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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