http://www.zunescene.com/comparison/

Just a little FYI, for those who're thinking about getting a new MP3 player.

Granted, it's by an official Zune site, and honestly, I really don't care for the Microsoft Zune (I prefer Creative's line of ZEN players), but I have experience with both players (and with Creative's), and I can vouch that 100% of these claims are true.

What's really hilarious though, is if you scroll down, look at "File Compatibility," and neither player is compatible with "PlaysForSure (Protected)."

PlaysForSure? Mo' liek, "PlaysForShit" m i rite? PFS is one of Microsoft's greatest failures in years, and makes many MP3 players literally impossible to use: Never buy an MP3 player from a company that doesn't make its own drivers for it; and in general, never buy a peripheral from a company that doesn't makes its own drivers for it; expecting Mygrosoft to make FUNCTIONAL drivers for your peripherals is like expecting the government to make good on its claims of providing welfare: Not gonna happen.

P.S. My Creative ZEN seems to work with Vista, but I have to use the software that came with the player, as opposed to the good 'ol drag-and-drop method (which I was able to do with Windows XP); in contrast, the Microsoft Zune doesn't work with Vista, at least, not out of the box; looks like I'm going to have to find, download and install additional drivers. When I tried installing the Zune software on this Vista machine, it said that it wasn't currently supported by Vista, and showed a picture of an Asian person getting hurt; why would they show an Asian person getting hurt? The Asians (Creative = Singaporian) make better damn MP3 players than THEY (Microsoft) do. "Oww!! MY KNEE!!!"

-This post was brought to you today on a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop using Windows Vista Home Premium; works so far.

Microsoft and Apple, bleh.  My iAudio X5L with Rockbox is better than both of those over hyped players, and yes I've used them all.

-Mike

Is there any MP3 player out there that will just function like an external hard drive anymore?  That's why I still have and love my 100 series iRiver.  While I do have an iPhone now, I only really intend to use the iPod function on it to play just the files I can only find in iTunes format.  I don't have the time or the inclination to add my files to iTunes, cause I want to move things as I see fit across devices.  (or is there a way to just somehow get into the file structure of the iPhone to put in MP3 files myself?)

I bought an 80GB iPod a few weeks ago, I like it a lot so far. The only thing I don't like: I wish you could delete songs on the fly instead of having to wait until you get back to your comptuer but it's not a big deal.

I still use my 2GB Creative MuVo in my car most of the time when I go to work cause I don't want to leave my iPod unattended for long periods of time. I use the iPod when I'm going somewhere that is not work and I can keep it on me.

Yeah, I thought this was bad, but I actually like the alternative more...If I give a song a 1-star rating, it sticks with the song in iTunes after I re-sync and I can get rid of all 1-star rating songs in one shot manually.

That's my biggest gripe about my Creative Zen. The Creative Zen Nano Plus was very simple and acted just like a USB flash drive. Technically, the Zen works this way, too, but if you load up your music by just dumping them on to the drive, then you have no ID3 info at all. The player doesn't even read the file name. Basically you have 4gb of "Unknown artist - unknown track." It doesn't even know how long the track is!

I finally installed the stupid software that will "convert" mp3s from my computer to the Zen. It reads in all the ID3 info so I actually have track info on the device. Blarg.

The player I mentioned in my initial reply is basically a 20GB/30GB/60GB hard drive when plugged into your system.

http://www.cowonamerica.com/products/iaudio/x5/

Looks like they're pretty hard to find now though.  Glad I got mine when I did!

-Mike

Yeah, I've got a Cowon G3 flash MP3 player, and the things that sold me on it were (1) the folder-based file structure for loading music and (2) the joystick.  I've never liked the iPod scroll wheel.

My own MP3 Player is a l'il Sansa 1GB m240 picked up on the cheap one Black Friday. It'll only hold 150-65 songs, even if there's room for more. A little annoying, but keeps me honest as to current favorites.