Rating: 
Summary: This player is fine
Review: Great player, I have two studio 10 and a recorder 20. Of course I just keep a Studio 10. Recorder has better navigated (8 line) high matrix solution LCD (Which is much better). Studio just has two. Battery life can be up to 8 hours (which is varied depends on sound volume/quality/setting; Recorder eats batteries faster than Studio. Recording cost more batteries life). For Firmware you can update to Rockbox that gets better result and sound quality.
The internal Mic is cheap made. Don't depend on it. When you do recording better get a better external Mic to help (internal mic almost = nothing)
For HD error, I think one of the reviewer said the right thing: Unplug the USB device from Computer OS first (usually the icon at the time bar right hand side. safely remove USB device/HD), then unplug the USB cable from the jokebox. The headphone need to be replace, don't use the come with head phone. Then this player will bring great performence to you.
Another thing is. MP3s which below or = 192k/s is ok. Mostly, I decode mp3 stream = 192k/s. If you play over 192k/s, you may face some skip problem ( I have try 256k/s and 320k/s, both have skipping problem). The reason might be the laptop internal hard drive's buffer is not enough = 2MB. I don't think there is big difference between 192k/s, 256k/s or 320k/s; so 192k/s is ok and much better than 128k/s. Don't complain sound quality if you using stream 128k/s and a mal-quality headphone.
Although It is better than studio but I rather keep studio. I admited its LCD display and buttons are much better than studio. But shorter batteries life, more expensive (This price level I can get a Creative Nomad Zen which cooler and smaller).
Rating:
Summary: Sceptic, but a pull through! even over iPod
Review: I purchased my Archos Recorder 20 before I went on a long trip to Japan. I didn't have enough room for a bunch of CD's so I bought the JB 20 instead. At first, I liked the idea of not having to mess with CD's, but a little swayed by the weight of it. But the thing that aggravated me the most was the Archos firmware. It's slow and crashes. So I thought I would sell it and start saving up for the iPod which is twice the price. But just recently, my brother introduced me to Rockbox.haxx.se which is a site that created it's own firmware that speeds everyup and makes it well worth the price. The firmware is open source which means customizable, to some. My advice, it's well worth the price for the 20gig HD when compared to the iPod ...
Rating: 
Summary: Few Glitches
Review: ARCHOS JUKEBOX RECORDER 20GB This Mp3 player is very suitable for anyone wishing to carry all music where ever you go. Many people have pounded the Jukebox for a few reasons.
1) The instructions are inadequate, but with a bit of commonsense, the Jukebox is under control within an hour or so. 2) Being dead on arrival, be paitent 3) Some have moaned over the sound quality. If used with the supplied headphpnes, the sound quality is minimal. A new set will solve this. 4) The playlist problem is easily overcome. If you want to make a playlist, just hold the 'play' button for 3 seconds next to the song/folder you want, move to where you want to save the playlist, go to menu, playlist, save playlist, enter your name, done. A few incidents have occured while I've owned it, about 3 weeks. At one stage, it refused to turn on. After many attempts, it still stubbornly refused to work. But, later that night, it was fine. A few times my computer crashed. I guess this is expected as the specs say Win 98 SE, mine is only Win 98. The Jukebox really looks bulky, this is misleading. It was supprisingly small, a little on the heavy side. This is as expected as it holds 20gb. The Jukebox was chosen over the Nomad as its size is smaller, price cheaper, easier functioning ie drag and drop, and more functions. I am very pleased with this product. TIP: While waiting for your Jukebox in the mail, download Musicmatch, Realone whatever and download all your CDs at your leisure onto the computer before arrival. Saves a lot of time! TIP: Buy new headphones TIP: Organise your Jukebox by MUSIC;GENRE;ARTIST;ALBUM;SONG A VERY GOOD PRODUCT. HAVE SOME PAITENCE AND IT IS A VERY ECONOMICAL AND SUITABLE PRODUCT
Rating:
Summary: Simply Irresistable!!
