Duncan, mused, then expounded:
> 
> For that reason, I'm writing Archos off as a choice at this point in time.
> Due to their popularity, support for iPods is a fairly good gamble, even
> yet to be released models with different hardware.  It may take awhile,
> but it's fairly likely to happen.  The iriver h10s look to be the only
> other close to viable alternatives in the 20+ gig range, at this point. 
> There are several sub-10GB flash based players in various stages of
> support, but that's not what I'm looking at.
>

The Neuros Audio 2 come with an 80GB drive, supports Vorbis and has
had an open firmware project for a couple of years now.  The price is
less than an iPod as it's being discontinued.  While not offically
supported or sactiioned, both the hard drive and battery can be replaced.

I had the first version, just as Vorbis support was deing added.  Upgraded
my hard drive with a standard laptop unit, and used it for a few years
before it finally died - probably too much poking around inside trying to
get a better understanding of it.  The first version's audio wasn't all that
great, but then most people won't care.  And it's a bit bulky as it takes
2.5" drives and it seperates into two pieces.

After mine died, I picked up an Iriver IFP-999 which is quite nice,
very good audio and quite small.  But I miss having 40 GB of space
as 1 GB is very limiting in the music I can carry.

Neuros has the replacment device on hold as they are just finishing up
the OSD - kind of a portable, networked VCR that uses CF, SD, etc. cards,
runs linux with a version of e17 as the display manager.  

Rasterman, himself, created the display manager and has (or had, I haven't
followed the irc logs lately) worked quite hard on it.

There is a pretty active, though small, community supporting the Neuros
Audio devices.  There main website is - http://www.neurosaudio.com/
And there development process is fairly open - irc dev logs, with some
mild censoring, blogs, wiki, and support forums.

As for me, after mucking in the swamps of Myth, I'm looking forward to
the OSD.

Bob
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