Ok, so I'm tired of carrying around my CD collection. I'm thinking of going with an MP3 player with large storage and expandable memory.
Consumer reports rates Creative Labs overall highest.
Ease of ripping tracks, storage, and track management are high priorities for me.
Any recommendations?
The iPod seems to constantly get good reviews.
I have a Creative Nomad Jukebox with 20 GB storage, which works alright for me. However, it's somewhat bulky, doesn't have USB 2.0 support (a real plus), and the interface isn't as good as the iPod's. If you want a really compact MP3 player, go with the iPod; but if having a wide variety of features is more important to you than size, you may want to look into the Nomad Jukebox 3.
I think large storage and expandable memory are going to be hard to find in the same package. Of course, if you need to expand a 20 gig hard drive device, you may have a bit too much music on your hands.
I bought a RIO mp3 player about 4 years ago. It definately has a compact size, limited memory, limited features, slow download time, etc. Recently I purchased a sony sports minidisc player as a gift. You can fit over two hours of music on one disc at a reasonable 130 kbps. Additional discs only cost between $1 and $2. Download time is a bit slow due to the conversion to sony's music format, but it usually takes longer to pick out the songs to put on the disc than to rip them, and a faster computer helps this process along. It also has an amazing battery life. After about 30 hours of use, it is still on it's original single AA battery. Also, being a sports model, it is a rugged little unit. It already has had a few drops and still works perfectly. I wish I could say that about my RIO.