I've decided to get meself one of the those lovely MP3 players.

Does anyone have any advice on the good ones (or the ones to avoid)?

Not looking to spend much more than a ton.

Cheers guys & gals

halibut

I went the CD MP3 route, i.e. a CD player that can play MP3's burnt to CD. Great for train journeys because with 650mb on each CD it doesn't take many to ensure that you aren't going to get bored. The only problem I have is that I have 4.9GB of MP3's.

I have a 6 gigabyte Archos Jukebox 6000 which is £250 in the shops. I hear rumours of a 10gig and 20gig version but I haven't seen them in any shops partly because I've not been to have a look.

For a hard disk, it does skip every so often and thinks that every song is 6 minutes 36 seconds long, but aside from that its pretty good. It supports downloadable software updates and has a playlist function etc etc.

Its not very loud though and has to compete with the noisy bus engines and there's naff all bass. But it is USB and appears as drive F: on my machine so I can just copy and paste MP3s directly from the computer. Doesn't support WMAs either.

Overall its far better value then a memory stick based device and can double as a backup device for your documents and for transferring dirty porn flicks to mates houses.

Pretty inspired little device for the money.

I have an Intel Pocket Concert 128MB. The sound quality is amazing for such a little unit (I can hold it comfortably in one hand, and it is lightweight) WMA is fully supported, the firmware is upgradeable, it has a treble/bass equaliser, the music never, ever jumps or skips and it even has an FM radio with ten programmable presets and surprisingly decent reception

The only niggle, albeit very minor, is that the random function isn't terribly random and you cannot transfer files from the player to a PC.

I'd just get one of those new sony minidisc players with a pc link, that they have in Argos. You can easily record from tape, CD, minidisc or mp3. And memory is cheap too.