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My MP3 Player Can Beat Up Your MP3 Player

By Eric | December 5, 2005 1:45 pm

This the new toy I’ve been playing with for the last couple weeks. Behold the Archos Jukebox 6000 MP3 player. Produced in 2001, it’s not exactly cutting-edge technology, but that’s exactly why I got it. The facts that I picked it up for $40 on Ebay, and it has a 6GB drive in it notwithstanding, there’s a handful of reasons why I chose this over an iPod or other similar players.

First off, unlike most all (if not all) current mp3 players, the Archos doesn’t have any DRM (digital rights management) whatsoever. This means that I can freely copy music off the player back on to any other computer with no problem, while all the other players only let you copy back to your own machine. Add that to the fact that I’m not tethered to iTunes or some equally craptacular music program, and I’m a happy camper.

Which brings me to the second thing it has going for it. It works as a standard USB hard drive, and since my makeshift case has room for a USB cable, I have storage anywhere and everywhere!

Thirdly, since the original firmware that came with the Jukebox wasn’t all that great, some enterprising coders came up with replacement firmware called Rockbox, which added all kinds of features and customizable screens. Pretty nifty.

And now to the best reason for getting the Archos. That aforementioned 6GB drive? It’s a standard 2.5″ notebook hard drive, which means…. yep, you guessed it. It can be swapped out. For something much bigger. MUCH bigger. Like 100GB bigger. All I have to do is format the thing with FAT32 (NTFS won’t work, and based on the Archos architecture, there’d be no performance gain anyway), and I’m ready to rock. After Christmas, it’ll be out with the 6 and in with the 100, and the entire music collection will roll with me everywhere. 🙂

Throw in the FM transmitter I picked up, and I have everything at my fingertips in the car also. With more flexibility and far less money than an iPuke, this Archos works for me. I’ll trade a little bit more weight (and I do mean just a little bit) and a little bigger footprint for all of the aforementioned features.

Topics: Blog | Tags: , , | 6 Comments »

6 Responses to “My MP3 Player Can Beat Up Your MP3 Player”

  1. Chip Says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 4:27 pm

    Pretty cool! Most manufactures will custom design their hardware or ASICs but it only ends up enslaving the user to “their” way of playing music. Back in 2001 it was a race to the market – everyone wanted the first portable MP3 players which means one thing…yep, off the shelf components. Can you get a firmware to run WMA files too or only MP3/WAV’s? I suspect WMA may be a bit more computationally intense for 2001.

  2. Eric Says:
    December 6th, 2005 at 2:27 pm

    I don’t believe that there’s WMA firmware out there. I seem to recall a question from the FAQ that read something like… it’s an _MP3_ player!!

  3. Adrienne Says:
    December 7th, 2005 at 8:22 pm

    wow… you are such a dork… I miss that. I dont have anyone to ask dorky questions anymore… haha oh… Happy Holidays too :O)

  4. Matt the Magnificent Says:
    December 7th, 2005 at 9:05 pm

    Dude….. I love your sexy old technology. You should strap a toaster oven to that thing.

  5. karl Says:
    December 8th, 2005 at 1:53 pm

    strap that piece onto your back as to help distribute the mass.

  6. Eric Says:
    December 10th, 2005 at 11:54 am

    I’ll get a little indentured servant to carry it for me… toaster oven and all.

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