Rating: 
Summary: Fantastic! Incredible! - A must have!
Review: I purchased the Jukebox 20 Player at [another location]. It exceeds my expectations. The Archos Jukebox 20 Player with Musicmatch Jukebox Plus 7.1 (I upgraded) is the best purchase I've made in years. It is nearly perfect; almost every criticism regarding this marvel of electronic delight is due to a terrible user manual and less than intuitive controls. Once you understand how to use it you will never be without it. I am sitting at my computer writing this with my entire CD collection (over 250 CD's) in my pocket and I still have room for at least another 100 or more. The sound is absolutely incredible and now that I have mastered the 'playlist' function I have organized my pocket hard disk to play exactly the songs I want to hear in a variety of sequences that I want to hear them. The batteries last about 6 hours with continuous play. It takes about 60 seconds to swap out the 4 Ni_Mh batteries. I don't bother to use the supplied charger and use my fast Ni-Mh battery charger that I use for all my gadgets. The manual advises: Only use the supplied ARCHOS power adapter and the supplied batteries. One of the reasons I bought the Archos was because it uses Ni-Mh batteries. I comes with 4 AA 1.2V - 1500 mAh batteries installed. I didn't want to wait to charge the unit so I ignored the warning and installed 4 1.2V - 1600 mAh rechargeable batteries. These are standard batteries that power my Olympus D-40 digital camera, Garmin GPS and sundry other electronic gizmos. ... you will find yourself using them for every thing that uses regular batteries. The unit comes with a fairly nice headset with volume control. The headset is fairly good but if you really want to enjoy the Jukebox you need a better headset. I use an adjustable "in the ear" set made by Bang & Olfusen ... I realize that this is an expensive combination but if you have 300 CD's ... this is a small price to pay to listen to everything, anywhere, anytime. With the supplied headset I found that I needed the volume near maximum all the time. With the B&O I have it set at mid volume and the music is perfect. The two most confusing things about using the jukebox are (1) navigating the directory structure and (2) creating playlists. There are only three buttons on the Jukebox.
(1) On - Used only to turn the unit on.
(2) Menu - Brings up the 8 Menus: Volume, Sound, Play Mode, Playlist, Hard Disk, Diagnose, Firmware, External, and Settings.
(3) Center Control with - Play/Pause/Select, Next (+), Stop/Off/Cancel and Backwards (-) The manual is terrible and it will take a lot of trial and error to figure this out but once you do it is so simple to use you will wonder why it took so long. I can control this beauty by feel without taking it out of my pocket. It really is quite simple once you understand the nested menu organization. I won't try to explain what each menu does but I will tell you that the manual does a poor job of explaining the simple functions. You can enter the Menu mode at any time. By pressing the Menu button you will see an arrow to the left of Volume. If you press the Play/Pause button on the top of the center wheel you will enter the Volume Menu. If you press the + button on the right you will move down to the Sound menu etc. Minus will move back up the menu list. But if you enter a master menu you must press the Menu key to move out of the sub-menu. The easiest way to manage MP3 files is to do all the maintenance on your computer using the Music Match Jukebox software. I recommend that you set up a directory on your computer and use the same convention on the Jukebox. For example I used a directory (folder for you kids) called MP3. I set the Jukebox settings to use that as my default directory for all files. I then loaded every CD I had into Jukebox using the CCDB database online to create the folder and song names. This is a very tedious process best done when you have something else to do near the computer. The storage directory is very important because you will have to edit every playlist file to change the location from C:\MP3\ to ..\MP3. The jukebox does not have a letter in the file location. Therefore if you use the same directories on the Jukebox that you do on your computer you can create all your playlists in jukebox using your master collection and then edit them with a text editor to search and replace all the C:\ to ..\ It is a pain but doable. The manual does not explain playlist editing. But playlists are worth the effort. I have 13 Jack Hardy CD's stored in 13 sub-directories of Jack Hardy. It was a simple task to drag all 13 CD's to the playlist on the Musicmatch Jukebox and create a playlist with 115 songs. The options with playlist are endless. There is so much more to say but I think you get the idea that I believe this is one great product. Like all great things my wife has to have one so I just ordered the new Jukebox 20 Recorder with USB 2.0 as my next gadget. My wife will get mine with our music collection pre-loaded. One final note. If you have a great stereo system it is a simple matter to use the Jukebox 20 as a stereo component. Just use a 'mini pin to stereo RCA' cable and hook it up to the line out of the Jukebox and the RCA in to your stereo system and voila you have all your CD's and playlists at your fingertip. You can get rid of your 300 carousel CD player.
Rating: 
Summary: If you are patient and experienced, this is awesome!
Review: I purchased my first Studio 20 last year and had to return it becuase the hard drive [messed] up. I received a new player, and although I have had some difficulty, I am totally satisfied. The player is a fickle piece, choosing to resort to errors whenever any problem occurs. The key to this is to understand that the unit is essentially a hard drive, and must be treated with the partition table in mind. If a file is copied and an error occurs (with the file or power) then the table gets messed up and most people give up. Run a scandisk on the player and voila! Most probelms I have encountered are solved. Archos [is bad] with tech support, so try some CS geeks instead. I am not one, so by reseaching and learning I have overcome all of my problems. Remember that in a worst case scenerio, you can always reformat the hdd (do a full format). The unstricted file transfer and size are its strengths, but the ease of use [is bad]. I love it though, adn still wouldn't trade it for a Rio Riot or a Creative Nomad. Remember: EXPERTS and PROBLEM SOLVERS ONLY!