Review: This MP3 player is simply an irresistable buy. It has been about 6 months now, since my purchase, and i was listening to a song today, after i hadn't listened to it for a while, and i told myself that I must tell the public about what a great product this is. If you want even better support (please visit this site - it will improve your experience with the AJBR tromendously).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Product - Can live with bugs
Review: I have arranged this review in 3 sections: PLUSES, MINUSES, and HINTS. PLUSES:
It is an excellent product and apart from being slightly bulkier and cruder/geeky looking than iPod, is better than iPod in all aspects - espacially at the price. Buy it, you won't regret it. Note that it is USB2.0 compatible but it works with standard USB as well. MINUSES:
Yes the manual is too skimpy and yes the OS is buggy BUT it does not have any bugs that would be a showstopper. Here is what i found and any fixes/workarounds: - Note a catch that the actual "capacity" of its 20GB Harddisk is around 18GB - some space is lost due to formatting/filesystem as is case with any harddisk. - Issue #1: The jukebox ignores the "loudness" setting upon a cold start though the sound screen "shows" correct loudness.
FIX: After turning on the unit, just go to the sound controls screen and "touch" (increase/decrease) the loudness setting to make it effective. - Issue #2: I have seen it become non-responsive if i am playing a track and also using menu/browsing files - it will just "freeze" for a few moments not responding to any keys.
FIX: The unit does becomes responsive again in a few seconds so have a little patience. - Issue #3: Plays incorrect track if you are fast with skip controls. This only happens if you skip to next/previous track using Cursor right/left keys and immediately skip back to original track that was playing before.
FIX: Just wait at least a second before going back to original track. HINTS:
1. While charging, if you hold the ON button for 5 seconds, the unit will boot into "normal" play mode so you can use it while charging (not applicable for very first/initial charge)
2. While playing a track: Cursor UP/Down control volume. Cursor Right/Left skip to next/previous track.
3. Loudness: See fix for issue 1 above
4. There is an open source alternate firmware called "RockBox" available for it. Though i have not tried it, you may checkout their website and see if you prefer it over factory's original. Checkout ...
Rating:
Summary: The Ipod Killer
Review: I've been looking at this unit for some time, and finally broke down and got one. I wasn't disappointed. First, the sound is unbelievable, with a good set of headphones. The ones that come with the Archos are a joke. The Koss Porta-Pros are the best. The unit gets fairly good playback time with the battery. The built in mic is only good for voice recording. I'd buy a better external one for anything else. Also, you must have USB 2.0 for a decent transfer rate. The PCI USB 2.0 cards are very inexpensive. I suspect those who are complaining about speed are using USB 1.1. Also, enable write caching on the drive in Windows. This will drastically improve performance. The unit only skipped once on me during vigorous walking. Most any unit with moving parts inside will skip at some point. I replaced the firmware with Rockbox, and am very happy. All in all, a very nice unit with great capacity. It will take me forever to fill up the hard drive!
Rating: 
Summary: Lousy Batteries
Review: If you dont mind spending more time charging the batteries then actually using the unit, then its a good device, but they dropped the ball with their special batteries. Advertised to last 8 hours yet only last 4 hours tops and takes even longer to recharge them. Dont expect good customer support either, they dont speak english very well.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent MP3 Player + More!
Review: I upgraded to the Jukebox Recorder 20 from the Jukebox Studio 20 because of its USB 2.0 capabilities. I'm so glad I did. I took only about 2 minutes to transfer 4 gigs of music to the unit! The interface is updated and everythig works much better. I love this mp3 player. I got it used here on amazon.com and it is the best deal I've seen. I have my entire CD collection on mp3 now and I can take it with me. I highly recommend this unit. I have had no problems with it whatsoever.
