Creative Labs DAP Jukebox 3

The battery life seems to be excellent, being a rechargeable Lion battery. Recharge times are good too and you can even add a second battery for up to 22 hours playback!

The Creative PlayCenter software is good, if a little quirky in places. If you delete your complete music library database(it only points to the files, not the files themselves!) it still shows music in the database. Just a little niggle though. The AudioSync function is very useful with large collections: you don't have to remember what you've downloaded to the player, it does the thinking for you. Searching for music on the player is a doddle; search by Playlist, album, artist, genre, etc. Playlists can be changed on the fly, so there's no need to use the PC software to make changes.

One other thing the player is good at, where other MP3 players fail: mixed CDs. There is no long gap between tracks which can be annoying. Thank you Creative!!!

I am sure I will be buying a second battery to take away on holiday and the car kit for those long car journeys.

If you don't mind having an MP3 player the footprint of a CD disc, this is the player for you. The only thing that could possibly put a dampener on this player is if Creative bring out a 40MB version, as mine is full already! Let's hope it's upgradeable like the firmware.

I don't have firewire, but find that the transfer to the box is at least twice faster than CD ripping, so since they go on in parallel it's just not a factor for my kind of use. There are some limitations - finding all the albums by one artist isn't supported by the menus - but I'm sure I'll get used to that.

The PC software seems to support almost any kind of use you want, syncing to the PC, simple rips to the machine, whatever, and I'm using it on both Windows XP and 98; it's a shame the file transfer doesn't just work by making the thing have a drive letter, instead it needs you to run a special program, but it's solid and well written. I do find the thumb wheel that you use to control most stuff is a bit too small and unfriendly (not as good as a mousewheel) but it's not a problem. I think I'll be buying the extra battery as soon as it comes back into stock on the creative UK website. Oh, and there is a 40GB model coming. But 20 will do me.

This is an amazing machine. It's changed my music listening habits totally overnight. 200+ CDs available, anywhere, at the press of a button? Wow.

The Creative is:
1.Better quality build. (I returned the Archos because of a fault on this criteria).

2.Better sound quality - unless it's because I've changed connects!
3.Better headphones - but that's not worth much!
4.Less trial and error guessing how it works.
5.More expensive and less equipment - eg no interconnect leads to the outside sources.
6.The software is less useful re listening and recording, for example, can't convert MP3 to wav and vice-versa, no editor for recorded files, no track progress to know where one is on a track, nor does one know how far the forward or back have taken you. Archos comes with musicmatch which is far superior.
7.When recording you cannot control in any way the sound level, nor know what level it is recording at- unlike the Archos.
8.Biggest weakness is that the Archos is seen as another drive by the computer and so manipulation is far easier. For creative you have to use their own limited software/ device manager.
9.Sort procedures on Creative is too simplistic - once full and you have thousands of tracks you have to go through them a few at a time to find the one you want. This is particularly galling if you are trying to see what you have. A windows type tree would be far easier.
10. Screen on both still hard to read except in good light.
11.Cover a waste of time. Archos is not.
12.Creative handles like a slippery pebble rather the more chunky block of the Archos.

My overall view is that I'd take the Archos on price if the build quality was better - but it aint. I'd therefore like creative to adopt some of the strengths of the Archos - software and letting the computer see it as another drive.