A week or three ago here, I asked if anyone could recommend an MP3 player with a harddisk that had a good pause/resume feature. (Among other needs, I wanted to be able to listen to recordings of Al Franken's new show, starting and stopping without losing my place.) I instantly received e-mails singing the praises of almost every model by every manufacturer out there, and I'm sure most of them would have been fine. But after studying several messages, especially those from a gent named Phil Merkel, I opted for the Archos 20 GB USB 2.0 MP3 Jukebox Recorder. The Archos is a little heavy, so it isn't ideal for carrying around when you jog or walk but it holds a ton of music and seems otherwise ideal…that is, if you make one little change.
When I first began researching this, I came across some poor reviews for this device, based largely on its internal software. Phil informed me that there's a terrific, free alternative. Some folks wrote an open source program called Rockbox which you can download here and load into your Archos Jukebox. It's simple to install and it corrects all the flaws the Archos people built into their product, making it into a wonderful little machine.
One other selling point for the Archos Jukebox is that it's cheap. If you click on this link, you can buy one from the Amazon folks for $179.88, which is a pretty good price, somewhat below what other online dealers charge. It can be even better because Amazon is currently offering a $50 rebate, bringing the actual price down to $129.88. There are online dealers asking a hundred bucks more than that, which reminds us that it pays to shop around. Anyway, so far, I'm pretty happy with my purchase.