heavier than it looks. It'll fit in a pocket, though. I expected a cheap feel, but it's actually pretty solid. Other than the headphones, which are dreadful. I switched them out for a pair of Sennheiser PCX250s that I usually use for traveling with my laptop, and am much happier. I'll have to buy something else for day to day use with the unit. The hard drive in the unit does sound a bit funky when it spins up for a major operation - which some seem to say may be a precursor to problems. We'll have to see how the thing holds up. But with 20G for such a low price, I can put up with a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Hack it with Rockbox software
Review: With the Archos firmware, this is a POS. With the (open source, free) Rockbox software, it's quite good, and a serious bargain. Played directly through high-end 'phones (Etymotic ER4-P's in my case), it sounds very nice. Add a headphone amp to the mix, and the sound is *impressive*. Very quiet too (no hiss). Note that it comes with 1 year warranty. Contrast that to iPod's 90 days, and realize that you also saved the $30/year cost of Applecare.
Rating:
Summary: After Sales Service
Review: I bought an Archos product over a year ago and it has now malfunctioned. When I approached the shop were I bought the product I was informed that Archos did not support any product of this type for more than a year. Despite numerous emails over many weeks I have not had any reply from Archos direct. The moral would seem to be if the Archos product you want is worth the money for 1 years use... great but if you want it to last more than 1 year beware.
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