Not any slower than finding a cd, taking it out of the case and placing it in the cd player. Give me convenience or give me death.

Slow interface? What, are you being chased by ninjas while you browse your library?

IMO, they're all the same. The geeks will most certainly disagree, but if you just want to store music and play it back (and don't care about video or staring at the tiny screens) then they're all exactly the same. Get what you can afford. If you're looking to store everything you have all at once, then obviously you'll want the bigger drives. I like to swap out albums all the time, so storage size means very little to me. My 5 gig iPod mini keeps me going for a week, then I just swap everything out for new stuff. Then again I, um, acquire many many gigs of new music every week, so there's no way I could use my iPod as permanent storage anyway.

Then again, if you're looking to spend 80gig-iPod-kinds-of-money, I guess I don't see the need to comparison shop.

I still rock my $25 portable cd player that plays mp3 cds. At ~$0.10 a cd, I just burn a new cd of tunes when I need one and throw the old one into the archive.

...I'll probably end up getting a fancy hard drive based system when my cd player finally breaks tho. Whatever you get, post your thoughts for those of us that may be in the market ;)

I have a Sansa MP3 player one of their e1?? models or something. Looks alot like a black Ipod standard but has a mic in it that records sounds, concerts, lectures and even radio program that it gets on its fm receiver. You also can plug in sansa miniSD cards and expand your memory/transfer songs on the miniSD cards as well. It's supposedly more durable than some other MP3 players if you're rough on your stuff.

Downside is that ITunes is not compatible with it of course! It's made to be compatible with rhapsody instead which has less music that I like.

There is absolutely no reason to shell out the money for an iPod if your main interest is to make your CD collection protable. Find the best deal on the most memory that you can afford.

I've heard that first gen 30 gig Zunes are going pretty cheap online. I've had one for almost a year and it works just great. I have over 5000 songs right now with around 3 gigs to spare. I use their subscription music service of unlimited downloads for $15/month. (No Zep, Beatles, AC/DC, but they do have "obscure" stuff like Low and House of Large Sizes) Good deal because I can share the subscription with my wife's Zune. If you purchase more than two CD's a month, or you have more than one person in the household who would eventually have a player, check out Zune. You can check into some of the other subscription music sites first and then see what players are supported. Although I am satsified with my Zune, they recently updated their firmware and software in October and some of the 1st gens got a little buggy. Took a few days to get things squared away again, but I'm sure Microsquish has ironed out those bugs by now.

Don't let TV/geeks tell you that Apple is somehow superior to all other hardware devices. If playing music is your main function, they are all pretty much the same. Right now Apple has an edge on all other players because most people assume iPod and Mp3 player mean exactly the same thing.

I'm also curious about which players will handle FLAC and SHN files. I have tons 'o live shows from archive.org that I would like to bring with me and not have to convert to a lossy format.

i hart my 30g first gen zune. it even auto-mat-ick-a-lee sucks up all of the pod-casts that go into jamie's itunes account. and the video is great as well...

I would look for one that acts like a hard drive when you plug it in and does not need proprietary software to transfer files to and from (without employing a hack), Irivers where great for this and I still use my 4 year old IHP-40 (40 gigs), but they don't make em anymore.

The brown color of the previous generation of Zunes was being sold for like $90 before xmas. Refurbed ipods at the apple store are a safe bet - same warranty as new and will be in perfect condition. You'll want a hard-drive as opposed to a flash-based player if you want to store a lot of tunes. For more format support, you can put Rockbox (do google search) onto iPods and other devices. Rockbox is an alternative operating system that supports many file formats and is just all around good, though a bit techy in terms of installation and use.

Refurb 30 gig ipod video for $159 now at the apple store.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/wa/RSLID?cjid=10492644-1225267-sduidp0t0&nclm=Certified&SID=sduidp0t0&AID=10479833&mco=44BD9AA2&PID=1225267

Ok. I've got a 30 Gig Video Ipod that's I've had for 2 years now. However, I got a 30 Zune that's (pretty much) just as good about a month ago.

Here's the deal: The Zune was FREE!!! You heard me right. Free.

Go here: http://club.live.com/

Play a bunch of games ( I recommend "Flexicon". You get the most points) and eventually you'll have enough points to order a free Zune. It's pretty sweet. And shipping is free too.

Thanks everyone for your info! I wound up going for a Creative Zen 16GB flash player. Uses less battery than a hard drive. FM radio, synchs w/Oulook, and Itunes compatible. Expandable SD slot, supposedly better sound quality than Sansa, but unfortunately the SD memory is not integrated like Sansa, meaning you have to back out of menus to use the extra memory. No available docking station either. I bought direct from Creative, actually a bit cheaper than Amazon.

http://us.creative.com/products/product.asp?category=213&subcategory=214&product=16999