Rating:
Summary: More capacity than ipod for less money
Review: After reading some of the other customer remarks about the Archos Jukebox Recorders, I decided to plunge into this exotic new technology, and I'm happy to report that these machines work very well, although the accompanying instructions could use some help, as most others here have noted. I bought the 15GB JR15, which is similar to the JR20 except for the smaller hard drive capacity and the fact that the rubber feet are black, not bright blue. I can't comment about the PC-related functions of the JR15, as I use the multimedia resources of my business computer very sparingly, limited by a dial-up Internet connection, and so keep no MP3 stash on my PC's hard drive. Instead I have been using the JR15 to record my collection of CDs the old-fashioned way, in real time via the analog input. The JR15 excels in this application. Recording in the highest quality, the sound is the equal of CDs, in my opinion as a seasoned semi-pro musician, although a carefully matched A/B comparison might reveal some minor anomalies. At any rate, the recordings the machine makes sound GREAT, and though I haven't jogged with the JR15, it has never once skipped in playback when I take it walking, riding a stationary bicycle, driving in a car, or riding the subway. This is better performance than my portable CD player! I have paired the JR15 up with a pair of Bose MediaMate speakers, and the sound these three put out is nothing short of astonishing - an outstanding portable audio solution. How many albums can a 15GB hard drive hold? My estimate is around 240; I have now used about one-third the memory recording 80 albums at the highest recording quality. I did have one problem that manifested itself after about a week of use: sometimes the machine would hang - responding to no control besides OFF - while making a long, two-CD recording. As a result, I would lose the recording, wasting several hours of effort. Fortunately an email to Archos produced a response the following day that has provided the solution. It is advisable to power the machine from AC when you are making a long recording. But when you plug in an Archos Jukebox Recorder, you only see the charging screen, you say! For the sake of other Archos newbies, I will share the two most vital pieces of information omitted from the instruction manual: 1) You CAN run the Archos Jukebox Recorders off AC. Just press and HOLD the ON button for 5 seconds after you plug it in, when the charging screen is on. The machine will eventually reboot, and the normal file screens will appear. 2) The machine has a useful HOLD function - to toggle it on or off, press and HOLD the ON button for 3 seconds when the machine is playing or recording; an onscreen message will confirm that HOLD is activated. The fact that the instruction manual neglected these rather essential pieces of operating information may give you some idea of the incomplete nature of the documentation. That is why I am deducting one star from my evaluation; I would give the machine itself a 5 and you will too, as it essentially enables you to take all your favorite records with you wherever you go.
Rating:
Summary: A great product, but needs a couple of changes
Review: Since portable MP3 players first became available on the market I had long dreamed of having a light-weitght, easy-to-use device that would hold my entire music library. After watching for the prices to come down into my budget range, I began looking at the various products available. My decision came down to two possibilities: this product and Mac's IPod. I chose this product over the IPod because I didn't feel like setting up my computer for Firewire. Upon receiving my Archos Jukebox I immediately took it out of the box and followed the instructions for setting it up. It was a snap and within 10 minutes I was already transfering songs onto the device (though it is recommended that you let the device charge for about 15 hours before you use it). I transfered my entire library (about 1,200 songs) in a little over an hour. I then let it charge overnight. The next day, much to my chagrin, I noted that only 999 songs had transfered onto the device. This is because the operating system on the device only allows 999 files in one directory. I had to break my files down by artist in order to get them all on the device, which wasn't so bad. But once this was done I couldn't set the Jukebox up to randomly play songs from all of my artists as the Jukebox won't shuffle between different directories. To solve this I created a playlist using the included MusicMatch software. Creating the playlist was easy but again the Jukebox will only recognize 999 of the playlist's songs. I got around this by creating a playlist for each genre. After setting all this up (it is realitively easy if you already have the Artist, Genre and Song Titles punched in correctly in MusicMatch) I can now use my Jukebox fairly easily. My final complaint is that it takes about 5 minutes for the Jukebox to "verify" all the songs in a playlist before it will start playing. This can be aggravating, to say the least. The battery life is great though it varies depending on how much you skip around for songs. The batteries drain really fast when it is in Jukebox mode. It only takes about 3 hours to completely charge the Jukebox and it will play for about 8-10 hours on a charge. I haven't really used the recording option and can't speak to how well it works. Archos could really have a dynamite product here if they get rid of the "999" upper limit and stop the device from "verifying" the tracks every time you start a playlist. Aside from that, its a great product and well worth the money.
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