I've had a number or Rio products and I'd be hard pressed to buy another 
one. I had one of the original 300MP units, the updated version sold as 
the Rio One and a Rio 500. The 500 is the only one that still works, 
although the display is a bit flaky and the behavior gets real odd at 
times but popping the battery out fixes it. Ironically, the RIO500 linux 
drivers work better than the Windows stuff from Rio and I've been able 
to recover a couple of hosed SmartMedia cards on Linux that Windows 
wouldn't touch.

I have an Archos Jukebox which is big, bulky and generally a nuisance to 
use. The rockbox software makes it a bit more friendly, but for now I'm 
using it as a portable backup drive.  I recently picked up one of the 
new 40GB iPods which is fantastic - I like having all of my music in one 
unit that can fit in my pocket.

The one I use the most is a pseudo Creative Muvo2. A lot of folks were 
pulling the 4GB compact flash drives out of these for use in cameras. I 
picked up a driveless shell for $50 and a 512MB CF card for another $50. 
So for about $100 I have a very nice, small (2x2x3/4) unit that can hold 
8 hours of MP3s, although I'll admit to using dbPowerAmp to get 16 hours 
of WMA files on the 512MB card. With some careful shopping you could 
probably get a 1GB card today for about $20 more than I paid.

My nephew has an iRiver 790T which he loves. I think it was about $140 
for a 256MB unit and he claims to get about 20+ hours off a single 
battery. I didn't think it was that much smaller than the Muvo - it is 
like a USB memory stick with a single AA battery case slapped on to the 
back. I think there is a slightly older model that only supports USB 1.1 
that shows up on close-out from time to time for around $110 - $120 or so.

Of those that I listed the iRiver is probably the only one that meets 
your needs - flash memory and OGG support. The few people I know with 
iRiver stuff seem to like it. I really like Rio the original company but 
I think the quality of the iRiver and Creative stuff among others is a 
much better value for the money.

--rick


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