Sorry, I'm not here to pick a fight. I am just here to state that my personal experiences with Apple, and their products, have been outstanding. I am going for a trade, aka welding and auto tech.

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Maynard James Keenan:
Like hearing my grandmother, talk to her dog that way -- "Ooo
-- puppy!" and I said I'd never do that, ever! And now I have two
dogs and I talk like an imbecile! I wander around, "Ooo! You want
food!" I've turned into a f*cking moron.

k so prolly very little lectures nshit....anyways, the ipod has driven me so nuts that any aspect of a portable device i WILL analyze it to death. so this time around when buying a portable device, im bound to get something reliable.

btw, sony is making all future portables mp3 compatible. theyve got a really sweet HD mp3 player thats WAY smaller than the ipod and lasts 30 hours on a single charge. right now its atrac only, but sony president announced the change to MP3.....yippy!

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Buying trance is a lot like buying a car. Don`t buy American.

Ive done a lot of research on this when I wanted to buy a player. Ive looked the Ipod, at that Sony HD one, at the Cowan HD player, MDs, just read up on everything.

I ended up getting the Iriver iFP-899

Its a 1 Gig flash based player that's about the size of a small cellphone, and uses a single AA battery to power it.

I chose it because:

1. Its small, meaning i can take it more places than the HD ones which are bulkier.
2. Its memory is flash based, unlike the HDs on Ipods etc, meaning that their HDs will eventually die out, and mine wont
3. It doesnt skip unlike the HD based ones, so you can jog with it.
4. No moving parts (aside from the buttons) to break, unlike the Ipod HD which can croak from just one drop on the ground.
5. Sound quality is top-notch, just like youd expect from iriver
6. No battery issues to worry about. When the AA is done just toss it and put in a new one. Life is grreat too, Ive been listening all week and my Duracell still shows up at 1/3 power.
7. Supports USB 2

(I decided I want to stay clear of MDs, had a bad experience with my old one)

Anyway look it up on www.iriveramerica.com there selling it for 250 USD plus 25 shipping