Rating: 
Summary: Pass on this one
Review: I bought the Archos 20 GB player and took it back after a few days. The problem is the sound. You can hear the hard drive spinning in the background of soft sounding music, which defeats its whole purpose. The interface is not very useful and making playlists is very labor intensive. I returned it for Apple's ipod which I am VERY happy with. It is worth the extra money and makes the Archos with its cheap plastic buttons, poor design and inferior sound feel dated.
Rating:
Summary: What's all the fuss about?
Review: Lot's of talk here about defective units. I have had my unit for 5 months now. No problems at all. Not sure what all the other problems listed here are all about. Perhaps these are Mac owners. There is an issue when you use the Archos 20 with the Mac. It converts the file system, and instant HD Error. The unit is not clearly marked to state this is an issue. Not sure if that is what these people are doing, but I have read posts in newsgroups, and on the Archos FAQ about this. I have seen other posts about skipping, and pauses. I have not had this problem at all. Could be the sampling rate, or perhaps the battery was low. For me this unit has performed great. I have over 15GB of music on it. Over 200 CD's so far. I use this unit every day, and it works great. It's great for moving large files between computers too. Sound is excellent. The line level output allows you to use it in your car, and through a stereo system. Pros: HUGE storage space. I expect to fit all of my 350+ CD's on it with room to spare at 128k. Line Output is useful. Backlit display nice for using in dark rooms. Easy to install, and transfer files. Cons: The controls are not that great. Easy to use, but they feel cheap. Have had trouble trying to back up the data from the unit to my PC. MS Backup seems to have trouble doing this. Since it is a hard drive, I am worried that all my music will someday go bye bye. Battery life can be an issue. It specifies 8 hrs, but it's really more like 4-6 if used constantly. 8-10 if used more sparingly. All in all I am very pleased with my purchase. As I said before I use it every day. My CD's collect dust now as I have burned most of them, and have them in my pocket.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply HORRIBLE!
Review: I purchased this hunk of junk 2 days ago. After putting about 3 GB of music on it and listening to it, I was very excited about having it. Worked perfectly. I got up the next morning to use it and it was toast. Didn't work. Had errors, power supply is all messed up....couldn't do a thing with it but throw it against the wall. So, I took it back, got a new one and had the same problem. Please do not purchas this product. It is an absolute piece of junk and Archos should be ashamed of themselves for putting it on the market. You will never get any tech support....and you will be VERY disappointed if you waste your money on this.
Rating:
Summary: Pure Garbage
Review: My wife bought an Archos Jukebox 20. I plugged it in, spent a few hours copying files over, and waited for it to finish charging. When it finally finished charging, the display read "HD Error" and the unit refused to do anything. We returned the unit immediately My wife wanted to try another one, so we bought another unit. AGAIN, I plugged the new unit in, spent a few hours copying files over, and waited for it to finish charging. When it finally finished charging, the display read "HD Error" and the unit refused to do anything. I have never had something not work out of the box before Do you want to risk these problems?
Rating:
Summary: Good rugged device
Review: I have had this for about 2 months. It is very rugged. The sound quality is great (depending on the headphones/speakers). It is pretty simple to use. I've dropped it from about 30 inches onto carpet and it works great still. I've used it on airplanes and in cars. I listen to it to go to sleep. It is great to have about 300 CD's (so far) accessible to me at my fingertips. THe only drawback if I had to make one is battery life. It seems to be around 5 hours. I can't say it for sure. I guess volume and the quality of the MP3 has something to do with it. But for most flights/average road trips, this device can't be beat.
Rating:
Summary: Absolute Garbage.
Review: The idea of having my entire CD collection in my pocket is absolutely a cool idea. But the Archos Jukebox is not a way to get there. I received the Jukebox I ordered on Monday. It started to fail almost immediately. By Thursday, I could no longer fast forward through songs or move forward in the list of songs I had without the unit turning off. By the next Monday, I was completely unable to use the product. I was infuriated. Do not waste your money on this. Get a Creative Nomad. It costs more, but you get what you pay for.
Rating:
Summary: What's the deal with Archos?
Review: I have had 2 Jukebox Studio 20's since December 25 of 2001. Both have malfunctioned, and there is no way to get in touch with Archos. Everybody I know who has had a Studio 20 has returned theirs to the store, and have opted to go with the 20gb Nomad from Creative Labs. I am going to return my Studio 20, and get the Nomad. At least Crative Labs has decent tech support.
Rating:
Summary: Caveat emptor! NO tech support, NO repairs!!!
Review: Despite a promising product with great battery life and storage, when you have a problem with the Archos company, better tell it to the Marines! The tech support email address on their website bounces back, the 800 number doesn't work, and they are in a permanent state of the busy signal on their only their known toll telephone number. What a disappointment. Hard drives on these units are easily damaged, but even when you are happily willing to pay fully for a repair, just try to get an RMA number. JUST TRY!!
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