Portable storage and a good mp3 player?

[kdent]

I have been doing so much research on media players for the last 2 weeks and now I am just getting lost. I have a Digital Rebel and a Pentax s400 (samll and cheap point and shoot camera) and I am looking for a portable hard drive that could upload my pictures and listen to mp3's with good sound.
My requirements:
-30 to 40 GB's but 20 is okay if the price is right
-$300-400
-small, compact, lightweight
-good sound and quality
-can read CF and SD cards
-good User Interface (UI)
-God battery life
-Read RAW and JPEG's obiviously, but doesn't need to show the RAW (would be nice though).

It doesn't need a CF slot but would be nice, same with a color screen.

I have been looking at the Archos Gmini400 (my sister has one that we used when we were in Africa and it worked great) but I don't like the look or the navigational controls. I also looked at the Cowon X5L, great mp3 player but it says it's not compatible with canon and other certain cameras (iaudiophile.net). I have also looked at the Sony Vaio Pocket, which has the same problem as the X5L. And I don't want an IPOD.

Thanks for the help guys,
Kevin

[lomond]

Epson P2000.
But then again I'm biased.

If you've got a week have a look here.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=61953

[Michaelmjc]

It's an MP3 player eh, didn't know that. That is certainly a nice feature to have.. I've heard great things about it, especially the huge screen.

[Illegally_Alive]

ARCHOS AV420!!!
I know the nav. controls look a little weird, but trust me they work well.
I have it and I love it! Plus, it records and plays video, so when you really need to watch family guy- you can. I use it for all the functions it offers, and they all work really well. The battery life in mp3 mode is around 12 hours.

[kdent]

Illegally ALive:
I hear that the av 400 series have a problem with their hard drives (read other forums). Especially the 480 after you put on 40GB's. I really don't want to purchase a player that will crash when I am in the middle of no where. I am curious if you have had any problems with yours?

[Lone Wolf 75]

Illegally ALive:
I hear that the av 400 series have a problem with their hard drives (read other forums). Especially the 480 after you put on 40GB's. I really don't want to purchase a player that will crash when I am in the middle of no where. I am curious if you have had any problems with yours?

I also have an AV420, but this is the first I have heard about hard drive crashes. I use mine primarily as an MP3/movie player/photo storage device when I am on long trips, and it beats carrying around a laptop, lots of CDs, and a CD player.

The only problem that I have had with it was when my work PC crashed (still running Windows 2000, not XP) without disconnecting properly and the Archos developed a read access error - it froze when the PC crashed, and the only way to get it back was to turn it off then on again. I called Archos and they said that sometimes happens, and the only way to recover was to reformat the drive. This was a pain in the butt, but I know now to back up whatever I put on the Archos and to be cautious especially when hooking it up to an older PC, such as my piece-of-junk office PC. I have never had a problem when I have used the Archos on trips for photo storage, nor when using it to connect to newer PCs.

[Illegally_Alive]

The only problem I had with it crashing, is the HD will freeze when playing MP3s for over 3 hours straight. All it would do is freeze in the middle of a song, but you could exit to main menu, and go back to it with no problems or loss of data. This issue seems to be corrected with the latest firmware update. Aside from that, it's been awesome.